Gentoo Archives: www-redesign

From: Aaron Shi <aaron@××××××××.com>
To: www-redesign@l.g.o
Subject: RE: [www-redesign] Site Map
Date: Tue, 24 May 2005 06:43:07
Message-Id: 200505240643.j4O6gt7J082136@athena.thinkhost.com
In Reply to: [www-redesign] Site Map by Michael Curtis Napier
1 Here's some feedback on the live new site. I'm very short on time (and it's
2 very late) so please bear with me.
3
4 The top portion where the sitemap link is now, is supposed to be the url of
5 the current site. It is a site level indicator, because we will have many
6 sites such as bugs.gentoo.org, forums.gentoo.org, etc., that indicator will
7 tell the user which site they're on.
8
9 Please follow the design templates with regards to headings, lists, bullets,
10 paragraphs, etc.
11
12 The Main Index page: "what's new" - wrong font; the headlines/excerpts - no
13 hr bar; date column - missing bg, main nav - please follow structure as
14 outlined by Sven...too many items and things blow up on smallers screens.
15 The actual news article page is supposed to look like a Guide Page Template,
16 with the article title, author, excerpt, date in the purple box, and the
17 full article below. The 3 jump pads are supposed to be only present on the
18 Main Index page and no where else.
19
20 Other pages: main headings - wrong font...supposed to be the green ones as
21 per Guide Page Template; subheadings - wrong font and there isn't supposed
22 to be a green arrow...supposed to be purple as per GPT. The layout is
23 completely broken in IE, I realize you're trying the author list in sidebar
24 layout, but what happened to the doc bar and the section indicators?
25
26 One of the main problems with the current (old) site is navigating the site,
27 going up/down the information chain, etc., by getting rid of the interface I
28 put in place in the new design, we're back to square one. There is no way
29 of going up one level unless someone starts over from the top level down
30 again. I.e. Home > some main category > some subcategory > some article >
31 some page of article, if you're reading the article page, you can't go to
32 any of the levels between it and Home, unless you go Home (or to a main
33 category level) and dig your way all the way back down to where you
34 want...does that make sense? The interface that was in the design template
35 is crucial to avoiding this problem. The site level indicator tells the
36 user which site he's one and provides an easy way to go back to top level,
37 the section indicators tell the user which section he's in, the breadcrumbs
38 allows for navigation anywhere within the chain of info flow...all these
39 things work together like a GPS...
40
41 Here's a test, suppose someone who has never been to the Gentoo site saw a
42 screenshot of page in a magazine, but no URL cause the magazine editor cut
43 out the browser location bar. Can he easily arrive at the same place as in
44 the screenshot with no full URL anywhere at all? With the new design, all
45 they have to do is look at the site level indicator (www.gentoo.org,
46 bugs.gentoo.org, whatever) and enter that into their browser, look at the
47 section indicator to find the main category and click that on the main nav
48 bar, look at the breadcrumbs and get to where they need to go, and finally
49 the article title and main headings will get them to the exact
50 page/paragraph. That's something that's impossible with both the current
51 site and Michael's current live new site.
52
53 Furthermore, if the template guidelines are not followed, then the print CSS
54 won't work as it is based on cascading after the other CSS and overwriting
55 the necessary rules.
56
57 I haven't had time to make the changes requested with regards to how to
58 display long lists of authors and finalizing the code segment displays.
59 Once I do that, I will create a design and style usage guideline for
60 templating work. In the mean time, Michael's done a good job giving us a
61 live environment to preview, but please for the time being follow the
62 templates that I created. Do not change the nature of the templates or the
63 functionality of the site, but rather present the content using the
64 templates already created. I thought since the code is all structure based
65 now that we've stripped presentation into CSS, it would be clear what
66 elements are used for what (i.e. h1 for doc title, h2 for main headings, h3
67 for subheadings, etc.), but I should've probably created more documentation
68 to detail their usage.
69
70 Btw, that site map is huge!!! Wow. I think we're going to have to figure
71 out a way to display all that info, but it's a good start. At least now we
72 know what we're up against. ;)
73
74 Keep up the good work Michael, I realize this probably isn't the feedback
75 you're looking for, but it's important to make sure the foundations are
76 right before we go ahead and build the rest of the house. ;)
77
78
79 -Aaron
80
81
82
83
84 > -----Original Message-----
85 > From: Michael Curtis Napier [mailto:curtis119@×××××.com]
86 > Sent: Monday, May 23, 2005 9:27 PM
87 > To: www-redesign@l.g.o
88 > Subject: [www-redesign] Site Map
89 >
90 > I started on the Site Map today. I am the coach of my oldest
91 > kid's basketball team and we had practice today so I couldn't
92 > put as much time into it as I had hoped. I have the
93 > Documentation section to a workable point. I'm not going any
94 > further with this until I get some feedback.
95 >
96 > The Site Map is an index to the entire gentoo site. Part of
97 > this redesign is to "redesign" the way the site is layed out.
98 > Not just visually but how the pages are grouped togeter as well.
99 >
100 > I propose that each major category of the Site Map be a link
101 > to that categories index. This index will be a short
102 > description of what you can find in this category and a
103 > category index. In essence, each category index is just the
104 > Site Map with actual content pages linked from it. The
105 > category index will have no real information other than to
106 > index it's contents.
107 >
108 > Once I get some feedback on the layout of this map I will
109 > start creating the rest of it and the individual category index's.
110 >
111 > curtis119.no-ip.org
112 >
113 > The Site Map is linked to in the upper right hand corner of each page.
114 > It replaces the link to www.gentoo.org. The upper right
115 > gentoo logo already takes you there anyway.
116 > --
117 > www-redesign@g.o mailing list
118 >
119 >
120 >
121
122 --
123 www-redesign@g.o mailing list