Walk from Rialto to Fondamente Nove

It's definitely faster to walk. Here's an excellent resource someone posted recently. It's a map of Venice showing the pedestrian traffic flow. Use the red and yellow routes to get from Rialto to F. Nove. Piece of cake.
Venice traffic flow

Well, Venice wasn't built to accommodate tourist traffic. Glancing at my map, I can see several paths to get you to Fondamenta Nuova. They all zig and zag a bit. Head north on Salizida Grisostomo. Hang a right at Calle Canzian, through Campo Santa Maria Nova, past Campiello Widmann, then follow Calle Fumo to FM.
Leave some extra time, you'll make it.

You are correct -- it does save a great deal of time and we have done it a number of times. But there are several routes and they all twist and turn. There are two sites that have excellent aerial views of Venice. Go to bing.com and googlemaps.com. You can zoom in and out, move about, and plot your own path. The googlemaps.com site also has street level view so you can even preview your route. TC

Thank you to those that responded ! I downloaded walking directions from Bing maps and from Via Michellin for comparison and they look to be about the same. It looks like the most confusing half mile walk ever ! Are there signs on the buildings directing the way as there are to Rialto and San Marco?

On many (not all) buildings, about eight to ten feet off the ground there are signs that state "Fondamente Nove". Those signs indicate that you are heading in the right directions. I'm not sure how close to Rialto you will see them, so just keep a good eye out and then follow them. TC

I do not love the scale and coloration of the Streetwise map, so other resources are a good idea. Looking at the color map in Rick's book, it looks like a pretty simple route, with one a few corners. I know you want to get our to Burano, but hopefully, getting there will be part of the fun. Don't be afraid to get lost.

Thank you Laura for the encouragement! We'll be there in the second half of September on a My Way tour and I'm sure we'll do our fair share of getting lost! We're mapping out our time in Venice to make sure we see the sights that are most interesting to us in the time we have there.

You are correct that to connect many points in Venice, there's often no "direct" way without at least some detouring. It's just the way the city is built. As someone used to cities like New York and Philadelphia built on grids which allow for maximum "efficiency" when walking, I share your consternation, but once you accept it, it's fine.

I did sometimes take a vaporetto rather than walk, if I wasn't up to navigating the streets, as the vaporetto stops and routes are well marked. So you are right that between Rialto and Fondamente Nove, walking will be faster (and more interesting), but the vaporetto is easier. You may want to go each direction by a different method (that's what I did). As a bonus, by walking back I found a supermarket (there are only a few in Venice proper).

We are in Venice now and just did this walk but we actually were at Rialto market hopped the vAporetto to ca d' oro (next stop on line 1) got off there went to right along strada nova then just followed signs to fondamente nova it could not have been easier took no more than 10-12 minutes we did stop to visit the beautiful gesuiti s Maria assumpta church along the way
sorry for typos/ misspelling on my iPhone!
We are finding it very easy to get around Venice places are actually a lot closer together than it seems on map!
Did cicchetti tour with Alessandro last nite highly recommend

Burano was delightful

ChristineH. Thanks so much for taking time out to reply. Your very helpful suggestion is exactly what we will follow.
Cheers!

And you can do a test walk yourself using Google Maps Streetview. They photographed virtually every square inch of Venice. Just drag the little guy onto the map.

Happy travels.