Thematic titles help users notice key points.—Waite (1982)
The title should ideally be less than 64
characters in length. That is, many applications will display
document titles in window titles, menus, etc. where there is only
limited room.—Berners-Lee(1995)
The title is crucial, because the page
title is often the first thing visible to users using slow
Internet connections, and because the title becomes the text for
any bookmarks the reader makes to your pages. The page title
should:
Form a
concise, plainly worded reminder of the page contents.
—Lynch
& Horton (1999)
Make titles unique and understandable out
of context as most search engines list them in their search
results page. —Ameritech(1997)
Look for two characteristics: consistency in
terminology and consistency in granularity. —Rosenfeld & Morville (1998)
Don’t start all page titles with the same word;
this makes them hard to differentiate when scanning a page. —Uncle Netword (1999b).
Many of the important uses of page titles are
taken out of context, so it is important that the title
have enough words to stand on its own and be meaningful when read
in a menu or a search listing. —Nielsen (1999f))
An informative, concrete title helps
orient readers, whether they have come from inside or outside a
site. —Spyridakis(2000)
Simple page titles that start with a salient
keyword help users pick out pages from the minimized tiles in
the Windows task bar. —Nielsen (2000b)
Web pages, therefore, should contain some
explicit content that can help readers to orient themselves;
access relevant prior knowledge; access relevant content and
structural schemata in Long Term Memory, or construct new
schemata; and identify content relationships within and
across pages.
—Spyridakis (2000)
Readers possess prior knowledge for both
content and text structure that strongly influences how successful
they will be in comprehending discourse. Numerous studies have
shown that prior knowledge facilitates comprehension (Meyer
1984; Lawless and Kulikowich 1996;
Voss and others 1986).
See bibliography:
Ameritech (1997),
Ausubel (1968),
Berners-Lee
(1995), Bricklin (1998),
Dumas (1988),
Frisse (1988),Lawless
and Kulikowich (1996),
Levine (1997),
Lynch
& Horton (1999), (Meyer
1984),
Nielsen (1996, 1999f, 2000b),
Rosenfeld & Morville
(1998),
Spyridakis (2000),
Uncle Netword (1999b),
Voss et al (1986),
Waite (1982),
Williams (1994).
