Re: *.gnome.org common header

[Claus Schwarm <c schwarm gmx net>]

Quim, 

your specific design of the global header is obviously _not_ able
to deal with our requirements: According to your own explanations, it's
unable to include links to our 'Contact' pages and to our 'About' pages.

The 'Contact' and the 'About' links are part of the top-level
navigation for a reason: They (are going to) satisfy important
use cases -- those of journalists and the press, and those of people
new to and interested in GNOME.

The only use case your presented is: "Somebody might visit the GUADEC
pages without knowning what GNOME is."

This is a valid use case. However, it assumes that these people will
find a link to the GUADEC pages that is _not_ mentioned in a GNOME
context. I can hardly think of such a case. It fits probably 0,01% of
your visitors. My estimate is that it will be less than 25 people in
2006.

Your use case also assumes that these people will get interested
in GNOME instead of just closing the GUADEC page. This brings my
estimate down to 5 people in 2006. For these 5 people, it's sufficient
to use the already existing explanation in the 'About' section of
the GUADEC pages: Just make 'GNOME' a link to the GNOME homepage.

You descibed a corner case. We shouldn't risk to miss important
use cases for corner cases.

Additionally, agreeing on the proposal would obviously add a major
constraint to the design of other pages, especially our homepage. Why
should we commit ourselves to such a constraint right now?

For this reason, I see no need to discuss this specific proposal any
further. As a global header, it's rejected from my point of view.

Of course, you can still use it as an element in the GUADEC pages. It
would be nice if you could either sync the links in the grey top bar to
the current top-level links or remove the links completely, though.
There's a small risk that your visitors might get confused when
clicking them. However, this is your decision.

Please note that I really like the rest of the design of the GUADEC
pages. They look nice, indeed.


Cheers,
Claus