On Sun, Nov 03, 2002 at 07:52:09AM -0600, Igor Izyumin wrote: > On Sunday 03 November 2002 03:09 am, Dimitrie O. Paun wrote: > > On November 3, 2002 02:35 am, Francois Gouget wrote: > > > Too much nesting just hides information and forces the user to dig down > > > to find what he is looking for. > > > > I am sorry to do a AOL -- me too post, but I do agree 100% with Francois. > > For WineHQ, I _strongly_ feel it's a big mistake to have more than 2 levels > > of menus. Just top level, and a sublevel is more than enough. > > > > Here are the principles I used for my proposal: > > 1. Just two levels > > 2. The more some info is accessed, the fewer mouse clicks > > should be required to get to it. > > 3. Menus organized by usage patterns, rather then strict > > technical category. > > I agree with the first two, but the third is wrong. Information should not be > split up into illogical categories based on what you think is a logical usage > pattern. The fewer splits you can make, the better it is. If I'm looking > for a FAQ, I would first click on Documentation, but if it's buried in > "Support" I would not even bother clicking there. The best structure would > have clear, logical categories and you would not have to guess where a > certain document would be buried. Keep in mind that it is better to group > all information into as few logical categories as possible. There should be > no guessing involved. Agreeing 100%.
> > Similarly, for the Development/Contributing. Time and again OSS > > project push only the "Development" part in front, scarring > > away non-programmers from contributing, just to realize later on > > that they do need a lot of non-programming help as well. Case in > > point, instead of spending my time on the controls, I do other > > things that could be handled by non-programmers :). It's a natural > > split, the Development area is very important for Wine, and people > > going there are not interested in items that are listed in > > "Contributing"; also, we should show people there are many other > > ways to contribute, appart from coding. BTW, the Contributing > > section is is Francois idea, but I strongly support it. > > OK, this section needs to be renamed, too. 'contribute' is a transitive verb, > and in a context of a free software project implies contributing code. A web > guru would never click on a "contribute" link because they think it's > instructions for sending in Wine patches. "Help out" or "Volunteer" or > something like that would be much more accurate. Great idea ! Contribute is in fact not "aggressive" enough, as it hides what the intentions behind that are. -- Andreas Mohr Stauferstr. 6, D-71272 Renningen, Germany Tel. +49 7159 800604 http://mohr.de.tt
