On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 1:16 AM, Christian Soeller <[email protected]> wrote: > I think a new sidebar item 'Installation' is the way to do. It should link to > a page (already existing somewhere, e.g. wiki?) that walks a user through the > various installation options and gives platform specific hints. > > 'Getting started' I would expect to find as a prominent link in the > documentation section. > > I installed some software recently and really liked the sites where I could > find these installation hints easily.
I feel that we need to find a way to actually reduce the number of links in the sidebar. This is difficult to do. I fully agree that an "Installation" link makes sense, and a "Getting Started" link makes sense too. Same for Tutorials, FAQ, Home, Documentation, Mailing lists, Wiki and a ton of other links. Individually, each one of these makes sense. But if you include them all, in aggregate they will actually damage the usability of the website. More links can lead to duplication and they can make useful information harder to find. So, what do we do? Well, I don't really know. It takes time to think about these things. If good design was easy, everyone would do it. One idea that I am considering is putting a few prominent links on the front page, rather than the sidebar. For example, look at http://scipy.org. I like the icons on their front page. Here is one way we could adapt this to the PDL site: * Remove 'Download' and 'Contact Us' from the sidebar. * Add big prominent icons/links to the front page: Download, Installation, Getting Started, Support Maybe remove Bugs and Patches and merge the Development block with the About PDL block... I'm not sure. I'm going to experiment a little and see what I get. Daniel. -- Intollerant people should be shot. _______________________________________________ Perldl mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.jach.hawaii.edu/mailman/listinfo/perldl
