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Under review

Users shouldn't be taken away from the current page to the bibbase page

Paul Parsons 9 year бұрын updated by Christian Fritz 9 year бұрын 3
When clicking on a publication, users shouldn't be taken away from the current page to the bibbase page. It is very confusing and they often don't know how to get back.This is especially true if they click on the bibbase logo. There is no visual indication that they are going somewhere else. They see "sign in" and other confusing information.
Under review
BibBase is a free service even though it is not free to operate. As such, it seems reasonable to me that it at least is allowed to advertise for itself. However, if you would prefer a completely white-labeled service, it would be conceivable to offer a paid version of BibBase where no self-advertisement would happen. Would you be interested in that?
Hi,

Sorry, I wasn't very clear in what I was trying to say. BibBase is a great service, and thank you for what you're doing. BibBase should definitely be able to advertise for itself. I don't see any problem at all with that.

My issue is with respect to the interface design when BibBase is embedded in another site. If a user clicks on a publication title, they are taken to the embedded BibBase page, with the BibBase logo and "sign in" option. At this point, it can be confusing because users don't know they have been brought somewhere else. They might be confused about how to get back (because the page hasn't 'reloaded', so they don't think they would need to hit the back button), and not have any idea what "sign in" means. Then, for lack of any other visible option, they would click on the BibBase logo. At that point, they are completely confused, because now they seem to be at a totally different website, even though the rest of the original website is still in view around it! Probably at that point they will start hitting the back button because they don't know what else to do.

Perhaps when a publication is clicked on, the BibBase page could be opened in a new window/tab. That would avoid the whole issue above. Alternatively, there could be an internal back button, breadcrumbs, or some other form of visible navigation embedded in the BibBase page. Or, the user could simply be given a message "this will take you to a different page....", which could actually help to advertise BibBase. In any case, there are many ways to deal with the issue.

Anyway, just my 2 cents. I work in user centered design and usability, and I can see how this will cause confusion for users. BibBase is great so far, keep up the good work!
Hi Paul,

Sorry I misunderstood your intention. I certainly appreciate ideas on how the UX could be improved.

One question: are you describing the case where BibBase has been embedded using an iframe? I'm asking because you mention the situation where "the rest of the original website is still in view around it" If that is the case (iframe embedding), then I agree. That is very confusing. And there are a number of other reasons why I don't recommend the iframe method -- most importantly because search engines would not associate the terms/pdfs found to your web site, but would link to the embedded frame source directly.

Do you want to try the JSONP method of embedding instead and see whether you think that avoids some of the confusion for the user?
<script src="http://bibbase.org/show?bib=[URL-OF-BIBTEX-FILE]&jsonp=1"></script>