An
Anatomy
of Anchors
[1] Adaptive Path, Official home page. Designed by Douglas Bowman of Stopdesign, 2004 <http://www.adaptivepath.com> (efferent)
is a web design analysis company with a flexible methodology that illustrated in its flexible use of anchors.
Screenshot used by permission.
The site not only uses a variety of anchor styles to convey various types of content, but also emphasizes non-anchoral content with bolded text. Text anchors are signified with a slight variation on the standard style,--dotted underlines rather than the traditional solid blue. underlines. The site also uses bold to emphasize nonanchoral texts. Here, using the standard and expected format for text anchors works lets readers quickly understand which type of emphasis includes a navigational element, and which a mere content element.
The site itself shows flexibility to use various "user-centered methods" of indicating various anchor types.
Like Afterimage [7], Adaptive Path
uses a text anchor at the end of a section to entice readers to continue
(e.g. "explains it all"). Where Afterimage's end anchor evokes
a connotative connection, evokes a nearly denotative
anchor to continue to "read more" or get the full explanation.
This shows the same technique used to get different effects in efferent
and aesthetic sites and works.
Non-distinguished anchors
Note that some of the anchors, such as the names of the founding partners, are not distinguished as anchors. These anchors occur only in predictable places, however, (such as lists) and do not require an ergodic hunt.
Selecting from the menu
The navigation, like many others (e.g., Nevada Division of Environmental Protection [50], this paper, or brandchannel [5]) uses selective animation to highlight anchors that would be triggered. would be triggered.
Adaptive Path goes one step further to highlight the face of the founding partner corresponding to the anchor. This provides a more friendly feel, as if by tsriggering the anchor, we would evoke the personal presence of a smiling and eager-to-help expert. Compare these selective anchors with the face anchors that are always in color at Bankrate [3] or the faces at the Doonesbury [64]cast list that appear when the anchor is scrolled over at http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/thecast/.
Screenshot used by permission.
