Re: [documentation-dev] Trying out some ideas for reworking the main Documentation Wiki page
Sounds great Clayton. If you need any information regarding the write up of the wiki page or if I can be of assistance, feel free to let me know. Best regards, Gabriel Gurley Author, A Conceptual Guide to OpenOffice.org 3 Quoting Clayton ccorn...@openoffice.org: Gabriel Gurley wrote: Sorry I haven't had an opportunity to join in the discussion before now. But I definitely like the way the testpage is progressing. For me, I have found that the layout makes it easier to find what I am looking for. Clayton, as this progresses, if you find that my Conceptual Guide materials need to added to this page and to a specific area, let me know and I will be happy to make any necessary adjustments. Hi Gabriel. Thanks for adding your comments and thoughts. And yes, we can (and should) definitely add in your Conceptual Guide. We can link back to the OO.o website, and even write up a Wiki page or two for your contributions. I've added it to the Resources column - pointing directly to the zips and isos. We can clean up the links later if/when Wiki pages are created for them. C. -- Clayton Cornell ccorn...@openoffice.org StarOffice - Sun Microsystems, Inc. - Hamburg, Germany - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@documentation.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@documentation.openoffice.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@documentation.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@documentation.openoffice.org
Re: [documentation-dev] Trying out some ideas for reworking the main Documentation Wiki page
Gabriel Gurley wrote: Sorry I haven't had an opportunity to join in the discussion before now. But I definitely like the way the testpage is progressing. For me, I have found that the layout makes it easier to find what I am looking for. Clayton, as this progresses, if you find that my Conceptual Guide materials need to added to this page and to a specific area, let me know and I will be happy to make any necessary adjustments. Hi Gabriel. Thanks for adding your comments and thoughts. And yes, we can (and should) definitely add in your Conceptual Guide. We can link back to the OO.o website, and even write up a Wiki page or two for your contributions. I've added it to the Resources column - pointing directly to the zips and isos. We can clean up the links later if/when Wiki pages are created for them. C. -- Clayton Cornell ccorn...@openoffice.org StarOffice - Sun Microsystems, Inc. - Hamburg, Germany - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@documentation.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@documentation.openoffice.org
Re: [documentation-dev] Trying out some ideas for reworking the main Documentation Wiki page
I've done some more tinkering on the new Doc Wiki layout ideas... http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Talk:Documentation/testpage This is working on the idea from Uwe to split things up into User and Developer... does that work? Comments/thoughts? Note that the doc list is incomplete for each section... just 3 placeholders each for the User/Developer sections. C. -- Clayton Cornell ccorn...@openoffice.org StarOffice - Sun Microsystems, Inc. - Hamburg, Germany - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@documentation.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@documentation.openoffice.org
Re: [documentation-dev] Trying out some ideas for reworking the main Documentation Wiki page
I've done some more tinkering on the new Doc Wiki layout ideas... http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Talk:Documentation/testpage This is working on the idea from Uwe to split things up into User and Developer... does that work? Comments/thoughts? Note that the doc list is incomplete for each section... just 3 placeholders each for the User/Developer sections. I added a link to the Help Style Guide in the brown Want To Help box and some more dividing lines into the Resources section to make the groups in this section more visible. I like that idea. The lines nicely break it up into groups. Since everyone seems to like the direction this is going, we can start working on getting the actual content in the sections right now. The hard part will be figuring out what grouping to do for the User docs and for the Developer docs... and getting the guiding links right. The Install or Uninstall link now points to a new page which built with a DPL (ordered by popularity) for the Category:Documentation/Setup. The DPL builds a list of page links based on a Categories. C. -- Clayton Cornell ccorn...@openoffice.org StarOffice - Sun Microsystems, Inc. - Hamburg, Germany - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@documentation.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@documentation.openoffice.org
Re: [documentation-dev] Trying out some ideas for reworking the main Documentation Wiki page
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Talk:Documentation/testpage This is working on the idea from Uwe to split things up into User and Developer... does that work? Comments/thoughts? The headings are too long and break awkwardly on narrower screens. Can we use Users Developers and Search and be more verbose in the subtext? For the small subtext under Resources, we need to define a new lineheight. Something like line-height: 1.2em; I put my suggestions in the wiki Yup, you're right. It looks better with the changes you've made. C. -- Clayton Cornell ccorn...@openoffice.org StarOffice - Sun Microsystems, Inc. - Hamburg, Germany - To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@documentation.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@documentation.openoffice.org
Re: [documentation-dev] Trying out some ideas for reworking the main Documentation Wiki page
