Re: Navigation Proposal

[Joakim Ziegler <joakim helixcode com>]

On Tue, Dec 19, 2000 at 10:50:49PM -0800, Michael Bernstein wrote:
> Joakim Ziegler wrote:

>> I like this. I'm a little worried about "Press", "News" and "Download" not
>> being top-level, but I guess they're prime candidates for "quick links". Hm.
>> Not bad at all. I have a better gut feeling about this structure than my
>> proposal, but I'd like to think about it a little to see if it can be
>> improved further.
 
> This is quite a bit closer to a purely topical heirarchy,
> with action items (verbs) relegated to leaf nodes (except
> for quick links/in-line links). I would suggest further
> modifying the heirarchy by:

> - Moving the roadmap under the 'About' category
> - Creating 'GTK' and 'Gnome Desktop' sub headings under
> 'Software'
> - Moving the 'Development' category under 'Software' 
> - Moving 'Projects' under either 'Software' or 'Community'

> This would leave us with four top level categories of
> content:

> * About GNOME
> * GNOME Community
> * GNOME Foundation
> * GNOME Software

> Which should be all encompassing, and fairly clear as to
> where to look to find what you want. With only four top
> level categories, these can be represented by a row of
> buttons across the top, and second and third level
> navigation can be accomplished with a right- or left-handed
> vertical bar.

While nice in theory, I think this falls into the "too much abstraction"
trap. Yes, it's a really nicely topical, logical hierarchy, but people expect
stuff like "Development" to be a top level header.

Remember, we're not aiming for the perfect categorization system here (Dewey
Decimal works really well, but it's hell to navigate for people who don't
know it), we're aiming for something that's optimal to use. That means as few
clicks as possible to the stuff that people use the most.

-- 
Joakim Ziegler - Helix Code web monkey - joakim helixcode com - Radagast IRC
      FIX sysop - free software coder - FIDEL & Conglomerate developer
            http://www.avmaria.com/ - http://www.helixcode.com/