Pop Up vs. Normal Page Link

Question...

[andmunn]

I have a "definitions" area in my website, in which i define common terms among the industry i deal with.

Now, the way i have the page set up is that once someone clicks on a word, the definition pops up in a new window (in a small 200* 200 box).

My question is a simple one: is this a "good" solution, or would it perhaps be better if I were to make the definitions fit in with the rest of the page...i.e..// not as pop ups, but rather like seperate pages of the site. I'm wondering if this would be more beneficial in terms of link building and such.

Let me know,
Thanks,
ANdrew.

[karmov]

In the end, what works for your users is a good solution. One of the problems with popups is that they have usability issues. Another is that they can get distracting. Also you're creating a lot of pages that have content that probably don't have any links out. This can cause problems if someone links to the URL of the definition. People will click through to your site and have nowhere to go once they reach one of these pages.

A general definitions page that would include all of the terms you wish to define would probably work best. This will help circumvent a lot of the issues I've mentioned and will have the added advantage of letting people have a quick glance to see if there are any other terms that they don't recognize (something I personally do). Some people like to read through any special definitions they might need as early as possible so they can read the rest of the page/article/site uninterrupted.

Again these are opinions. There are very few "right" ways to do things. The deffinitions of "good" and "right" on the web are pretty loose since there are so many factors to consider. I hope this helps a bit.

[photon]

Depending upon the length of the defintions, another possibility would be to use the

title

attribute to get a "tooltip". For example,

<p>blah blah <span class="defn" title="Blah--often used as a nonsense filler for content">blah</span> blah blah</p>

You won't get a link out of it, but you'll have added potentially keyword rich content to the page.

I'm not sure of the maximum length allowed; I want to say 4096 characters, but I may just be making that up.

[encyclo]

Even better than using a

<span>

is to use

acronym

, which is the appropriate tag in this case:

<p>blah blah [b]<acronym title="Blah--often used as a nonsense filler for content">blah</acronym>[/b] blah blah</p>

If the description is longer, I feel that using a popup is a reasonable solution, but I would add a backup link for non-javascript users to a definitions page with all the definitions. If you link to an anchor in that page, the user will be sent directly to the right place. Use an onclick event with return:false; so a user with javascript enabled doesn't get sent to the definition page. Something like:

<a href="/deflist.html#blah" onclick="popUp('your_JS_here');[b]return false;[/b]">blah</a>

[jatar_k]

also when using popups remember that they need to be specifically requested, which is the case here. You don't want them to result from a seperate primary action or all of the popup blockers will stop them.

Nothing more frustrating than getting a useful popup blocked because it was done improperly.

[andmunn]

Hello,

Thanks for your comments, all greatly appreiated. Right now all the defintions (about 50) are in one "index" page, with each definition forcing a pop up window (algined to the top left of the page).

It is coded this way:
<a href="#" onclick="window.open(definition.html', 'StatusBar', 'toolbar=no,resizable=yes,scrollbars=no,width=300,height=200,left=0,top=0');">

Is this a "good" way? Most of my definitions are probably around 25-250 words (therefore a fair amount of fluctuation).

I, personally, liked the pop up idea, because i could reference these words from all around the site, in order to help out necommers to the "industry" i'm dealing with.

Good idea, or bad..or should i just stick the examples given here?

[grandpa]

I use both methods on different sites. I like the pop-up version of the help/info much better than a separate page. And there is a link at the bottom of the popup help page, just in case someone does find their way to that help page via a SE.

Why do I like it? The help information is visible in front of the page, so what I'm talking about can be seen. Using Alt-Tab is an easy method to switch between the two views, if needed.

[Essex_boy]

I did exactly the same on an ecomm site the pop explaained about shipping and general info etc.

Seemed to work as the pop up wasnt forced it came when the user wanted it.

Good idea overall.