On 12/08/08 15:49, ccornell - OpenOffice.org wrote: Thank you and Frank for this :) I didn't noticed the More... link at first sight, I think the first reaction is to click on the more prominent link, so I for myself, prefer the first proposal you made with less to read at the first look. However I really like the hidden text blocks. I'll try to make a proposal tomorrow. I've tinkered a little with the layout Frank came up with and put it here: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Talk:Documentation/testpage (larger fonts, shorter descriptions etc.) Maybe this will help with making it clear there is a 'More...' link. Converting it to the original idea is not really possible with the extension. There are limitations to how the information can be displayed, and linked. Once we find a way of presenting the info for the Doc project in a way that makes sense, we can start to look at how we can categorize and group the information we have. For now, the links/topics/resources are more an indication than final group/topic proposals. - Can we (should we) use different icons for different topic types (using the OOo Galaxy icon style/set)? - Who are the people looking for info? The audience? - What are the high level tasks that we can use for grouping topics? - What books and content do we actually have? Hi, this really looks great. However, I would like to rearrange the links a little bit: - remove the artificial split up between Topics and Resources. Users who want help and information don't care if they get help from a topic or a resource information source. - clearly divide the information sources between User Help and Developer/Admin Help. The links to developer/admin information only distract normal users from finding help. - Add a highly visible link to How to improve the help. This is a Wiki at all, and we want the user to participate and share. - No normal user should need to scroll down to find the most often wanted help information. No user should be urged to read one and a half column of links and text until he/she finds the FAQ or the How Tos. - The link to Forums currently doesn't work. An additional link to the mailing lists main page should be added. - The link names and the descriptions should contain the terms that user are used to search when they want help. For example, user who search the manuals don't find any manuals now. They are named different - but how? Uwe -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Technical Writer StarOffice - Sun Microsystems, Inc. - Hamburg, Germany http://documentation.openoffice.org/ http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation http://blogs.sun.com/oootnt http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [documentation-dev] Trying out some ideas for reworking the main Documentation Wiki page
this really looks great. However, I would like to rearrange the links a little bit: Yup... you're right. The links as they are, are not the final layout or anything close. We are still looking at the technical aspects of how present the information. Feel free to rearrange them into something that looks better. The Talk:Documentation/testpage or the Documentation_new pages are not just to look at... everyone can have a go at them, edit them... shuffle things around a little etc. We can also make copies and create new test pages. - remove the artificial split up between Topics and Resources. Users who want help and information don't care if they get help from a topic or a resource information source. That means we need a good list of topics or entry points for people use to find the docs they need. The list of topics there was a quick list to show what is possible, not a final list. We need to find out (or make an educated guess) who the Wiki users/readers are, what the high level tasks are and what docs we have. - clearly divide the information sources between User Help and Developer/Admin Help. The links to developer/admin information only distract normal users from finding help. That is the direction the Topics and Resources lists are going, although the actual content of those columns isn't necessarily in the right places yet. - Add a highly visible link to How to improve the help. This is a Wiki at all, and we want the user to participate and share. We can do that in the same way it is done on the existing Documentation Wiki page (the box on the right)... or if there is a better way? - No normal user should need to scroll down to find the most often wanted help information. No user should be urged to read one and a half column of links and text until he/she finds the FAQ or the How Tos. OK, but also you cannot put all links to all documents in one spot at the top of the page... nor is it reasonable to put 4 links on the main page and ask the user to click through 6 Wiki layers to find the info they need or want. There is a lot of information on the Documentation Wiki and we need to find a balance between putting it all on the main Documentation page like it is now, and hiding some of it in subpages or hidden text sections... and of course we also need to work within the limitations of what is possible on the Wiki. - The link to Forums currently doesn't work. Yes, that's true... there is an error in the Template that is used for this part. The Template needs to be fixed. An additional link to the mailing lists main page should be added. OK good point. You can add it if you want :-) - The link names and the descriptions should contain the terms that user are used to search when they want help. For example, user who search the manuals don't find any manuals now. They are named different - but how? OK, what terms? Everyone can edit the testpage (or create another page) and add some examples if they have some ideas. What terms are people looking for? How are they searching? Are they using Google? Will they use the new Search box that we have added to the Documentation Wiki page? Will they find the topic areas to be the right topic areas? I don't know if we can even answer a lot of these questions, but we do need to take at least some of it into consideration as we work toward a better Documentation Wiki. The questions I asked in the last message: - Who are the people looking for info? The audience? - What are the high level tasks that we can use for grouping topics? - What books and content do we actually have? are along the same lines as the ones you've raised... and they don't have clear answers just yet. C. -- Clayton Cornell [EMAIL PROTECTED] StarOffice - Sun Microsystems, Inc. - Hamburg, Germany - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [documentation-dev] Trying out some ideas for reworking the main Documentation Wiki page
Thank you and Frank for this :) I didn't noticed the More... link at first sight, I think the first reaction is to click on the more prominent link, so I for myself, prefer the first proposal you made with less to read at the first look. However I really like the hidden text blocks. I'll try to make a proposal tomorrow. I've tinkered a little with the layout Frank came up with and put it here: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Talk:Documentation/testpage (larger fonts, shorter descriptions etc.) Maybe this will help with making it clear there is a 'More...' link. Converting it to the original idea is not really possible with the extension. There are limitations to how the information can be displayed, and linked. Once we find a way of presenting the info for the Doc project in a way that makes sense, we can start to look at how we can categorize and group the information we have. For now, the links/topics/resources are more an indication than final group/topic proposals. - Can we (should we) use different icons for different topic types (using the OOo Galaxy icon style/set)? - Who are the people looking for info? The audience? - What are the high level tasks that we can use for grouping topics? - What books and content do we actually have? C. -- Clayton Cornell [EMAIL PROTECTED] StarOffice - Sun Microsystems, Inc. - Hamburg, Germany - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [documentation-dev] Trying out some ideas for reworking the main Documentation Wiki page
