kde.org re-design usability issues

[Simon Edwards]

On Sunday 20 October 2002 18:00, Neil Stevens wrote:
> On Sunday October 20, 2002 08:48, Simon Edwards wrote:
> > Summary: Use 2 menu columns for the Home page, and a 1 menu column
> > design for content pages.
>
> Why not just go with three, to maximize the ability to find them?

3 's a crowd! Seriously, menu, content, and another menu, (3 columns) is about 
the limit, anything more is too crowded and noisy.

> > * It haven't seen any vaguely convincing arguments for putting the menu
> > column on the right side for the 1 column design. It's goes against a
> > well established web standand and in fact is just looks odd (read: like
> > someone screwed up).
>
> Well-established standard?  Come on, blindly following an alleged crowd is
> not the same as a standard.

true, but going against the grain without a *very* good reason is *very* 
annoying, and I just don't see what the upside of having a menu on the right 
is. The reader's eyes are drawn to the content area first anyway, since it 
has the big heading and the highly contrasting black on white text. (While 
the menu with smaller text and lower contrast receeds into the background 
somewhat).

-- 
Simon Edwards             | Guarddog Firewall
simon at simonzone.com       | http://www.simonzone.com/software/
Nijmegen, The Netherlands | "ZooTV? You made the right choice."