No, not just yet! ;)

[Jason Bainbridge]

Just a quick response from work whilst I wait for the kitchen to be free so I can make my lunch, so forgive the abruptness if any.

The original two column design had the content site's links on the left and all the KDE family links on the right. This is not well liked for the content sites as two menu's takes away too much from the content so a one sided menu was proposed for content sites.

Originally this one sided menu was going to contain the content site's links and then the KDE family links below, but this just made the list too long so it has been proposed that we just have the family links on kde.org. Currently the design at:

http://usability.kde.org/newdesign/activity/testing/firststeps/

Takes this into account and only has a link back to KDE Home. The menu on this site is currently on the right as that is where Neil, Mat, some others and myself prefer it for content sites. It is still open to debate as to where it will finally be positioned (and with what design as well) but as you said in our design it would be a matter of minutes to do a quick switcheroo as it is just in the template and the CSS.

There are also other proposals available under kde.org/testing as per Christoph's earlier emails that implement the same one column menu idea.

As for the main kde.org site there is a few ideas floating around as to how to make use of it the best and use it to kickstart navigation around the rest of the KDE sites. There isn't currently any proposals for this that I am aware of apart then the original two column design.

I am planning to whack together something tonight (UTC+8) which has all the title/navbar stuff at the top, then 3 (or more) columns of links broken up into categories, then the release announcements, then dot.kde news, then in one column have third party apps and another column kde-look stuff and then finally the footer.

Is that a bit clearer? Please correct me if I've gotten something wrong. :-)

Regards,
Jason

-----Original Message-----
From: Arcana <emerald-arcana at rogers.com>
To: kde-usability at mail.kde.org
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 23:14:12 -0400 
Subject: No, not just yet! ;)

On Monday 21 October 2002 05:36 pm, Christoph Cullmann wrote:

> The 2 side menu <--> 1 side menu left <--> 1 side menu right fractions
> seems to be pretty frozen and senseless "but x sided menus on the xxxx side
> of the screen are better because of ........" mails won't bring any
> success. Could we now please just simply vote which design concept will
> make it ? Sure, we can now write one or two more weeks 100th mails, but
> will that help us ? The most people have their fixed opinion about the
> topic, many alternatives are around (sayed where in plenty mails before ;),
> almost everybody has given his input on this lists. Isn't now simply the
> point reached to make the decision :/ ?

I'm still really confused what the two menu columns on the left and right are 
supposed to contain.  I look at the two and wonder why the right side one 
exists.  However, I also look at the single-column alternatives and they 
don't look as balanced.

There's been suggestions that the menu be moved to one side, and the right 
side be used for news items, app highlights, and other similar "look at me, 
I'm important" items that can contain some eye candy.  There's been 
suggestions that the menus be reordered because they're duplicates of each 
other.

I would like it if someone can go through the purposes of the columns for our 
benefit.  Determining the functional purpose of them may help clarify some 
issues.

Finally, is it possible that the design of the site be coded such that it's 
easy to plug in and remove menus from the left and right?  If that's the 
case, then coding can start now, and the template would be the only thing 
that needs to change.

-- 
-- Arcana

Dreams may be in sleep, or may occur waking.  In all cases, listen to your 
dreams.
_______________________________________________
kde-usability mailing list
kde-usability at mail.kde.org
http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-usability