On Sat, 26 Mar 2005 09:46:53 -0500, "Daniel Carrera" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: > Miikka Leskinen wrote: > > > > 1) The present website usability is criminally bad. > > > > Could people on this list do a brief summary on what they think is wrong > > with the current design (https://www.sc40.sfo.collab.net/) when it comes > > to usability? > > I think that the "criminally bad" comment referred to the current home > page at > http://www.openoffice.org, not Maarten's design. > Heh, ok.
> Having said that, I'll comment on usability of Maarten's design: > > * The User and Password fields are half-hidden. > * The boxes on the left have low contrast. > * The middle box says "new?". What is that supposed to be? OOo news? > These are super easy to fix. I guess Maarten has already taken the low contrast problem into account and he's releasing new designs every week. What do you mean 'half-hidden'? In a wrong location of too close to the screen edge? If I have understood correctly, the login field is being replaced with search. > Those three boxes are the entire extent of the information available on > the page > on an initial screen. That, and links to the components. But there is no > link to > tech support, contact, mailing lists, documentation, latest news (unless > that's > what that green box is supposed to be). > > Users may or may not realize that there is stuff below the screen. It is > certainly not evident when I first load the page. > > If you do scroll down, you find a tiny bit of information. Not much > though. There > is nothing that would tell the user how to get help, or where to get a > manual > (which is often requested on the users lis), or how to even report a bug! > I guess the easy workaround for this is to make the buttons smaller and the center content vertically smaller in overall. This could be done by killing the image (as in Emily's design) and moving the components to another location. But I have to acknowledge you're right. There isn't much help for new users on the homepage. I think that information can be put below the separator line. By the way, this reminds me of http://www.safelyinrussia.com/tmp/miikka/ooowebsite/1.1/ (my pre-alpha quality design proposal I don't endorse that much anymore). > The best I can say about this design is that the picture in the centre is > pretty. > But that doesn't justify the removal if imortant information, or > introducing > ambiguity, or discriminating against users with low-contrast vision. > As already said, too bad the image is temporary. And yes, people with poor eyesight have to be and will be taken into account. We have many people here on the lists that will take care of that if the person behind the current design forgets. > > Has any of these problems been fixed in Maarten's recent proposal > > (http://www2.hku.nl/~maarten/external/OpenOffice.org/proposal3.0/)? > > One of them. He replaced "new" by "new user". > This is again something that's super easy to fix. I don't know if this even falls to the category 'problems of a design'. > Cheers, > -- > Daniel Carrera | I don't want it perfect, > Join OOoAuthors today! | I want it Tuesday. > http://oooauthors.org | > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
