Hi, Ivan,
Ivan M wrote:
Hi Clayton, all,
On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 12:49 AM, Clayton <[email protected]> wrote:
A lot of work has gone into the openoffice.org website to make it look a
LOT better and make it much more accessible to everyone... I'm wondering
now though, what about the OOoWiki?
The Main Page on the OOoWiki is pretty much a long link farm page - a
large number of links which are obsolete or not really useful to 99% of
the people using the Wiki.
But please consider a phone-book, with 10K names and numbers. It is
99.99% useless--except for the one entry we're looking for.
I suggest that link farms are similarly useful, and right up front is a
very good place for them. Like any farm, regular weeding and fertilizing
are required.
We should consider the kinds of users that visit the wiki (or the
kinds of users we would like to be visiting the wiki more in the
future), and compare that with the kinds of users that the wiki is
currently targeting. For example, I find the project links at the top
of the wiki very useful - they let people get where they want quickly
- but only if they know OOo's project structure, and if they have a
reasonably good idea of where they're going. Some people might not be
after specific projects, but rather something more practical
(cross-project, or project independent, such as getting help with
OOo).
The links further down the main page seem to be trying to address
this, but not in a user-friendly way. First, they require scrolling
down - not everyone will do this, especially if they get intimidated
by the project links (user help is at the very bottom of the page!).
Second, the links could do with some weeding and updating - e.g., List
of Wishes is not really a project AFAIK, and it's not really a page
that's being a lot.
I would suggest the following:
* Add new-user-friendly links at the top of the page - these would be
targeted for those visitors to the wiki who don't have a clear idea of
where they're going / where they need to go
* Restructure the layout of the project links so they do not eat so
much vertical space - e.g., by having a 2-column layout
** Oh, most excellent! Love what you did on the demo page.
* Get rid of "Welcome to the OpenOffice.org wiki" heading... it's
eating vertical space and it's not really necessary
* Move Search into the header like the OOo website does. This makes
better use of the header's vertical space, and makes the left hand
menu smaller
* Move the "In Other Languages" portlet on the left hand menu further
up the list on the main page (where "Toolbox" currently is) to promote
other languages in the wiki
* In terms of length, the new main page should be about a third of the
size of the current page
* Use Galaxy icons on the homepage to give visual meaning to sections
This Wiki Talk page from a new OOo Community member is an indication of
the problem we are facing with the Wiki and the website...
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/User_talk:Cbrownusa where he
points out that it is confusing, and he has no idea where to go or which
link to click in the website maze.
Has anyone given any thought to a major rework of the Wiki Main Page?
Can we simplify it? Can we make it clearer where to go as a developer,
and where to go as a user? Can we use some graphics, illutrations,
icons etc to help direct people?
Does anyone have any ideas? Proposals? Is anyoen willing to take this
and start re-working the Main Page?
To get/keep the discussion going, I've made a quick proposal at:
http://www.patentpending.co.nz/openoffice/wiki/Main_Page_New.htm
which incorporates the suggestions made above. Feel free to comment /
tear it apart / make suggestions, etc.
Regards,
Ivan.
Two suggestions:
1) Have pity on us old fossils, and put the type size back up.
2) These improvements help the visitors to get where they're going _in
the Wiki_. To help them get where they want to be, _on the page_, I
suggest a very old-fashioned remedy: the Wiki-style TOC (i.e., lose the
_NOTOC_)
Alternatively, this might be a good place for that "now you see it, now
you don't" technology (click to expand), for the sub-headers. This would
also reduce the *apparent* page-size, drastically.
Or both. /tj
--
T. J. Frazier
Melbourne, FL
(TJFrazier on OO.o)
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