Re: perl.apache.org site overhaul

[James Home <ji...@vagabondage.com>]

hiya!   sorry I'm late in responding; February is a month of conferences.

Sometime on  2/24/00, Robin Berjon was saying:
>I certainly would hope the approach to
>this doesn't involve *that* kind of politics.

I'm a designer, not a politician.  I will, however, strongly advocate 
what I feel is the best approach to the organization of a given 
collection of information.  I don't consider this politicizing, I 
consider it essential to being an good designer.

>The original goal of splitting into smaller pages is not to "move people
>around", it's a user interface principle.

there are countless reasons why it might make sense in architecting 
any given site to break up content into separate pages.  I would 
*not* say that there is an overarching interface design principle 
that states "content must be split into multiple pages".  our job as 
designers is to decide what information it makes sense to separate 
and which information should stay together.

>I see the index page as a way to
>link to content so that people can easily find it. It's goal is imho to
>make the content of the site clear and provide obvious means of accessing it.

that's just one goal we should have for it.  in the case of this 
site, where the goal is to get short snippets of information into 
developers' hands as rapidly as possible, I think the index page can 
do a lot more work than that.

>After that, of course no one is going to say that documentation pages are
>to be cut into smaller pages that fit a screen. But there's a difference
>between content pages and navigational pages.

I disagree, actually.  I believe that pages that don't contain 
content on a site like this are generally a waste of time.

>Having to scroll through four
>pages of stuff to find out what I want (even though I have a very high
>resolution) has me already lost.

the top left quadrant of the page has four navigational links to 
other parts of the home page; they are set up to provide a ten second 
visual overview of the site. I'm curious what piece of information 
you had trouble locating.

the alternative the knowscape design presents is a toolbar consisting 
of links to eight other pages.  this seems much more confusing to me, 
and on sites with similar designs I often need to visit two or three 
pages before locating the piece of information I'm looking for.

>For more on this and other usability
>problems, http://www.useit.com is generally a good resource.

"For almost seven years, my studies have shown the same user 
behavior: users look straight at the content and ignore the 
navigation areas when they scan a new page." - Jakob Nielsen, 'Is 
Navigation Useful', January 9, 2000

I didn't look hard for this quote; it's a recurring observation of 
his.  if you look at Nielsen's site (http://www.useit.com/) you'll 
note that he presents a *lot* of content on that first page.  there 
are no navigational toolbars.  it's a hard working page.

>>     - for novice mod_perl developers looking for a complete overview,
>>       parsing a single page of information will be faster that working
>>       through several documents;
>
>I would favour a dedicated page for novices.

I like this idea.  again, I have concerns about maintenance.  the 
people who are making mod_perl happen are busy making mod_perl 
happen, and I'm concerned that keeping multiple pages up to date may 
prove a challenge.

>There's no way we can
>efficiently satisfy seasoned users and novices alike on one single page.

it seems like it might be a challenge, but I don't think it's impossible.

>>     - it's significantly easier to make updates and remove obsolete
>>  information from a single page of data;
>
>I personally disagree, and this doesn't make that much sense when applied
>to a site that will mostly be generated using perl scripts.

you disagree that updating a piece of information that is repeated on 
several different pages takes more time than updating the same piece 
of information when it only appears on one page?   I don't understand.

this is the first I've heard that the site will be dynamically 
generated.  is this already in the works?  if that is how it will be 
done this is obviously less of an issue.

>>     - it's possible to search a single page rapidly using your web
>>       browsers built-in search capabiility.
>
>Which requires that users know what they are looking for, which is imho the
>index page's goal to achieve.

hmmm.  I think that that is *a* job of the index page for news or 
entertainment sites; destinations that users visit without 
necessarily having a specific information acquisition goal.  I think 
this is less true with this site; my understanding is that the vast 
majority of the visitors to this site have pretty specific goals in 
mind:

- if they are first timers they want a basic overview of what 
mod_perl is and how to get it;

- if they are mod_perl developers they want some specific piece of 
information to help them with their project.

all in all, it seems like we are taking fundamentally different 
approaches to the design of this site.  I'm not sure what the right 
way to proceed from here is. I'm completely open to the mod_perl team 
doing whatever they like with the work I've done so far, so perhaps 
the best thing for me to do is to simply stay tuned and continue to 
answer any questions folks might have.  however we decide to proceed, 
I hope we do so soon; the existing site isn't getting any more usable.

	- J.












-- 

     James Home - jim@vagabondage.com
     http://www.superdeluxe.com
     http://www.vagabondage.com

"There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a 
willingness to contemplate what is happening." - Marshall McLuhan

Re: perl.apache.org site overhaul

[Ask Bjoern Hansen <as...@valueclick.com>]

On Fri, 3 Mar 2000, James Home wrote:

[...]
> I disagree, actually.  I believe that pages that don't contain 
> content on a site like this are generally a waste of time.

I agree.

-- 
ask bjoern hansen - <http://www.netcetera.dk/~ask/>
more than 70M impressions per day, <http://valueclick.com>

Re: perl.apache.org site overhaul

[Ask Bjoern Hansen <as...@valueclick.com>]

On Fri, 3 Mar 2000, James Home wrote:

[...]
> I disagree, actually.  I believe that pages that don't contain 
> content on a site like this are generally a waste of time.

I agree.

-- 
ask bjoern hansen - <http://www.netcetera.dk/~ask/>
more than 70M impressions per day, <http://valueclick.com>