Dear List Members, Let me share my comments on usability issues concerning the main page.
"Select a server near you" form This label doesn't make clear, what's the purpose of this select form. What servers is it about? Maybe we should write "Select a website mirror near you". Anyway, choosing a mirror site is an advanced user operation, beginners might not understand its purpose. Furthermore, I believe users who prefer mirrors to w.d.o choose mirror at most once in a session or most likely, after knowing a mirror they use it permanently and don't need to switch between them anymore. Therefore I think it's not the best solution to put it at the top of the home page and _every_ sub page. We'd rather put it in a separate page, and could add additional information on the location of the mirror sites and on the quality of connection to them. Menu at left I find it quite long. The readers might be annoyed because they have to scroll for the navigation. We could hide the sub-items on the main page and show them only after visiting a main item, or create dynamic menus with layering technique. The number of sub-items could be reduced. We should consider which pages should be accessed with one click from the main page. What's important to the users? (And not to the members of the project!) Do the users really want to visit the Social Contract page and the Free Software page quickly and directly from the main page? (The latter is linked in the intro text anyway.) The item "Mailing Lists" points to an introduction page, which is important to the newcomers. But for people who already know usage and regulations and want to browse the lists or manage their subscription this page makes it more difficult. Moreover the item "Mailing List Archives" is misleading, as it points to the general mailing lists page. I would replace this two items with a "Mailing Lists" item which points to lists.debian.org. "Miscellaneous" means not too much, so visitors really don't know, what they'll find behind it. Here the sub-items would have a right to exist but it would be a better solution to find their place, for example under "About", "Ports/Architectures" (for Laptop page), "Developers' Corner" (mirroring Debian). "Weekly News" item under "News" can disturb users, who might think they are the same, but the latter is a digest or something. We can avoid the "Weekly News" item in the main page, because the News page has a link to it and explains what is it. Visit the Site Sponsor If the mirror has no sponsor this link points to a completely empty page. In this case the image shouldn't appear. Search "The Debian search engine has been disabled for now. We're working on it." Are we really? This message has been shown almost for a year (why is the Last Modified date 2002 in the footer?) It's a shame on us. However, search with google is a viable solution. There's no need to give the option for searching www, everybody searches www from google, nobody does from d.w.o. I'd put a simple search entry field at the top right corner of the pages (where everyone puts it), which works with google. The current entry field at the bottom of the navigation menu has several problems: lacks a label and a submit button and doesn't work. Best, Viktor -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
