"Next ->"
Everywhere I go on the web these days, I find little tiny "Next ->" links. At the bottom of every page of Google or Yahoo search results; or in every Flickr user, tag, or group view. You see a few, and you always have to click Next to see some more.
So why are the Next links so tiny, so hard to click on?
I'd like to see them get a bit bigger, a bit easier to click on. It's not that I can't see them, it's just that they're so fiddly to use. They require more effort than actually starting a search, or clicking a search result.
In fact, I'd like to see the page developers use some real smarts and make large sections of the page clickable. How about if the margin of each page, about 30 or 40 pixels at each edge, became a Previous/Next link? These margins could be subtly shaded to indicate that they were different from the page background itself. I see no reason why this couldn't be a user pref, stored in a cookie or somesuch, so that people who didn't like or didn't understand the concept could simply switch it off.
But those of us who liked it and understood it could fly through search results and Flickr pages much faster than before, with far less mousing required.
Labels: tech
