On Wed, 29 Dec 2004, James Mason wrote:
Henri,
Looks good. Big improvement, I think :). I especially like how the third column brings more information "above the status bar". A few comments:
Thanks :)
1) The first paragraph sounds more like it's describing the ASF than describing Jakarta. A suggestion:
------------------------- The Jakarta Project offers a diverse set of open source Java solutions and is a part of [The Apache Software Foundation] (ASF). Like all ASF [projects] Jakarta encourages a collaborative, consensus-based development process under an [open software license]. -------------------------
It actually is meant to be describing the ASF :) To cut down on text, I threw away 'jakarta, like all ASF, encourages...' to the simpler 'ASF encourages'. It's just as true and uses less space. I'd like to dump 'for all its projects' to be honest, but didn't want to lose the link to the ASF Project page.
It's tempting to chop the last 4 words and add a ASF link on the right, together with the other ASF ones, under a new heading of About Apache or something.
2) The first sentence of the second paragraph seems awkward to me. It's not immediately apparent why that information is useful. If I don't know what a TLP is it doesn't really help me, and if I'm looking for a TLP that used to be part of Jakarta it doesn't tell me how to find it. Unfortunately I haven't been able to come up with a better wording. Hopefully someone else is feeling inspired :).
Two big parts I'm looking for in this paragraph.
1) Jakarta = umbrella project. I don't want to say umbrella as that's an odd metaphor to the uninitiated.
2) Definition of graduating, attempt at an explanation of why projects are no longer to be found in Jakarta (a common user confusion I think). The TLP acronym isn't highly important (at first I thought it was good to get it accross, but it's too much info). Linking to the bit above, I could dump the TLP acronym and make this the link to the ASF project page.
3) "Graduated" on the left needs to be in the context of a noun. Maybe swapping the left and right columns (leaving "About" on the left) and making the right column "Projects" with subheadings of "Subprojects" and "Graduated"? That might take up too much space, though.
Gah! Much as I want to scoff at the suggestion for the pain it causes, I think you're right, to be correct it should be a noun.
Putting the projects on the right was an option, but I think that consumers will mostly want to click through to a subproject, rather than any other link there and the LHS is the prime navigation spot.
It also matches the www.apache.org approach, which is nice for the symmetry of a user clicking through and not having to adjust their navigation flow.
Possibly I could change Graduated to Graduated Subprojects? Seems a bit long. 'Graduates' seems wrong. Looking for a good label here :)
4) Removing the margin from the <ul> that makes up the news would help spread that section out a bit.
Yep. I'm going to hassle a few web designers I know on spacing issues once I've updated the XSL build to output this site. All their suggestions will involve CSS, so I'll need to have a CSS sheet by then I suspect.
Thoughts?
Hen
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