15 August 2020

Link Navigation in Gemini

I use Bombadillo as a Gemini and Gopher client. I like its all-keyboard navigation, and I like the way links are numbered. I assume, but don't know, that this is common in other Gemini clients that inherit ideas from Gopher.

When you want to open a link in Bombadillo, you type a space, then the number, then return. But there's a shortcut: The first ten links can be opened just by typing that number key (0 for number 10). We can take advantage of that, and the first few links' visual placement at the top of the file, to make the user experience nice.

On the web, lots of sites have a navigation bar that stays consistent from page to page. Or they may have breadcrumb links, which differ between pages, but consistently point back to home from the same place on each page. Either way, that kind of stable presentation of internal links builds visitors' muscle memory within the site. It's similar to the way a browser gives users a way to go back and forward in the browsing session, with back and forward buttons that stay put, and shortcuts that correspond. This is great because visitors feel comfortable in the space, not lost in space.

For this Gemini site, I chose to make the first link always go to the parent page. That's a breadcrumb link. Its number is consistent, and so is its placement. Following link 1 repeatedly will bring you to the root. I think visitors will understand that quickly, no matter which page they arrived on. If they spend a little time here, they'll benefit from muscle memory.

Today I added Next and Previous links to glog post pages like this one, which are links 2 and 3. Relative navigation between sibling pages isn't necessary in every corner of the site, but it makes sense for a time series like a glog. I think it will give visitors a greater sense of where they are in the site.

There's one remaining wrinkle: When you read this glog, you might follow link 2 to read a few posts in order. If you repeat that until you land on the latest post, there is suddenly no more Next link. That makes link 2 the Previous link, on that one page. That inconsistency could lead you to make a navigation mistake, and then you'd feel like you have to tiptoe through this site. On the web, we might solve that problem my putting some plain text where the Next link would have been, preventing the Previous link from occupying that reserved space, so, preventing navigation mistakes. But in this case, adding plain text wouldn't stabilize the link numbers and their shortcut keys. Maybe the latest post page could link to itself in that spot, with the label "Latest."