[ZWeb] A new proposal (long)

[Trevor Toenjes]

I havent been involved with the homepage design.
But I also have gotten no feedback on the sub-page for the "Products area"
merely 24 hours old.  :(

Anyway...here goes some feedback for the main page design.
<I stopped and started several times so this got long. sorry>

The designs are pretty and a HUGE MENTOS to Olivier for kick starting this
process.

My input is from a usability design, not creative design perspective.
Rule of thumb --"Design for what people are used to seeing. Leave cleverness
to Advertising sites."

1. Please leave the left navigation column as its own color to distinguish
it from the body.  My tired eyes find it hard to distinguish navigation from
the main body.
2. Please do not use any "Right Justification".  It is WAY TOO HARD to read.
Most of the world is used to "left justification".
2A.  Please dont use Force Justify in the Right columns.  Left Justification
works just fine here.
3.  The left nav areas need to be cleaned up and cut down quite a bit.  They
are non-descriptive and not very helpful to the first time viewer of the
page.  And it is WAY TOO MUCH information to digest.
4.  Applications has the wrong connotation in the community.  The Community
uses "Products" to describe Zope add-ons.  And this should link to the area
that I started to design.
5.  Please enclose in a table any areas that need to be their own elements.
The "sparse all-white" background design makes it very difficult to scan for
relevant areas.  At least put a border around them if you dont want a
background color.

...woops, got distracted. Now I lost my train of thought...

I do like the "Info for..." area.  But isnt this redundant with Advocacy,
Business, Using Zope?.  Why not move more of the left nav links to this
style and leave only the most important navigation for the site on the left
nav bar?

The Page needs a good tagline or description that emphasizes that it is "The
Website for the Zope Community".

Final feedback is that this design is not enough of a departure from the
existing zope.org page to make a difference.  It does not improve upon the
targeted purpose of making the page more friendly for the purpose of
increasing the adoption of Zope by first time viewers of the page.
Those of us that invested unnecessary time exploring zope.org for useful
information now know where to find it.  Therefore we dont need a new design.
The new design should be to grow the community...hopefully attracting much
more talented programmers than I who can contribute to the core and to
Product development.

Suggestion: re-evaluate the content areas with a question like "What is the
main objective of the home page and of the website?" and then "Does the
layout provide clear descriptions for people to navigate to their area of
interest in one-click?"

Idea...
Why not a section called.  "The Zope Advantage", "Want to know more about
Zope?" or "Evaluating Zope?" or open-source attitude like "Zope: not your
mother's ASP"  :)

Why not have a box for the latest "How to's" with a link to explain how to
write your own how-to?

How about a small link at the bottom of a topic-table that says "Add Zope
announcements to your page"?

Links should be name "Zope-web links" with a page that describes ZWeb, this
mail list, and why people should get involved for the sake of the Zope
community.

And now for some excellent Vogon Poetry for perspective...
Oh freddled gruntbuggly thy mictuations are to me
  As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee.
  Groop I implore thee, my foonting1 turlingdromes.
  And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles,
  Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon, see if I
don't!

Cheers,
Trevor


-----Original Message-----
From: zope-web-admin@zope.org [mailto:zope-web-admin@zope.org]On Behalf Of
Olivier Deckmyn
Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2002 10:47 AM
To: zope-web@zope.org
Subject: [ZWeb] A new proposal


Hi there,

Seb sent me a new proposal :

http://www.nidecker.net/zope.org/v4_1_4/

I like its ideas (seb worked with lennart).

I prefer this version (I made 2 minor modifications)

http://www.nidecker.net/zope.org/v4_1_4b

Cheers,

Olivier.