On Mon, 2004-02-23 at 11:37, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > My only beef with the current style is what happens when you have tons of > sub-projects, as in the case of Jakarta Commons. When you start stacking > many different scopes of detail on top of one another down the left sidebar, > it becomes hard to differentiate between scope divisions. I know, the > headers should be a clue, but it does get a bit overwhelming... Maven's > plugins reference would have a similar problem, if it were constructed in > this way.
Dealing with umbrella sites is definitely something that people want some advice on how to do best. An umbrella page is really an aggregation of all information contained within all the subprojects. So in this case maybe we need a different kind of page. Possibly having a page with a reference to all the projects contained within instead of trying to stuff them all in the navigation. The umbrella page can contain all the things like project goals, licenses, pointers to mailing lists and the like but maybe we need a standard format for an umbrella project? I agree that the navigation for the commons is a little unweildly and will become moreso as the number of components grows. Come up with a clean page with a nicely formatted table of all the projects contained within, possibly with a short summary (taken from the short description) and a pointer to the subproject page. > Another problem with the volume of information is that it tends to lead > off-screen, where scrolling to read destroys the coherence of the sidebar > information. Definitely, this is where I think a page containing a list of the subprojects would be good. Having to scroll does indeed make wandering through a site annoying. > Personally, I'd much rather have a dashboard at the top (where > applications, not just _web_ applications traditionally have a menubar) > where I can see the operations near at hand, like details of this project. > This may seem like replication of the top part of the sidebar, but it pops > out to the eye quite a bit more readily than a subsection of this gigantic > list on the left (all of the same font size, etc.). For an application I too like the dashboard. For a maven generated site I have always been of the mind that the front page first paragraph of of the first section should tell you "What is this beast?". I'm sure it's a matter of habit for me now, but I read that first paragraph and then I wander left to the navigation and in the first navigation section is where the hot items should go like javadoc, downloads, cvs repos. Looking at the first page of the commons-math site, I am immediately presented with a list of things: there is no summary of what the project is or does which. Instead of having a link to "About Math" it should tell you right there on the first page and the user guide be a hot item in the first set of navigations. Additionally, Maven's users guide suffers the same problem where scrolling of the table of contents is necessary. Though commons-math is much better in that you link to each section so you can click around without scrolling much. There are certainly some guidelines for good sites like Jacob Nielsen's books but to a large extent I think there is an element of conditioning and if we come up with a reasonably sensible, standard format then everyone benefits. I agree with you 100% that navigation without scrolling should be a goal to strive for and we can help with that by providing tools to make easily navigable user guides, FAQs and templates for aggregated sites. > Final note: The content area is what you define it to be. If you frame a > page properly, it will be obvious what is and is not the content area. > Top/Left are premium real estate because they naturally frame any page > content, so maybe shrinking the _huge_ logo at the top and/or allowing the > embedding of some navigation in that top 10% of the page (I'm guessing) > would help free up some space for the actual content. Another would be to > take a page from the Safari website, and allow the user to "hide" the > sidebar, in order to read the content. All good ideas, and these are the things I would like to incorporate into the xdoc plugin. > I know that the Commons website isn't probably organized in the best > possible way wrt what is/isn't on the sidebar, but I definitely think the > site rendering should provide some not-so-subtle visual clues about what is > nearby, or important. Prepending these links to the top of a long list > without even changing the text formatting in my opinion doesn't handle this > very well. Point taken, coherent navigation is not a simple task. Maybe the first set of navigations could be visually slightly different in some way? > -john > > -----Original Message----- > From: Jason van Zyl [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Monday, February 23, 2004 11:24 AM > To: Maven Developers List > Subject: Re: [Fwd: Re: [commons-site] Alternate Horizontal Project > Navigation] > > On Mon, 2004-02-23 at 07:55, Mark R. Diggory wrote: > > I thought it'd be good to forward this onto you "Crazy Maven > > Developers". What do you think about horizontal project navigation: > > > > http://www.apache.org/~mdiggory/commons/math/userguide/index.html > > What you have in the tabs across the top is akin to what I would like to > see as the first entries on the left in the navigation. > > I honestly don't much like the tabs and like the navigation in the nav > bar on the left or in the breadcrumb bar. I think having navigation in > the body of the page with the content isn't a good thing. > > I think people will naturally look to the upper left (as the majority of > people dealing with computer stuff use English as the primary language > which reads left to right) to find things of importance and that's where > I would honestly like to see the things of navigational importance go. > > I've given up on trying to make the sites all look exactly the same as > far as colour and general style but I would really, really not like to > see each project start changing the navigation style. I realize the > currently generated site is lacking in terms of ease of use but I would > like to incorporate any ideas like you have into the standard xdoc > plugin so that the sites being generated remain functioning the same at > least in terms of navigational style. > > > -Mark > > > > -------- Original Message -------- > > > > Ok I added the following: > > > > 1.) first three navi levels stay the same height if content present or > not. > > 2.) nested custom project documentation menus under "About <Project>" > > (requires special formating (and menu/@type="tab" attribute to be > > visible there). > > 3.) disabled "Development Process" button (working on removing it). > > > > As an example of three levels being filled: > > http://www.apache.org/~mdiggory/commons/math/userguide/index.html > > > > -Mark > > > > Tim O'Brien wrote: > > > > > I think this helps. Although the "About Math" tab should have a blank > > > subtab for consistency. > > > > > > ...now the left nav - it is soooo busy. > > > > > > Tim > > > > > > > > > Mark R. Diggory wrote: > > > > > >> I worked out the kinks on an alternate project navigation, please have > > >> a look and comment: > > >> > > >> http://www.apache.org/~mdiggory/commons/math/project-info.html > > >> > > >> Pro's > > >> > > >> 1.) Navigation better integrated into page layout. > > >> 2.) Horizontal positioning at top of page more traditional for > > >> navigation. > > >> 3.) Strong CSS control over look and feel, 0% javascript > > >> 4.) Clearly separates "Shared Commons Navigation" from "Individual > > >> Project Navigation". > > >> > > >> Con's > > >> > > >> 1.) Limits number of items on a level to the width of the page > > >> (although it does provide "wrapping" when items are greater than > width). > > >> > > >> 2.) Currently limited to menus nested three levels deep. > > >> (but easily extendable to more). > > >> 3.) Currently doesn't integrate custom project navigation. > > >> (but could easily be adapted for such support, I had initially > > >> included it, but encountered small issues with merging two separate > > >> "menu sets"). > > >> > > >> > > >> I think its important to clearly separate the "Projects Navigation" > > >> from the overall shared "Commons Navigation", I believe positioning > > >> them in very separate locations of the site gives the user a much > > >> clearer path and ease in determining the level of the site they are > > >> within. > > >> > > >> -Mark > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > > -- > > Mark Diggory > > Software Developer > > Harvard MIT Data Center > > http://www.hmdc.harvard.edu > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- jvz. Jason van Zyl [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://maven.apache.org happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder ... -- Thoreau --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
