.............

[Sebastian Faubel]

> It's easier to scroll down, than to play hide-and-seek.

That's one point, really good. Why hide the links on the bottom of the
monitor?

> When you have to 
> look on the left column, on the right column, and on the upper right row, 
> that takes more mental effort and time to search than one hierarchy.

you really think so..:-)

> Why?  You agreed below that it's the main site content that's most 
> important, so why not put the main site content right at the eye?

yes, if the content is in the center it has the most prominent place on
a site to be...also for the eye.

> But that's just it:  I don't think it's a tradeoff of usability to get one 
> menu, for the reason I just gave above.

i do. also for the reasons i gave five thousand times already.

> Oh come now.  This is the KDE site we're talking about here.  And remember, 
> KDE officially supports an 800x600 screen resolution.  So this site *must* 
> be usable with Konqueror on such systems.

IT IS! And not bad at all. My design has no vertical scrollbars at this
resolution, and the text is wonderfully readable. it was the main goal
of my development.

> > also think about the current poll on kde-look: i think it couldn't point
> > out our expected user group / resolutions better.....
> > somewhere you have to make a clear line.

> I don't care about polls.  KDE never has been, and never will be, 
> democratically run when it comes to deciding technical merit.  It would go 
> against KDE's core principles to sacrifice usability and a whole segment 
> of users (small screens) because of a unscientific poll that could easily 
> be abused.

no comment.
 
> Yes, exactly.  That's why we need to get the search out of the way, put it 
> off to the side, to give the main content more room and more prominence.  
> I think your layout highlights the search form too much.

because it is not only a content search form. it is inteded for also
apps, themes & stuff. I think this is a really nice feature which could
have some attendance..
 
> > > 4. We modified the logo graphic to fit in with the CSS better
> >
> > i don't think so. you just put it somewhere as background-image, which
> > is not really an bad idea but i think this is only reasonable togehter
> > with an alternate not displayed <h>title</h> for non graphical or non
> > css browers...
> 
> I did do that.  Look at the code; there's an <h1> in there. :-)

ok.
 
> 1.  No, usability and accessability are most important.  It doesn't matter 
> how shiny your style is, if whole classes of users can no longer read it.

goes with me. is it impossible for you to combine visual style and
usability? About accessability we don't have to discuss that much, as it
automatically very accessible when programmed standards compliant.
i also intended to have the site Boby AAA approved.

ps. have a look at www.alistapart.com

there's really a lot of stuff about that...:-)

> 2.  Your stylesheet had proprietary fonts in it, adding a dependency that 
> is inconsistent with KDE licensing standards.

really? as i know verdana is under a almost free license. 
anyway that's not a reason for throwing out all font-families.
 
> 3.  The scope of the KDE site design is much larger than you may realize.  
> We need to mkae a design that will work for every language, so if your 
> design depends on a particular font, and your font doesn't support every 
> language KDE supports (See the i18n combo box on the site for some 
> examples), your design will fail.

does it? haven't i added alternative font-families? i don't think it
would fail at all, as the font-family "verdana" is a standard part of
microsoft systems all over the world. everybody else has either
helvetica & Co. But you are right, i could add some more alternative
font-families, there are really a lot.....