No, not just yet! ;)

Tue Oct 22 22:33:33 UTC 2002

Well, that clears some confusion for me, at least.

As I understood Neil's emails, the design that you all have been working was 
to be the template for the KDE family sites.  Is this template for 
Usability.kde.org, or for the whole kde family?

I do think all the KDE family sites should coordinate to some extent - they 
don't necessarily have to all use exactly the same template, but we probably 
ought to come up with a minimum set of information and links they all should 
contain.

This ties in well with Arcana's proposal that we figure out, at least roughly 
what should go in the menus before deciding if we want one or two.

I know Christoph will heave a huge sigh upon reading this ;-o, but...

I basically think we should have two columns.  I like 
http://www.kde.org/testing/modified-2/ a lot, but the search box is a 
dealkiller for me.  I have now looked at all the world newspapers I can think 
of offhand, and the only ones that has a search at the top center are the New 
York Times, Le Monde and http://www.tokyo-np.co.jp/, which I couldn't read.  
All of these have search boxes that a) don't take as much space b) don't draw 
the eye as much as the search box above.  Don't get me wrong, I think the 
gray diagonal line looks really sleek, it's just too prominent.  

Continuing with other usability stuff: there's also no pictures anywhere in 
any of these pages except at the top.  All the releases could easily be 
accompanied by a screenshot or a logo next to them - this would break up the 
page.

To address Aracana's concern, which I think is a good one, I tried last night 
to break down who might want to use kde.org, and what they'll be looking for.  
It's coming in a separate mail.

Cheers,

Eric

On Monday 21 October 2002 9:24 pm, Jason Bainbridge wrote:
> 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.