| Bill Jonas on Tue, 8 Oct 2002 22:40:04 -0400 |
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On Tue, Oct 08, 2002 at 08:54:13PM -0400, Iman Mayes wrote: > 1) The Home Page - When I first went to the home page to get info about the > group, I had to pause a little bit. I expected a brief intro about the > group, but got a list of mixed items that all ran together. At the top, > there are "Upcoming Meetings", list info and guidelines, PLUG howto Archive > (Was this a howto about the group? Howtos done by the group? *click* Whoa! > New site, different look), Members, etc...Internet Service Providers...OK, > more about the group...History...PA State Poilice Computer Crimes, more > about group...etc. Could be organized better. For example: Well, yes, as you can tell, there's been more than a bit of ad-hockery at work here. Some coherent thought as to the overall design might be more helpful, I'll grant you. But... > 2) New Information - Typically, having some reference to updates to the site > on the home page IMHO is a good idea. That way, as a returning viewer, I > don't have to troll through the whole site checking the last update date, > and then staring at the page to see if I can tell whats new. Maybe, other > than the meetings, the site does not get updated that much. But, when it > does how can you tell within a short period of time? I think the two-or-three column so-called "web log" format is *waaaay* overdone. Perhaps more helpful would be a little note to the side of each link with the date it was last updated? Maybe a little box off to one side with, say, only the most recent *couple* of changes/interest items? Maybe I'm just getting cynical, but while I can see how the site can be better organized, I think a Slashdot-a-like would be just plain overkill, not to mention the fact that the look is, in my opinion, extremely passe'. Why have a web forum when we have the mailing list and vice-versa? Also, please, for the love of god, please don't let a new site use tiny bug-dropping fonts that seem to be so common on the web and only look good in MSIE, rendering themselves into illegible squiggles in other (graphical) browsers. There's enough of that on the web already. I run into one of those sites and I can't read it, I increase the font size, and maybe it looks like crap at a size other than what the designer viewed it with, maybe not. Then I get used to how it looks and forget about it, leaving me in for a suprise if I should happen to re-use that browser window and am greeted with great honking inch-high fonts. Or using clear GIFs for spacers. It's *really* annoying to see my xterm filled with "[ spacer.gif ]" over and over again on the occasions when I use a text-based browser. Or... But I'm ranting now. The sample site at xulin.net/plug, while nice-looking with an Apple-y sort of feel, suffers from using Flyspeck 6 for its font and using dozens of spacer images in a (misguided, IMO) attempt to try to typographically lay out the page. A decent rant about web design is located at <http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/opti.html>. (Incidentally, I re-used the browser window with which I was looking at the proposed PLUG site page and was greeted by inch-high letters.) While this is geared to people who want to sell things to other people, it's still a good read overall. After all, most people put content on the web in order to have other people actually *read* it, right? So you're trying to get the other person to do something other than give you money, but you're still attempting an inducement of behavior nonetheless. So it's still a good set of guidelines, IMO, even six (!) years later. > As a side note, maybe its me, but I can't get to the archives on the mailing > list site. Both the "Subscribe" and "Archive" links take me to the subscribe > page. The nOOb would like to checkout what was missed! I'm frustrated about this too. It is a known issue which has been mentioned on the list probably three times in the last week or so, and probably a couple of those times in this thread. It's been several months now. I thought the netisland.net hosting was merely temporary. MCT, if we're not moving back to nothinbut.net soon (and I think the box has been rebuilt since I've gotten spam now a couple times to plug-announce or plug-announce-admin through firestorm), can we work on the archives for the present location at netisland? I'd be willing to help with this, if you want. -- Bill Jonas * bill@billjonas.com * http://www.billjonas.com/ "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin Attachment:
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