Hi Sheila,
I'm not sure how:
1. Putting the RIGHTNAV links on a separate page; or
2. Putting the RIGHTNAV links in a section below the PPD Notes
makes them more accessible.
In the first case, you need to do an extra click, and you're not even
sure what you'll see once you get to that page. Then to actually view
any of the specs and planning pages currently listed in the RIGHTNAV,
you have to click again.
In the second case, you need to scroll down the page.
However, I do agree that unlike the other Teams Pages, the PPD
'Active Projects' links are 'off to the side' rather than the 'focus'
of the page. That was intentional on my part.
Unlike the other Teams, we as a group have never really used the
DesignGroup page to focus our attention on active projects. We are
much more likely to look directly on planning pages for specs and now
we have a product area for all product definition, branding and
design issues. For PPD, the Product and Planning wiki areas are *our
focus*. We have always produced more wiki pages than any other
working group and we now have 2 dedicated Wiki Areas with which to
organize our work.
So in that sense the RIGHTNAV links are not the focus of the PPD Team
page, they are just peripheral QUICKLINKS to the other areas of the
wiki we focus on and garden all the time**. There isn't much to them,
but they serve 2 functions
1. Provides us with quick and easy access to Product and Planning
pages, if we happen to be staring at the PPD Team page. (But we
haven't and I don't expect that we will in the future...always go to
the PPD Team page when working on specs and/or design write-ups.)
2. Give people outside of OSAF a quick punch list of areas of Product
and Planning that we are actively working on**. But I suspect that if
someone is truly interested in Product and Planning material, they
will start from Product and Planning.
(**By "Garden all the time" and "Active" I mean links we might change
every 6-9 months.)
I think it will be too much work to try to maintain a full-fledged
"Active Projects" section both on the PPD Team page as well as work
to keep the Planning and Product Area pages up to date.
Our needs felt different to me, as compared to other teams. Our usage
patterns felt different to me, as compared to other teams. So I took
a pass at making the focus of the PPD Team more about Meeting Notes
and less about Active Projects.
===
There is a wholly separate issue of what constitutes clutter. What
looks tidy versus what's actually better for mentally grokking large
volumes of information.
I've always felt that the hardest thing to digest about the wiki is
the 'undifferentiated' look of long wiki pages with section after
section of text and bulleted lists. As you scroll down a page, you
beging loose sense of the big picture of the focus of the page.
What's this page about? What was the stuff at the top? At a glance,
it looks tidy because all the sections look the same, but when you
actually try to wrap your head around all the content, it starts to
become a blur of sameness. (Newspapers address this problem extremely
well. Newspapers have lots of different ways to chunk and segment
information without hiding it away, making it inaccessible to at-a-
glance browsing.)
(That diagnosis was the original driving motivation behind the
different 1 and 2 column layouts and the addition of the RIGHTNAV.)
The RIGHTNAV Priss and Jared implemented gives us a great opportunity
to 'chunk things out' a bit, communicate the substance of a page with
visual cues. Differentiate between Focus and Peripheral References.
For me, the Focus of the DesignGroup page was always: Meeting Notes.
X-links to Product and Planning are peripheral. We never used the
DesignGroup page to focus our work. But perhaps, you're suggesting
that we change that? That would be a separate discussion to have. But
I think that discussion is distinct from a discussion about what
constitutes visual clutter.
Either way, its your call as wiki owner of this page. We can try
something out and adjust as we go :o)
Mimi
On Apr 5, 2007, at 5:15 PM, Sheila Mooney wrote:
On Apr 5, 2007, at 5:01 PM, Mimi Yin wrote:
On Apr 5, 2007, at 4:32 PM, Priscilla Chung wrote:
Sheila, if you're okay with the new PPD Team page, I can replace
the old Design Group page with this one. http://
wiki.osafoundation.org/Teams/PPDTeam
I realize this is really Sheila call, but there is just way too
much information on the right side bar for this page. I'm also
not familiar with what a 'Hub Server' is, perhaps just Server is
fine if you're currently linking to 0.7 release page.
I changed it to Server. I've also removed a few items. Does that
feel better? I know it's still a lot. I agree that we don't want
to jam too much in the RIGHTNAV, but I think having the x-links
there are preferable to having them on a separate page or in the
body of the wiki. It seems onerousl to make people go a separate
page just to list out 3-5 links. Keeping content that is concise
(not too many characters) out of the body of the wiki page also
decreases the total # of sections in the body content and shortens
the page.
I think we just need to find the right balance of content in the
RIGHTNAV. Does anyone else have any thoughts about this issue?
I agree we need to have the right balance. I just feel that the
planning and specs info is hidden in the right nav. It's such an
important part of what the PPD team does, to me it seems more
prominent to have it on the main content page even though it's just
a set of links. Not many people are going to care that much about
the old notes, I think they could even go on a separate page really
and just have the more recent notes on the main page if we are
trying to keep things concise.
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