1 Glossary page
Glossary articles provide definitions and expansions for words and phrases used in a subsite.
Glossaries provide a centralised way to list the terms and abbreviations that a few readers may need to know in order to fully comprehend some articles, but which most may be familiar with. By making the words that need clarification into links to particular glossary entries, an article is left streamlined. Note that footnotes can also provide that ability, but only for one article. If an explanation is needed for multiple articles, glossary entries are the most suitable means.
The glossary page is accessed from a link in the Subsite links section at the bottom of every page, and is a simple list with each entry having a heading and a one paragraph description. The description may contain links which go to articles or external sites that more fully cover the topic that the glossary entry touches upon. An entry may include an image which will be shown at the side of the entry. It can be tabbed to or clicked on to make it expand so that its details can be seen more clearly. A glossary entry's term is a link to the page header.
There can be only one glossary per subsite, but a subsite may default to using the main subsite's glossary if a unified glossary makes more sense. If a subsite's content theme is significantly different from the main's, a separate glossary may be provided. There can be up to 99 entries, and if there are more than five, a navigation bar with links to every fifth entry is provided.
Pop-in△
Sometimes clicking away to a glossary entry can be disruptive to reading, so pop-ins are provided to insert the contents of the target entry after the link to it.
If a link to a glossary entry is hovered over or tabbed to for a second, the contents of the glossary entry is inserted after the link, such as will happen if you hover over this link to Glossary page. This is called a
- a.Work for a link to any article, category, section, subsection or entry, whereupon its headline or heading and introduction or description is inserted, along with its image if any.
- b.Work for items in the Related articles and Latest articles sections, and for custom items in the Subsite links section, all at the bottom of pages.
- c.Are ignored for links to targets in the same article.
- d.Will not be activated if there is too little room for them or they will mess up the layout, such as in narrow table cells, navigation bars, file owner links, or program or diagram elements.
- e.Only work one level deep.
- f.Are dismissed by clicking in it or setting focus anywhere else, which means any links in them are not active. Instead, click the link before the pop-in and click the required link in the resulting page.
- g.Do not work when editing pages in management.
- h.Require JavaScript to be enabled, which is the default in most browsers.
Pop-ins were inspired by Wikipedia where hovering over a link produces a popup that has a summary and an image from the target article. Unfortunately that facility has a couple of downsides, being that they cover other content and might only be partly visible if not fully within the page boundary. The arrangement within Smallsite Design mitigates both of these issues.