Safari on OS X 10.3.4 (or so, whatever the latest version is):
* horizontal scrollbar (on a 1024x768 screen) on all pages
(apparently caused by the right-aligned menu)
* text inside tables is HUGE, for example in the table inside
central/legacy/index.html
the fonts look like 14pt or 15pts
Non-tech issues:
* no link back to www.apache.org * __too__ different from the rest of the ASF websites. The menu is on the right, the front page is empty, there is half a dozen terms that are not explained but highly foreign (ie "laboratory", "central", ...) * number of clicks/minutes required to find the download of avalon-framework (still haven't found it...) * complete breakage of "backward compatibility" (everything has moved, old URLs no longer work, etc etc)...where's my API docs?? * ... * ... * ...
I appreciate the goal of a more "corporate feel" (disagree with it as I may :D), but at the moment you're also sacrificing navigation, usability, familiarity and compatibility. I can't find anything. If I were a new user (say a james or tomcat user, your average jakarta leech), I certainly would feel very confused after 5 mins on the avalon site. When I go to a software website, I don't even want to think about questions like this:
* who wrote this stuff? * what does it do? * how can I run a demo? * what language is it written in? * what's the "target audience" (am I the target audience)? * where do I get the latest release? * where do I get the latest head revision (from cvs or svn)? * where do I ask questions? * ... * ...
answers to questions like these should be on the front page, or hooked from the front page. Rich Bowen had a nice rant or two about it on his weblog. In some cases you can get away with "mailing lists" instead of "get support" because many people know they can get support on the mailing list.
You're doing a radical rewrite of everything here, at the same time. Just like with software, the best way to improve websites, documentation, etc, is an incremental one. Start with just changing the look of the current site (not the menu items or navigational structure), iron out the bugs and "release", incorporate feedback and "release", set up the first bit of the new structure "central" or "portal" or "planet" or whatever idea you have here and "release". Etc etc. Incremental development.
In summary:
* breaks "backward compatibility". * too different from what people expect. * many steps back from a "ussability" and "navigatability" POV. * incremental changes, not radical ones, not just for software. * think of the main "user stories" for your website and make sure those are supported, and supported well.
maybe you want to talk to a web usability person and sit next to him as he runs through the site.
cheers,
- LSD
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