Hi Marc,
On 10/23/2016 05:09 PM, Marc Chamberlin wrote:
Hi Benoit - (I will follow your precedent of top posting.)
Please don't !
No, the trouble with the current organization of the James website is
that the only way to navigate it is to use the hierarchical tree
structured table of contents that is found on the left hand side of
the pages. This can make it difficult to discover where a particular
topic is addressed, especially if/when that topic is found in a
location that the developer thought was appropriate, but not intuitive
in the mind of a user. For example, I wanted to discover what mailets
are provided with James. My initial guess was to navigate to the "User
Manual" > Configure James > Mailet Container and almost missed the
tiny link provided/embedded at the bottom of the page to the list of
mailets. Then and only then did I discover that this list was located
in a surprising location under "Developers Corner" which I had assumed
would be topics strictly of interest to James developers, not to
users. (I am NOT criticizing this particular layout, just using it as
an example of how using a tree hierarchy must be navigated, sometimes
through many many branches, in order to discover where a particular
topic is documented.)
Using search engines can further complicate matters, especially on
sites such as James where multiple versions of documents are stored.
One can easily and inadvertently land on a document that is
inappropriate for the version of the James that he/she is using, and
waste a lot of time chasing a wrong answer. (I know, I have done it
myself)
What a site map is/does is to flatten the presentation of an entire
website into a single page which contains links to EVERY web page
associated with that website. (including orphaned web pages which
sometimes crop up) That both makes it easy to see a high level view of
the entire website, all at once, and provides a lot of additional
clues as to the organizational model and where one may find documents
on a particular subject. One measure of the ease of use of a website
is to ask how many clicks does it take, to discover the answer to a
question or reach a goal on that website. A site map can reduce this
to a single click. Site maps are often used on large complex web sites
and I am sure you can find many examples. Also I have seen tools that
develop a site map automatically, some do it externally by chasing
links, others do it internally on the servers by chasing documents and
directories also, although these tools do have their limitations and
shortcomings especially if/when a web site serves dynamic content.
I am not asking that James use a site map in lieu of the hierarchical
table of contents it now has, just in addition to it.
I understand your point but I think the main problem is that :
1. none of us has experience into site map
2. we use a generated static site with old technologies
3. we are going the mix that with yet another static site technology
If you think you can tackle this challenge, you are more than welcome,
we'll try to help us on that.
Anyway, keep sending us your comments, they are very valuable.
Cheers,
--
Matthieu Baechler
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