Pattern 59: Broken buttons *
AKA:

You are including links to other pages or sites on a web page. You understand the need to provide FEEDBACK (41) and use NATURAL METAPHORS (56). You have tried WHITE SPACE SEPARATES CONTENT (58). But...

You don’t know the size of the window a page will be displayed in. Therefore you cannot predict how your links will appear to the user.

Therefore

Avoid line breaks in links. Do not put links midstream in other text, place them on a separate line. Use non-breaking spaces.

This pattern is terminal within this language.

Contributors and sources
Spool et al. (1999)

Buttons (i.e. links) can be wrapped round to fit the window of the table cell they are in or the browser window in which they appear. People then can think that one link is two or more links. In the example below, the user could think there were four options instead of three.

Example

SCARLET
RED/AMBER
GREEN

could display as

SCARLET
RED/
AMBER
GREEN

As an aside, it is also usually a bad idea to allow things like telephone numbers, email addresses or people’s names to break in this way.

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