From: Smitty <sm...@wa...> - 2002-08-23 21:27:10
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> Hello all, Hello, and yes I am aware that I am speaking from a biased viewpoint but I dont think I am overly biased so that I have devalued my ideas / arguments. > It's been a long time since the website has had a face lift. The currently > proposed 'new' site just doesn't do it for me. Sure it changes some of the > style, etc., but imo it doesn't address the glaring issues that have been > bugging me for ages about the current site--namely content layout and > organization. Content was generally not addressed (see below) > So, here for your consideration is one I've put together: > > http://lfm.sourceforge.net/dritest/ > > Issues addressed: > > Navigation - Removed frames (gross), and removed redundant menus. Why are frames gross? I thought these were unobtrusive, and if your browser can't handle frames that is acoomodated as well. > Organization - Reorganized content into appropriate pages. > Also, provided easy-to-find sections for important items > that were previously buried in long paragraphs. Interestingly enough the content had been reorganised at the behest of a user of the original site. > Layout - Refactored long lists into tables, or broke them up > visually to make them easier to index into. I sort of like the alternating colours although I was trying to get away from every sentance has to have its own table cell. > Mailing Lists - Now includes all four, with easy-to-see links for > subscribing, posting, and accessing the archives. It's an improvement (see below) > I'm not too particular about the visual _style_ per se. If you prefer using > boxes around the caption headers, or some fancy image or fonts, or different > colors or whatever, fine. My main concerns involve how easy it is to look at > and see visually what I'm looking for w/o having to read through 5 or 6 deep > paragraphs, or worse, read through several complete pages for something that > should have had it's own section w/an entry in the menu. I thought site_update achieved this. In a less is more sort of way. This was however intended as a starting point after which content could be reorganised. > Comments and feedback welcome. I don't mean to give offense to those that > have put in time and effort on the current pages--I only intend to provide > worthwhile improvements upon their efforts. Well I am slightly hacked about it, I mean RFC, RFC the website was about all I posted about for quite a while. All comments were replied to all changes requested were made (in a few cases (1?) I explained that something had been requested another way already). The whole point to the above was to get poeple to say I dont like this, please change XYZ, add abc, etc. If you had suggested eg the mailing list to be organised the way you have done it I would have done it (or said go for it). I unfortunately can't guage what people want when they are sitting on another continent, they have to ask for it or I assume they like it the way it is. > If you think this has been a waste of my time, feel free to say so--no offense > will be taken here either. I think you have wasted some of your time, but most of it looks well spent, rewriting the content is time well spent in my opinion. as Jens says (edited but hopefully still in context) : > The main question that comes to my mind is are you proposing to > maintain this site? > We need someone who can stick around and maintain this stuff. Hehe I thought I'd ended up doing this. However it has at least been a bloodless coup de' ta. <g> btw I hope that you are aware that David and I have started talking about the database, and web front ends that he is implementing which I believe will have a significant imapct on the websites content. Liam ---- it depends |