The Structure of Web Papers

The Structure of Web Papers: Navigation

Table of Contents

Overview
Content
Navigation
Layout & colors
Endnotes
Dos & Don'ts
Template

Navigation

Getting around a web paper is one of the most challenging aspects of creating a web paper, because if you don't provide the reader with an easy way of moving from section to section, the reader becomes completely frustrated and the message of the paper is lost. Even worse, the flow of the argument of the paper is never fulfilled.

There are several ways of achieving adequate navigation. Here, you're seeing one of the most common and familiar methods: the left column index or table of contents. Now, this table of contents is duplicated on every page. That is, every section of this paper is a separate file, a separate .html document. The advantages of this are: 1. you don't have a humongous huge page that the reader has to scroll down and 2. you don't have ugly frames. But the big disadvantage of this format is that if you make any changes to the index (you add a section, delete a section, rename a section file, etc.), you have to go back and physically change the index in each separate section/file. If the writer is using a program like FrontPage, this isn't a problem; FrontPage can automatically update every file in a website if you're working from a universal template. BUT FrontPage web pages must be housed on a server which has been loaded with the appropriate extensions from Microsoft--which sun.iwu.edu does not have. SO, you can't load FrontPage web pages on sun.

You have to be careful, too, to be sure that the menu is easily accessible... which means that if you have a really long page, you need to provide the reader some way of easily getting back to the top of the page to access the menu. There are really tricky, neat Javascript scripts which create floating menus that always float on the screen, but they can lock up way too often and may not be supported by the reader's browser. The two easy ways around this problem are:

half-way through a long page, and at the bottom, provide a "back to top" link.
use frames

One can also use list boxes with Javascript to access sections, but these can be hard to set up. When creating web papers, the best rule of thumb is to keep it as technologically simple as possible. Don't let the technology take over and obscure the basics--a coherent thesis and argument, convincing evidence, and clear writing.

For a sequential organization, commonly used in a web paper, PREVIOUS and NEXT buttons, or even just links, at the bottom of the page might be a good idea. This way the reader doesn't have to rely on the back button of his/her browser.