Re: [wgo] Polishing navigation bars

[Máirín Duffy <duffy redhat com>]

Quim Gil wrote:
> *** GNOME bar (black at the top)
> - We can consider it a stable beta.
> - Look&feel works, URLs work.
> - Still open to improvements but it can be released as it is now.

+1

> *** wgo primary bar (the tabs)
> - Still missing tabs, I will add them.
> - I think the eyes notice first the secondary bar and consider it more
> relevant. Tabs should be bigger, perhaphs brighter. Bolder fonts?
> Also, the fact that is aligned to the right helps its non-visibility
> next to the secondary bar.
> - Current section should be highlighted in the tabs, so the users sees
> clearly where she is.

Do you need artwork for this? I can export some sliced artwork for this 
out of the SVG work I have.

> - The tab of the current section could have no border to the secondary
> nav bar, this way we have a single navigation bar, so to say. This way
> we also avoid having to duplicate items in primary and secondary. Now
> "Take the tour" appears twice.
> - Clicking to a tab should bring the user automatically to the page.
> If I click to the "Take the tour" tab I should get the content. Now
> http://gnome.jardigrec.eu/en/take-the-tour/ is an index.

+1

> *** wgo secondary bar (the bar below the tabs)
> - Fonts are also small (like happens generally in all the plone wgo),
> they need to be bigger.
> - Current page should be highlighted in the secondary nav bar, so
> users know where they are.

+1, I can export artwork slices for this too if needed.

> - I'm unconvinced about the fact that the bar doesn have a beginning
> and end. Perhaps it would look better if starting at the left edge of
> the big GNOME logo in the header and finishing at the right edge of
> the last tab in the primary nav bar.

Do you want to try it with a little bevel on the far left and far right?

> - Can we save some horizontal space between text and borders of each
> item? This way we have a shorter bar, which will help making fit the
> Take the Tour section in one line. Getting a second line i.e. in
> 800x600 is not that bad, I think. Better than forcing horizontal
> scrolling, as many websites do.

I'm using 1024x768 and 4 items spill over into a second level of the 
secondary nav bar. I kind of think this is just way too much content. 
There are a couple of different approaches you could take:

First one - each of the pages is a nice, small, digestable chunk of 
text. Could the tour be treated a little separately than other content 
in plone, eg., could it have its own special navbar (maybe a sidebar?), 
and be designed with more of a 'wizard' format (something you walk 
through step-by-step from beginning to end, so you'd click "next" and 
"back") rather than a normal site format (where you don't necessarily go 
through every page or go through everything in order)?

Second one - Maybe there is a better way to organize the different parts 
of the tour? E.g., right now it looks like:

- Take the tour - redundant. Looks like the introductory text that 
should be displayed with the first-level 'take the tour' tab.

- Simply Powerful & Essential Tools - these two share a similar theme 
and I think could be combined

- Windows/Mac - not sure what this is about, doesn't seem to have content

- Multilingual - if Windows/Mac talks about compatibility across OSs, 
this could be related - compatibility across languages

- Standarized - not sure, no content yet, but maybe combined with the 
other two above

- Shipped by... - basically a distro list.

- Deployments - example deployments im sure

- Development & Innovation - seem like they could go together

- Community

- Free!

I would suggest revising this to:

- "What you need" - Simply Powerful & Essential Tools
- "Speaks your Language" - Multilingual content, standardization?
- "Ahead of the Curve" - development & innovation
- "All about People" - community, deployments, shipped by (people 
involved in the community + demonstrating 'who' uses it, including 
distros and deployments')
- "Free"

Then you go from 12 nav items to 5. I don't think you really want 
anymore than 5-7 nav items on any one level. It's just too overwhelming 
cognitively to have more than that, especially considering the number of 
navigation bars already.

~m