John McCreesh wrote: > > * Whe have a large and visible array of links right above the Download > > box for people to learn more about each component of OOo. > > Can someone please make them clickable then so it's obvious to a 'stupid > user' (me)?
Uhmm... it's a *mockup*. If you've followed the discussion, you know that Louis suggested them to provide more information about the product. > > * Downloading *is* the most important objective of the home page. > > And the section is prominent because that's the first priority. > > Downloading is the most important objective of the *download* page. No, sorry. The most important thing is for people to download the product. Run this simple test. Ask a few people (who are not part of the OOo team) to download the software. Where do they go? www.openoffice.org The most important use of the front page is downloading. The second is getting help/community/etc and that's closely followed by getting additional information like AboutUs/About the Product/Press Kit, etc. Remember that people comming to the site already know about the product. If what they want is to learn more, the first thing to do is see what it looks like. After an initial look, they may want to learn how to do some things they couldn't figure out right away. You are making a mistake that was discussed early in this discussion. You are asking "what do we want to tell the user?" instead of "what is the user wanting to do?" This is something that should have been brought up much earlier on in the discussion. The home page has been completely designed with these priorities in mind. I suggest you prepare a mockup of what you'd like, along with arguments for it. > > I suggest reading this article: > > and I believe my comments are in line with it? Not really. You suggested that the download section was unecessarily big. At least, that's the message I got. I have some very good articles on usability that I recommend. I list them here: http://website.openoffice.org/tryouts/dcarrera/usability.html I strongly suggest reading them before preparing your mockup. > Now that the web project has got that far, it's time to open the > discussion to the wider community to make sure the content is > appropriate too. You are making the mistake of treating visual design with content as if they were independent. Styles, layout and content are all strongly related. They need to work together to achieve certain desired goals. During the discussion we setup "download" as the first, "help/community" as the second, and "about" as a third. The layout and style of this page are all centered around those priorities. From the dimmension of the download box, to its location, colour, the links that surround it, which links are on the left, which are higher up, etc. You can't just take the visual design and change the choice of content just like that. Cheers, -- Daniel Carrera | I know everything, I just can't remember Join OOoAuthors today! | it all at once. http://www.oooauthors.org | :-) --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
