On Thu, 2010-09-23 at 11:55 -0500, Steven Clift wrote:
> 1. I want to keep our customizations minimized and your progress is a
> great start.
>
> 2. I'd like to see the mock-ups in the context of the left nav and
> whole page. Can you really fit both tabbed areas next to each other?
As part of a wider redesign, I'd like us to look at making the
header/footer more integrated, and minimal (think FB/Twitter/etc.) I
think I sent you a more general (and also longer term) page mockup
off-list (you were on the road).
> 3. Assuming left nav remains, I'd like to suggest that this an ideal
> place for the standard group icon/image just above the menu items -
> this is the easiest way for the sense of group identity to be spread
> out across all pages, posts and topics.
At this stage, the plan is to drop the left navigation panel. The main
points, off the top of my head:
1: It is inconsistent. We use it some places, but not others.
2: It actually isn't that useful. The objection I can hear people
claiming is that "it helps me navigate between groups"[1]. Does it,
really? *most* people are only in 1 group. I'd estimate that only a few
percent are in more than 3 groups. The groups homepage redesign (though
it's not *terrible* at the moment) is likely to be better navigation
point (yes, it's one more click). I think there will likely be a new
*intragroup* navigation, but we haven't quite gotten that far yet.
3: It makes the page loads slower -- especially for those poor suckers
who have loads of groups (this is probably the least important point)
I think your point about the sense of group identity being carried
through all pages could well be carried with the intragroup navigation.
I think if we get this right, no one will miss it :)
> 4. If we display the group info tab collection above the group content
> tab collection, you could hide it completely with a link to expose if
> someone is logged in.
We tried this early on (actually, the other way around). Generally we
are more limited for vertical space than horizontal space -- I just
think this would be unnecessary. Having said that -- I would imagine
that the positioning of the collections would be totally CSS controlled,
so they could be in whatever arrangement one liked.
> 5. Perhaps a "New" tab on top instead of Topics? - What I am thinking
> is something that mixes a few of the latest topics, photos, number of
> files, number of new members ... etc. in one window. If we have two
> tab collections on top of each other, then the New, Topics, etc. tabs
> can go deeper. (New is a kin to Latest Activity in Ning)
Could be interesting. I think in the 'initial' cut Mike was looking to
improve the organisation of the information, rather than introduce
totally new concepts, but I don't think we would rule out something like
this following the organisational refactoring.
I also had a thought the other day, while speaking with Dan, that we
could repurpose our 'chat' feature as a 'who is in the group at the
moment' on the group homepage -- effectively it does presence as a
side-effect. Could be interesting for people to be able to add their
ad-hoc comments to the front-of-group. Might need to be tied in with the
moderation though (ie. moderated users cannot use chat :)).
> 6. The likely customization I want to explore is make the "New" tab or
> something profile more online news like where we lay out some topic
> headlines, a short excerpt, embed the photo of the author if we have
> it, a photo from the topic, etc. in a mix.
Yep, I think one of the advantages of this design is that 'customisations'
more easily, as well as more maintainably -- at the moment it is *very*
easy for us to accidentally break customisations on the e-dem homepage
because there are so many of them, and they're pretty much all
maintained zope-side (as opposed to filesystem code side -- which is
where we now maintain the visual skin changes).
I can't help but think this reply should probably have gone to
groupserver development :) Steve: could you repost your original to
there (stripping out anything you considered to be e-dem specific) so
that I can keep the wider audience informed of the process please?
Rest of post
--Richard
[1] If you recall, this is a similar claim that was made when we dropped
the breadcrumbs. Anyone remember that we had them? Note that google
groups has similar nav structure -- no intergroup navigation.