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Posted to dev@jena.apache.org by Ian Dickinson <ia...@epimorphics.com> on 2011/02/22 11:59:30 UTC
Jena site: navigation prototype
Hi all,
I've been playing a bit with how we can get a balance of useful
navigation support from the Jena site while retaining use of the Apache
CMS ... which is rather limiting. Since we've not agreed to any of this
yet, I've done my experiments outside the svn, and put the prototype here:
http://www.iandickinson.me.uk/jena/about/index.html
This uses a fairly simple two-level navigation hierarchy: major sections
in the top menu, sub-sections on the left. Since one of the main
problems with the CMS is that the same page skeleton and navigation
SSI's are used on every page, I've added some javascript to manage the
complexity. With Javascript and CSS enabled, each page should show
feedback on the currently selected section and page, and only the
section sub-menu relevant to the current section (hiding the long list
of other section pages). With Javascript turned off, the navigation
still works but readers dont' get the "you are here" feedback or the
simplified menus.
One other suggestion from Dave that I implemented was to include script
to move a "table of contents" from a given page into the navigation
menu. This is illustrated in the in_depth/ontology section (you can see
the before/after by looking at the page source).
I've loosely based the structure on current suggestions around the IA,
but it's by no means complete: this was just a quick prototype to test
one way of getting what we need from the CMS, and there's a limit to the
number of times I was willing to create lorem ipsum pages :)
I've tested this on firefox 3 and chromium (which manifested an annoying
out-by-one pixel bug I've tried to mask as best I could). Feedback on
whether it works on other browsers would be welcome.
Otherwise, please give feedback on the general approach. I'll respond
separately on the IA thread(s).
Ian
--
____________________________________________________________
Ian Dickinson Epimorphics Ltd, Bristol, UK
mailto:ian@epimorphics.com http://www.epimorphics.com
cell: +44-7786-850536 landline: +44-1275-399069
------------------------------------------------------------
Epimorphics Ltd. is a limited company registered in England
(no. 7016688). Registered address: Court Lodge, 105 High St,
Portishead, Bristol BS20 6PT, UK
Re: Jena site: navigation prototype
Posted by Ian Dickinson <ia...@epimorphics.com>.
Thanks for the feedback Dave.
> Aesthetically (he says, wary of starting a long discussion) it mostly
> works really well. I especially like the side bar and overall page
> layout.
>
> There's something about the top bar that clashes a little for me - I'd
> be inclined to try having the tabs round both top corners and the blue
> bar with flat top corners.
I tried your suggestion, but the result didn't quite work. However I
understand what you mean about the bar design. So I've tried a new
version that loses the gold border altogether (and puts rounds on both
sides of the tabs). Feedback welcome.
> I see the occasional slight flicker when switching sections, no big
> deal. It would be nice if the sections could start as hidden then get
> revealed by the javascript but can't see a way to do that that is robust
> against no-js.
Indeed.
I've solved (well, worked around) the rendering discrepancy I was
getting between FF and Chromium. I've also added support for one more
level of hierarchy inside the top level folders, e.g.
documentation/whatever/index.html. Consequently, I feel better able to
integrate the various ideas, including Paolo's detailed suggestions,
into one consolidated IA. However, it's a bit late now and I'm not
entirely well, so I'll try to do that sometime tomorrow.
Ian
--
____________________________________________________________
Ian Dickinson Epimorphics Ltd, Bristol, UK
mailto:ian@epimorphics.com http://www.epimorphics.com
cell: +44-7786-850536 landline: +44-1275-399069
------------------------------------------------------------
Epimorphics Ltd. is a limited company registered in England
(no. 7016688). Registered address: Court Lodge, 105 High St,
Portishead, Bristol BS20 6PT, UK
Re: Jena site: navigation prototype
Posted by Dave Reynolds <da...@gmail.com>.
