Re: *.gnome.org common header

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Tue, 2006-03-21 at 11:43 +0100, Claus Schwarm wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Mar 2006 22:59:25 -0600
> Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > I can give at least two examples of a global header
> > being incredibly successful, even across multiple
> > subdomains:
> > 
> [...]
> > 
> > It does work, when done correctly.
> > 
> 
> I think, there's a difference between GNOME and your examples: Apple
> and Wolfram are organizations. They can make a decision and force
> sub-site maintainers to follow the decision.
> 
> We lack such an organization: Everybody forks the design whenever it
> seems fit.
> 
> It's probably easier for our visitors to have 'outside' links clearly
> marked as such. Let's just declare pages such as GUADEC as external
> when linking them from the main pages. Every sub-site maintainer is
> then free to use whatever seems useful.

Sure, we can't threaten to fire people if they don't conform,
but that hasn't stopped us from making a good product before.
Our desktop is a collection of applications and libraries with
dozens of maintainers.  And yet, we manage to have a consistent
look-and-feel.

Random points that will help a global header succeed:

* Second-level navigation should be accommodated, but not
  required.  It should be tailorable to particular subsites.

* The standard header without the second level navigation
  should occupy a small amount of screen real estate.

* The standard header without the second level navigation
  should be visually attractive on its own, and it should
  be clearly "the Gnome header".

Um, probably other points.  It's early.

--
Shaun