First of all, thanks for the feedback - it is appreciated Brian Robson said: > The idea of having a new website for LA is great, but this new website > does not ROCK at all. It has serious design and usability errors, a > few of which are outlined below. But these are easily fixed.
I wouldn't really call them too serious... but you're right, they are easily fixed. We've tried (over the past few weeks/months/whatever) to fix up most issues with standards compliance and consistency across rendering engines (this is tricky). Some of the smaller things have escaped this initial deployment - but hey, when you release something to a wide audience - you instantly get a set of good bug reports :) > SLUGGers should not be deluded - good web sites only come from hard > work, good content and attention to detail (just like programming) and > not from having graphics designers using the latest fashion in > typefaces and colour schemes. A good website is not made by deluding > oneself that your own site is the best, and that critism is > inappropriate or the critic must be a nasty person. Exactly. We've tried to keep to these principles with the new LA site. Of course, some things slip through - but they're easily fixed :) A lot of hard work has gone into this one :) > Designing website is now a technology taught at TAFE (there are heaps > of books on usability) and has not been a guru craft or a black art > since 1998. Wages for people who build build sites have fallen from > $130 per hour to $30 per hour. But *good* sites that are standards compliant, cross-rendering engine and compatible with accessibility stuff is hard. People still get paid very well for being able to do this. I'm not an expert, and either is most of the other people working on the team - but we do know some, and they've been invaluable over the development period of giving us some assistance when they can. I strongly encourage experts to help us :) contributions are welcome! > 1. The logo on the main page can be clicked, and when it is, it > displays the SAME page again. Whilst it is normal for the logo when > clicked to return to the home page or all subsidiary pages, this is a > big no-no on the main page. All textbooks on usability recommend > against having anything which simply displays the same page, as users > find it very confusing. Good argument - but point is arguable... consistency across each page? Hrrm... one for thought. May change it... not sure... > 2. None of the images are sized with width= and height= tags. This > causes the page to jump around while it's loading, and this is even > more annoying on dial up lines and on the first visit. The worst > example is the main logo, because it's "above the fold" on the first > page. Yes - this is a known flaw with the current layout. I plan to fix this by going through with id's and css foo sometime soon. It was not deemed a show stopper. > 3. The Linux Australia title includes a trailing space. Bug - will be fixed. > 4. The menu choice at the top left includes links to things on the > site and off the site. This is bad practice (a) it confuses the users > and (b) Do your really want to provide links for your users to leave > your site at the top of your main page. (you are a dill if you do). (top right i hope you mean... unless some bug has crept in :) These 'external' sites are actually run by linux australia. Linux.conf.au comes under our banner (even though it is very much delegated to the lca organisers). We also run the opensource.org.au domain. We don't see these to be problematic - far from it, we see them as useful links into the .au open source space. > 5. The font at the very bottom of the page is far too small. It's > only minor info to be sure, but the font is still too small. If it's > not to be read, then simply take it off. Also, this bit has weird > added spaces which are just confusing and do not add to the enjoyment. Bug has crept in - someone changed the CSS to have a hard font size of 9. Will fix this to be a relative size. > 6. Under the heading Sept 10th, RSS, there is a <> symbol, which is > perhaps trying to look like a diamond replacing a dot point. It's made > out of the gt and lt characters. In fact it looks weird, like a coding > error to anyone who has seen faulty web pages (all of us). Why not just > use a bolded asterisk??? Will examine - the RSS stuff has gone through a couple of revisions and we're still getting everything working "just right". > 7. At the top, the link to linux.conf.au does not work. Was there any > testing at all??? The destination underneath is not the same as the > displayed text neither. The www (and the trailing slash for > directories) should be on all href= links. Currently fixed. Was a fault in the migration process (not as easy as you'd think). > 8. The main page link "Membership" goes to the "Membership Database" > which is not the same thing, and confusing to users. Closer reading of > the Membership Database page does tell how to join. Surely if the aim > is to get new members, this means there should be a "How to Join" link > right on the front page. Yes - this is to be fixed in the next version of MemberDB (the membership database - http://www.flamingspork.com/projects/memberdb). As you can understand, the main website has received more of my time than MemberDB over the past while :) Plans to make the look-and-feel consistent with the rest of the site are also in place - but help is always appreciated. > 9. The new member sign-up page is a bit wacky - it displays the log-in > boxes for existing members to log-on (and stuff about forgot your > password) at the SAME time as displaying the form where new members can > join. This is nutty from a user's point of view. yes, it probably is. I'm still trying to fine tune the memberdb UI. Help is really appreciated in this area - especially having it look non-ugly :) i have focussed on having things solid in the important areas (signup, approval, member lists). The next big thing is election code. help is really appreciated here. > 10. In some browsers, the mouse rollover text includes a display of > leading spaces, which looks weird to the user. The values in the alt= > tags need to be reviewed on all pages. Yes they do :) It happenned a few revisions ago, but some extra problems have crept in. Wasn't considered a going-live showstopper - but will be looked at over the next few days. If people can report to us any rendering oddities - it would be greatly appreciated. We're currently seeing a bit of strangeness under Konqueror and IE6.0.2 on XP (but not with IE on some other windows versions - urgh). > 11. On the Membership Database page, clicking "Home" shows the same > page again, and does not go to the home page of Linux Australia. Very > confusing to users, and goes against the accepted meaning of Home. Yes. Will be clarified in the next memberdb release. Wit the main website largely done now (apart from fixups and maintenance) i should be able to spend more time getting memberdb up to scratch. In my defense - i'm only currently calling it version 0.2 :) Thank you very much for your valuable feedback - it is much appreciated. -- Stewart Smith ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Linux Australia Vice President ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.flamingspork.com -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
