Ask Dr. IntraNet
Please step in and lie down, Steve Blass, is in for consultations. He understands the strains felt by people developing and managing intranets. Send your problems to dr.intranet@paranet.com

Q I want to make our linear intranet more exciting, in part by giving users more control over navigation. What navigational elements are the most effective?

A It's tempting to use at least one or two of every navigation feature available just because that makes producing Web pages fun, but you may drive your users nuts. What you really need to do is scrutinize your Web server log files and build a system that reflects user preferences.

For example, if everyone starts at the home page and clicks five times to get to the search engine page, you ought to supplement the first page with a search engine link, be it a button, hypertext or a hot portion of an image map.

I advise providing redundant options by using hypertext and image map graphic links. Pop-up windows, menus and checklists are good choices for presenting reasonably short lists. It doesn't make sense to me, for example, to use a pop-up list of 50 state abbreviations. It's easier to type in the two letters than to scroll the list.

The idea is, don't get wrapped up in form over function. Many Web page designers include site maps because the publishing software makes it easy, for example, but few site maps make sense. Or providing a table of contents in one frame and a text window in another can make navigating large documents much easier. Unfortunately, not all browsers support frames, so you lose the weak or provide a frameless version of your pages.

Q Can you recommend a good intranet-in-a-box package?

From the Internet Business Group mailing list (Subscribe at ibglist@silcom.com.)

A A number of products are available in this category, although the trade name Intranet-In-A-Box belongs to CompuServe/AOL. Your choice will depend on whether you're running Unix or Windows NT, how large you're going to need to scale the system and whether you're organizing at a project, departmental or company level. Finding the right tool means thinking through the goals and objectives you want the technology to meet and reviewing the tools with that end in mind.