screenshot of usabilitykde.org using new design

[Jason Bainbridge]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Neil Stevens <neil at qualityassistant.com>
>http://members.ozemail.com.au/~jasonandkate/kde/usability-newdesign.png

>Please, if that's going to be even the remote >possibility that users will 
>be able to navigate the site, you're going to have to >condense the three 
>widely spread menus into one.

>How is anyone supposed to search everywhere for that >stuff?

By 'three widely spread menus' I am assuming you mean the bread crumb, the main site's navigation menu and the  family of links on the right? Personally I don't have a problem with them all being seperate as they all serve seperate purposes as explained below.

The bread crumb menu is an additional navigational aid just to allow people to see where they are at and also to go back a specific level if they desire, although most people won't even use or notice it, it is still a nice feature to have. Note this menu is not used for locating content it is more for informational purposes and just happens to provide a way to navigate back to a certain level.

The main menu on the left is the menu for the site in question (in this instance Usability) containing links specific to the Usability site, when the user traverses this menu through the submenus then their current location is also indicated by making the links bold.

Where the menu on the right are links external to the Usability site and will be the common family of KDE sites used across all of the sites. Primarily I want people's focus on the menu on the left and given it's location I am confident that's where they would look first as it is some what of a convention and by keeping the family links off of that same menu I think it prevents adding confusion and clutter to it.

>And don't you think the fonts are too small, same as >the problem with my 
>proposal?

I know they are a bit small and the colouring/contrast is a bit off as well, I am going to iron out those few things tonight as I was only focused on the PHP side of things last night. I also want to work on re-wording some of the menu entries and make it easier to recognise just what the 'Areas' on the right refer to, something like 'Other Areas within KDE', basically to reduce the guess work required as there shouldn't be any of that involved to navigate a site. :)

Getting back to your suggestion into making the three menu's into one, firstly integrating the bread crumb menu wouldn't really work and do you think it would improve the layout if the family of links were just dumped at the bottom of the current menu on the left? I think having them on the right is a much cleaner solution and given their purpose I don't think you could mix and match it into the main menu with any luck especially as each site will have it's own main menu.

I guess one alternative would be reducing the family of links to categories only and having those link to pages containing the actual links so it would be able to be integrated at the bottom of the menu on the left, but that increases the number of clicks it takes for a user to locate content and that's bad. :)

Thanks for your comments and I look forward to any more you have after this email. 

Regards,
Jason