On Tue, 2011-02-22 at 10:59 +0000, Ian Dickinson wrote:
> Hi all,
> I've been playing a bit with how we can get a balance of useful
> navigation support from the Jena site while retaining use of the Apache
> CMS ... which is rather limiting. Since we've not agreed to any of this
> yet, I've done my experiments outside the svn, and put the prototype here:
>
> http://www.iandickinson.me.uk/jena/about/index.html
>
> This uses a fairly simple two-level navigation hierarchy: major sections
> in the top menu, sub-sections on the left. Since one of the main
> problems with the CMS is that the same page skeleton and navigation
> SSI's are used on every page, I've added some javascript to manage the
> complexity. With Javascript and CSS enabled, each page should show
> feedback on the currently selected section and page, and only the
> section sub-menu relevant to the current section (hiding the long list
> of other section pages). With Javascript turned off, the navigation
> still works but readers dont' get the "you are here" feedback or the
> simplified menus.
Looks good to me. The quick links part of the side bar is useful and
gives a way of addressing the various bits that people want to have
"easy to get to" but not necessarily separate top level sections.
Aesthetically (he says, wary of starting a long discussion) it mostly
works really well. I especially like the side bar and overall page
layout.
There's something about the top bar that clashes a little for me - I'd
be inclined to try having the tabs round both top corners and the blue
bar with flat top corners.
I see the occasional slight flicker when switching sections, no big
deal. It would be nice if the sections could start as hidden then get
revealed by the javascript but can't see a way to do that that is robust
against no-js.
> One other suggestion from Dave that I implemented was to include script
> to move a "table of contents" from a given page into the navigation
> menu. This is illustrated in the in_depth/ontology section (you can see
> the before/after by looking at the page source).
Seems to work nicely.
> I've loosely based the structure on current suggestions around the IA,
> but it's by no means complete: this was just a quick prototype to test
> one way of getting what we need from the CMS, and there's a limit to the
> number of times I was willing to create lorem ipsum pages :)
http://www.lorizzle.nl/ for some alternative lorem ipsum :)
> I've tested this on firefox 3 and chromium (which manifested an annoying
> out-by-one pixel bug I've tried to mask as best I could). Feedback on
> whether it works on other browsers would be welcome.
Works fine under chrome (no surprise given it works with chromium).
Dave
Re: Jena site: navigation prototype
Posted by Ian Dickinson <ia...@epimorphics.com>.
On 22/02/11 10:59, I wrote:
> This uses a fairly simple two-level navigation hierarchy: major sections
> in the top menu, sub-sections on the left. Since one of the main
> problems with the CMS is that the same page skeleton and navigation
> SSI's are used on every page, I've added some javascript to manage the
> complexity. With Javascript and CSS enabled, each page should show
> feedback on the currently selected section and page, and only the
> section sub-menu relevant to the current section (hiding the long list
> of other section pages). With Javascript turned off, the navigation
> still works but readers dont' get the "you are here" feedback or the
> simplified menus.
I've just been trying to combine the various suggestions on IA into a
consolidated structure, and I've come to the conclusion that my
prototype is too limiting by requiring everything to be at one physical
level. For example, the tools section includes rdfcat, schemagen,
eyeball, etc. Each of these should really be a separate page, but think
that makes the navigation and physical structure a bit clunky:
Jena
Documentation
Overview (/jena/documentation/index.html)
RDF API (/jena/documentation/rdf.html)
...
Tools: schemagen (/jena/documentation/tools_schemagen.html)
Tools: eyeball (/jena/documentation/tools_eyeball.html)
Better would be:
Jena
Documentation
Overview (/jena/documentation/index.html)
RDF API (/jena/documentation/rdf.html)
...
Tools
Overview (/jena/documentation/tools/index.html)
schemagen (/jena/documentation/tools/schemagen.html)
eyeball (/jena/documentation/tools/eyeball.html)
I'll go at generalising the Javascript & template to make it possible to
have multiple levels of content (or, to at least add one more level).
Ian
--
____________________________________________________________
Ian Dickinson Epimorphics Ltd, Bristol, UK
mailto:ian@epimorphics.com http://www.epimorphics.com
cell: +44-7786-850536 landline: +44-1275-399069
------------------------------------------------------------
Epimorphics Ltd. is a limited company registered in England
(no. 7016688). Registered address: Court Lodge, 105 High St,
Portishead, Bristol BS20 6PT, UK