Hello again CLytie--
Clytie Siddall wrote:
Sorry: this is the first part of my amalgamated response to the
homepage/projects page thread. I was doing it in bits, and it seems to
have become separated...
__________
Hi everyone :)
I've been trying to catch up with the main/projects page thread. I have
some suggestions.
Firstly, a style point. Is there any reason why we're not using
drop-down menu items in the horizontal navbar? That would save space and
give us some quick links.
hmmmm...interesting idea.
Secondly, the current content hasn't caught up with the action-based
focus of the homepage, and of many NLP pages:
Get it
Install it
Use it
Are we still talking about the main Projects page? The one accessible
from the tab? I'm not sure these kinds of terms are really appropriate
for that page. I guess I see as more informational then actionable...
Verbs engage the user. So I suggest, for example, that we change
Contributing to "My choice" or "Participate" and have drop-down menu
items as follows:
Coding
Working on docs.
Testing and QA
Translation
Promoting OpenOffice
Graphics
These links would take the user to pages with much more detail, but they
are quick descriptions of what they would do. It's active language, and
gives them the info right from the navbar. Choosing "My choice >
Translation" should always take me to l10n.openoffice.org, which would
save me a bookmark, among other things. ;)
Forget calling it "programming" or "writing": to the people who do it,
it's "coding" or "hacking" and "working on docs" or "doc work", etc.
"Internationalization" and "Native-Language Projects" might be a much
better explanation of what we really do, but nearly all the time we just
talk about "Translation". And "Marketing" puts off people from the
free-software world. "Promoting" is what we do. "Graphics" is what the
computer artists call it. I have at least one Photoshop addict in my
house, so I know. ;)
The drop-down items from the navbar would mean faster navigation in
general.
I think "My pages" is under-utilized. Mine has one user-specific item on
it, the Vietnamese project, and I know where that is. We could do more
with this.
I agree that a page showing functions and where they fit in OOo would be
a useful resource. Even experienced users often use less than 5% of the
capability of their software. Show them what OOo can do.
From that page, each item could link to a page with info on how to
help. Current issues. Current efforts.
Yes, this would be VERY useful!
Some tips on how to improve your
usage. A link to the latest emails on this subject. Something alive and
useful. A window on OpenOffice from the POV of that function. It would
be a useful training method, too: move from one function to another
through the table and see how much you learn from those pages. We need a
better name than "function", though, something more dynamic and less
easily confused with mathematical actions. "features"? "abilities"?
"choices"?
I suggest changing the Projects tab to "Inside OpenOffice" (?) or
something similar. To anyone from other projects, a project is the
single entity, the whole effort. "Projects" implies you're looking at
something outside the current project, not inside. OOo is big enough to
have sub-projects, OK, but that's not the usual structure. We're
referring to the structure of OOo, which is unusual, so we need to use
words that are more familiar to most people.
I see what you're saying from a person on the street view. I imagine the
term "projects" was used because it's a very common vernacular in most
open source endeavors. And, because that IS the way OpenOffice.org is
structured internally, by project.
But...thanks for the new insights
from Clytie (vi-VN, Vietnamese free-software translation team / nhóm
Việt hóa phần m�m tự do)
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/vi-VN
--
==================================================
MzK
Kay Schenk
"The only way you learn about life is looking
at things that don't go well."
-- Dave Letterman
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