Hi Ivan, hi UX members and website team,
I'm cross-posting this mail, because I'm not sure where you expect the
discussion to take place. By the way, I looked briefly at the comments
on the website dev mailing list at [1].
Basically, I have to agree with Cléments opinion who pointed out the
most important (remaining) issues. So I will just add my own opinion
between his lines...
Am Donnerstag, den 07.08.2008, 16:52 +0200 schrieb Clément Pillias:
> Le 7 août 08 à 05:40, Ivan M a écrit :
>
> > * Homepage icons have been replaced with much nicer Galaxy
> > equivalents (many thanks to Stella for making these!) [...]
> But together, the icons lake of strength: there are less colors used,
> less contrast, and it makes the page a little dull. [...]
Personally, I'm happy that the page will be improved in terms of
consistency with the office suite. But in this case, I think the changes
turn out to be less optimal than expected. Why?
I think that the icons for "info" and "help" are too similar to be
helpful for the users. The current "life belt" symbol may be
inconsistent, but it stands out with different shape and color. ==> So
my proposal is to keep the new blue "help" icon and replace the "info"
icon instead. At least with the "about ooo" icon which shows the sea
gulls (but, it's also blue and round).
[...]
> Concerning the 'download' and 'participate' icons, I say a big NO.
>
> You don't participate alone, and the need to belong to a community is
> an important motivation to contribute. So the icon with three people
> seems more appropriate to me. But I think we could do better, by
> symbolizing an action, such as building something.
Even if somebody sometimes feels alone in the community... ;-)
As I can see, the icon has already replaced at [2], but I'm not happy
with it. Even if the new very different colors are based on the Galaxy
style, they doesn't seem to fit on the page - at least I never saw a
purple person :-) Personally, I like the "community" icon at [3].
> For the download icon, both designs make the same mistake: they don't
> highlight the most important thing, which is the down arrow, and it
> should be the most important object in the icon. [...]
> Just provide a big
> down arrow and nothing else (except maybe the version number, because
> it is an useful information).
> And I suggest to put download as the first item.
I see two issues here: First, the site offers little prioritization with
its similar looking items (similar color, same spacing, ...). The only
chance to provide information is it's order. ==> So why adding some
little space to separate the items ('---'):
What is OpenOffice.org?
Download it! It's Free.
-----------------------
Help and Assistance
Extension and Personalization
Join the Community
The second main issue is the download icon is different from the other
icons in OOo. Why not re-use the "update icon" which is already
available in OpenOffice.org (represents a green arrow over a harddisk)
and will sooner or later be presented to the user?
When I tried the download button, I was a bit surprised. I checked the
current site and the same behavior, weird. So maybe this is intended or
it is a rather old issueI never had to download OOo from the site, so
maybe this is a rather old issue.
* First, all the other items in the list open a new page. The
download item just "expands" to the lower.
* The weird behavior (maybe a little bit nitpicking): After
expanding the download button, I'm not able to revert this
change with the usual commands: Using the backward button goes
back to the previous page. Using the forward button then shows
the front page with download button. Re-loading the same page
(having the same name) reverts the change and hides the download
button. I don't understand that, because I thought that
reloading the page with the same name should always present the
same content...
Back to the download: If we can guess the platform of the user's
computer (which is truly great), why not directly show the green
download button? So it may look like this:
+---------------------------+ Showing some additional
| Download OpenOffice.org! | <-- links for other versions
+---------------------------+ and platforms at the
bottom.
What is OpenOffice.org?
Get Help and Assistance
Extend the Functionality
Join the Community
> > * The key words in the action statements are a lighter color than
> > the rest of the action statement text. Action statements' text is
> > also more colorful on rollover
[...]
> But I have to give a big -1 (say, a -10) for the lightening of the
> key words. It should be exactly the opposite! Lightening them makes
> them less striking, when they should be more.
>
> And while I am here, please simply remove all these "I want" and this
> "I need". Don't force the visitor to read useless text, and don't
> speak with the visitor voice. [...]
> And try to find more useful text for the subtitles,
> giving informations about what the visitor will get if he follow the
> link.
Absolutely! If we need to highlight keywords in a simple text line, then
I think there is something wrong with the text itself. So why not make
it shorter and focus on the keywords? The bottom line may provide enough
additional information instead. As you can see, I (partly) re-used the
text of Clément for my menu proposal before.
> > * New, vertically-flexible, proportional width (24%) #campaign
> > style (uses the same HTML as before). A seagull graphic would limit
> > horizontal text space and increase the vertical space required for
> > announcements - what do you think?
>
> -1
>
> It looks worse when one resize the window, because it gets too much
> closer or too far away from the text. And I like the seagull
> graphics, they provide personality and dynamism, and help to not
> confound these boxes with ads. But it's true that it could be
> enhanced, because sometimes the text flows out of the boxes.
I'm unsure about that. The simple boxes make it possible to limit the
visual noise if there are two or three of them (from experience it is
known that there are sometimes two equally important news items, or?).
What I don't like here is, that they look similar to buttons and you
have to read the content to know that it is "just" news...
Why not use one of the styles on the Extension website [5]. Or, re-using
the seagull for the first item, mark it with "news" and stack other
news? Something like...
GULLSEAGULL
SEAGULLSEAGULLSEA----------------------------+
SEAGULL |
| NEWS |
+----------------------------------------+
| |
| OpenOffice.org 3.0 Beta available! |
| blablablablablablabla |
| Try it! (Link) |
| |
+----------------------------------------+
| |
| Another message! |
| bliblabloblablumbli bla bla blum |
| Read more (Link) |
| |
+----------------------------------------+
| Older news (Link) |
+----------------------------------------+
> > [...]
> +1, there is indeed a better contrast. But still, the white text can
> be hard to read in the upper part, where the background is lighter.
Yep, it's still hard to read. The text provides only little contrast if
the resolution of the system is rather high (thin text on light
backgound).
> > * Mouse-over effect on #navcol links (left-hand side project menu),
> > for all 3 different ways that these have been implemented
> > throughout the website (see website.openoffice.org,
> > ui.openoffice.org, and test.openoffice.org/project_discuss.html to
> > see all 3 semantic variations). This makes the CSS a little more
> > tricky to read, but offers much greater consistency.
>
> +1, its nice and useful.
It seems to be getting late that I don't understand that :-) But I
noticed that the mouseover area (for highlighting the list items) is
different. I can move my mouse towards the item and the text get's
highlighted. Moving it a little bit further highlights the icon. Being
again a little bit picky ;-)
[...]
> Nice effort, globally.
I can only agree. I'm glad that there is continuous improvement for this
very important "business card" of the whole project. So I hope my
comments (and of the others) are helpful and may help to improve the
already very high quality of the page.
Have a nice evening,
Christoph
[1] Website dev mailing list
http://website.openoffice.org/servlets/BrowseList?listName=dev&by=date&from=2008-08-01&to=2008-08-31&first=1&count=5
[2] Test "front page"
http://test.openoffice.org/
[3] http://ui.openoffice.org/VisualDesign/OOo_Web_icons.html
[4] Mozilla Firefox download page
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/
[5] OpenOffice.org Extension Website
http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/
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