Hallo, so eine richtige Meinung habe ich noch nicht. Welcher Vorschlag gefällt Euch?
Gruß Rolf ---------- Weitergeleitete Nachricht ---------- Subject: [project leads] Debate and Vote on OpenOffice.org Homepage Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2005 22:52:28 -0800 From: Louis Suarez-Potts <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dear Project Leads, Kay and I would like to ask you to debate and vote on a new OpenOffice.org homepage. We have three candidates; this message is meant to synthesize the positions and describe the candidates. We ask you to debate for roughly one week, with a vote to be held no later than 11 February. I would like make these discussions publicly viewable, and include the designers in the discussions, so that they may respond as needed. If that is okay, I can add them to this list. If it is also okay to make the list publicly viewable for the duration of the debate and vote, i would change it to an Allowed Posters list, reverting when the vote had been completed. ===== * Summary Over the last few weeks the Website project has been engaged in what began as a OOo homepage redesign and evolved into a site redesign. The debate has been often interesting, sometimes contentious; passions have run high. One pole of the debate has focused on a Jakob Nielsen notion of usability. The homepage, in this view, should cater to what users (as Nielsen advocates call website visitors) are looking for, minimizing all other things. In the view of usability advocates, sites must be functional; other elements are distracting. (For a useful summary of articles pertaining to usability, embedded in a recent email on the subject, see [1].) The other pole focuses more on presenting to the visitor those elements representing OpenOffice.org, the project, the product. This second pole does not dismiss usability--no one wants to make the site unusable--but rather asserts that the homepage is more than a download page, it is a vehicle for bringing in visitors to the project, for informing them. These arguments, of course, recapitulate a longstanding (and rather boring) debate in web design. Most web designers nowadays would argue simply enough that good design means that a site is usable and appealing; that it provides visitors with the information they need while representing the project. A good example often touted is that of Mozilla.org: <http://www.mozilla.org/>. (For critiques of the debate, see [2].) I stand with those who argue that the homepage is a gateway to the project and is more than functional apparatus. The OOo homepage (HP) must present to the visitor what we are about, as well as important information about the product and project. We want visitors to find things easily as well as being induced into the project and all it houses. *About the current HP: The current page is rightly termed "cluttered" and difficult to navigate. It is so because we have duplicate elements competing with each other; and it is so because we have elements on the page that seem important but are not to most imagined visitors to the page. For instance, we have, on the current page, "Development" on the top navbar and "Contributing Work" on the left navbar; both occupy a similar logical space, and they share it with "To-Dos". We have also the faintly intimidating "Licenses" link--which, to an open-source advocate is nothing new but to a naive visitor is confusing. The Guidelines are also ambiguous. One could go on: The Resources section, originally meant to be a catch-all box for OOo user resources, competes directly with the Support tab. Furthermore, we do not now have a good description of OOo (product or project) on the HP, yet it is one of the more frequently requested elements. * Proposals The three proposals presented, Matthew's, Maarten's, and Jacqueline's, address the shortcomings of the current site and are all appealing. Matthew's design expresses foregrounding a Jakob Nielsen usability, Maarten's and jacqueline's express a page that presents key elements of OpenOffice.org to multiple anticipated visitors. The debate on this list should focus on: * How well does a proposal accomplish the goals set out? * How well does it accommodate the needs of the community? * Is it able to expand as we do? During this debate, I expect that the proposals will continue to evolve. Maarten has already expressed interest in changing his to conform more with Jacqueline's, for instance. The three proposals: ** Jacqueline McNally's: <http://website.openoffice.org/tryouts/homepages/prototype_j1.png> With explanation: <http://website.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=dev&msgNo=6521> ** Matthew Wardrop's (two similar ones): - OOoWeb2 (equivalent of Mark 5.1) - Matthew <http://website.openoffice.org/nonav/tryouts/Matthew/OOoWeb2/index.htm> - OOoWeb2.1 (equivalent of Mark 6) - Matthew <http://website.openoffice.org/nonav/tryouts/Matthew/OOoWeb2.1/index.htm With explanations: <http://website.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=dev&msgNo=6486 > and <http://website.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=dev&msgNo=6516> ** Maarten Brouwers': <http://www.murb.nl/extern/openoffice.org/websiteproposal/2.2/> With explanation: <http://website.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=dev&msgNo=6506>. -Louis ============ [1] Index of usability links: <http://website.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=dev&msgNo=6517> [2] Articles on usability debate: <http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/sphere_of_design.cfm> <http://www.alistapart.com/articles/marsvenus/> <http://www.lighthousedigital.co.uk/approach/usability.cfm> <http://www.digital-web.com/articles/end_of_usability_culture> --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
