Question about link text variations

[afuna]

I'm considering whether having two sets of standard text would be acceptable for official styles. Right now, all the entry links (previous/next/memories/track, etc) are two words or more. That makes those links somewhat difficult to work with in some layouts which have more limited space.

What I'm considering are to have the long forms as defaults, but to have a secondary set of shorter text we can encourage style designers to standardize on, for official system styles. Keeping in mind the previous entry about changing link text, do these variations work for you?

Long and short forms of entry link text

Long	Short
Previous Entry	Previous
Next Entry	Next
Add to Memories	Memory
Untrack This	Untrack
Tell Someone	Tell
Leave a comment	Comment

Comments

[lightgetsin]

All but "tell" make sense to me, but I can't really come up with a better synonym. Maybe share?

[branchandroot]

Ah! Yes, this! (I knew there was a good word I just wasn't remembering.)

I vote for "Share".

[snakeling]

I usually change it to "Share" for myself, too.

[afuna]

I wonder if we can change the longer version to match Share? *g* (retcon!)

One issue that was brought up is that some people do stuff programmatically/do ctrl+f to find the links, so it's good to have some common text between short and long. But like everyone else here, I can't figure out a good short form of "Tell someone", so maybe we need a good long form of "Share"...

[branchandroot]

"Share with someone"?

[afuna]

Hmm. Maybe "share entry"?

Urgh, can we just have Share for both the short and the long forms? *G*

[kyrielle]

"Share this entry"?

[aveleh]

Just noting that "tell/share" is also used for whole journals, so it should (eventually) match there too.

[afuna]

Oh... hum. Suggestions for new text? Share doesn't seem to match journal as well as entries.

[afuna]

How about "Share this" or "Share link"?

[aveleh]

I think it's totally reasonable to have "share this entry" and "share this journal". I actually think it's better than to have the same text for both, since then you can build journal links on entries and comments without them being confusing. (See aveleh for my hackish example.)

[afuna]

hehe okay!

[sophie]

"Send to someone"? (or does it not send the text, but just the link? If so, that won't work)

[afuna]

I think it's just the link that's sent.

[jadelennox]

thanks so much for reposting! I think that having two standard sets of text would be really useful -- and the nice thing about the two columns you've given here is that they all share text in common (well, the "add to memories" text shares the string "memor"). That makes building functionality around shared standard text easier.

[sedge]

Maybe "add memory"? That would make the parallel constructions even better.

[afuna]

Hmm, I'm thinking pairing either "Add to Memories" then "Memo", or "Add Memory", and then "Memory". Thank you for suggesting text!

[snakeling]

Also, because "Comment" could be confused with "# comments", I usually use "Reply".

[sophie]

Agreed about "Reply".

[afuna]

Ooh, good point. And that's been kinda bugging me! In that case, though, I'd probably do "Reply" for both short and long forms.

[vampwillow]

"Add to memories" is, surely, "Remember"? And I'd strongly agree with the view that "Tell" should be replaced by "Share"

[kyrielle]

I like "remember" but then maybe the long form should be "remember this" so they share text in common.

[afuna]

Thinking, thinking. The good thing about having "Memories" is that it's used for the name of the feature, and it's good to keep that consistency between names.

[not_a_sniglet]

Those'd work for us. We like the short forms actually but that's just a personal preference.
Great work Fu!
Also, that icon is brain-meltingly awesomely cute.

[afuna]

*grin* Great to hear that it works for you (and also, thank you <3 I like my icons; hope your brain recovers from the melting )

[ex_peasant441]

Perhaps 'memo' for 'add to memories'

And, yes 'share' and 'share with someone'

[afuna]

I'm leaning towards share/share this entry, or share/share entry, myself. Or, no, wait, maybe I like share with someone better. Hrrrrm!

[jeshyr]

Note: There needs to be only ONE canonical form for each long and short version. As Jade has said, they need a word or a decent chunk of a word in common for searching purposes but the usefulness of standard forms is that they're standard - even when my eyes can't turn text into meaning very well they can look for text of a standard shape much more easily.

So for example "Share with somebody"/"Share" is a great version of the current "Tell" but it needs to replace the "Tell" form completely and not complement it to be really useful. I realise not everybody will want to change right away but the usual caveats about default systems styles do it this way -> if we're changing what "this way" is it needs to change totally.

r

[afuna]

Yeah, we'll be changing to use a canonical long form and short form. Some of the changes, I haven't yet decided on, but I hope to soon.