Hi Clayton, all, ccornell - OpenOffice.org wrote: Thank you and Frank for this :) I didn't noticed the More... link at first sight, I think the first reaction is to click on the more prominent link, so I for myself, prefer the first proposal you made with less to read at the first look. However I really like the hidden text blocks. I'll try to make a proposal tomorrow. And I didn't have the time to look at it yesterday :( I've tinkered a little with the layout Frank came up with and put it here: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Talk:Documentation/testpage (larger fonts, shorter descriptions etc.) Maybe this will help with making it clear there is a 'More...' link. Converting it to the original idea is not really possible with the extension. There are limitations to how the information can be displayed, and linked. I would remove the [This is a list of all available documentation resources on this wiki.] sentence and let only the [Click on the More link to get a list of contents for a particular resource.] and may be bold it. Once we find a way of presenting the info for the Doc project in a way that makes sense, we can start to look at how we can categorize and group the information we have. For now, the links/topics/resources are more an indication than final group/topic proposals. - Can we (should we) use different icons for different topic types (using the OOo Galaxy icon style/set)? Yes - Who are the people looking for info? The audience? Beginners to advanced users, developers and may be a redirection for contributors (links to l10n, QA ?) in non coding areas. - What are the high level tasks that we can use for grouping topics? The topics you've added to the test page are good but I would separate the user content from the developer content May-be : - administrate: installing/uninstalling, administration guide, deploying, migrating - work: users guide, FAQ, how-tos, reference lists, tutorial - develop: developer guide, basic guide, api and extensions - contribute: wiki editing policy, QA, l10n, etc. - What books and content do we actually have? There is several content that I find difficult to access, for example, for Base, you have: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/Database which is not linked directly on a Base part of the documentation home page also http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Connecting_dBase_(xBase) and http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/SUN_Report_Builder/Documentation I even discovered that a French page exist http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/FR/Base/SUN_Report_Builder May be we should add the component category and documentation category to all pages that are documentations? Kind regards Sophie - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [documentation-dev] Trying out some ideas for reworking the main Documentation Wiki page
Le 08.12.2008 15:49, ccornell - OpenOffice.org a écrit : ... I've tinkered a little with the layout Frank came up with and put it here: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Talk:Documentation/testpage (larger fonts, shorter descriptions etc.) Maybe this will help with making it clear there is a 'More...' link. Converting it to the original idea is not really possible with the extension. There are limitations to how the information can be displayed, and linked. Hi Clayton, I think it's not necessary to have a link to png image on the arrows. Regards. JBF -- Seuls des formats ouverts peuvent assurer la pérennité de vos documents. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [documentation-dev] Trying out some ideas for reworking the main Documentation Wiki page
I've tinkered a little with the layout Frank came up with and put it here: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Talk:Documentation/testpage (larger fonts, shorter descriptions etc.) Maybe this will help with making it clear there is a 'More...' link. Converting it to the original idea is not really possible with the extension. There are limitations to how the information can be displayed, and linked. Hi Clayton, I think it's not necessary to have a link to png image on the arrows. That is default MediaWiki behaviour. MediaWiki images are designed to link to the description page, so that licensing, upload history, contributors, and full resolution versions are available to the user. In fact, I don't think, without heavily modifying the MediaWiki engine, that you can have it any other way. I also haven't seen an extension that would block or change this behaviour. C. -- Clayton Cornell [EMAIL PROTECTED] StarOffice - Sun Microsystems, Inc. - Hamburg, Germany - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [documentation-dev] Trying out some ideas for reworking the main Documentation Wiki page
Le 05.12.2008 11:41, Clayton a écrit : The main Documentation Wiki page is starting to get rather long http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation and maybe it is time to look at other ways to present the information on this page... to shorten it up a little and focus on presenting the info a bit better. If you look at the main www.openoffice.org web page, it's very task oriented, and the questions are, can we follow that example with the DocWiki? Is it a good approach? Will it work for us? I've started a test page here: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Talk:Documentation/testpage which we can use as a sandbox to tinker with and test ideas. Interesting idea. :-) It is easy to localize ? Kind regards JBF -- Jean-Baptiste Faure French N-L project Lead Seuls des formats ouverts peuvent assurer la pérennité de vos documents. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [documentation-dev] Trying out some ideas for reworking the main Documentation Wiki page
Considerably more user friendly approach. Let them pick the general areas of the documentation they want and drill down, no more clutter right on the landing page to have to sift through. I also think that it'll help with organization and maintenance on our end as well. I agree with you Sak, it's more user friendly. May be we could mix the layout of the how-to page with your proposal to get well separated areas for each item? The page I put together was done just to figure out how to use the hidden text blocks. Frank has created and example page that gives a much better idea what is possible with the hidden/expanded text areas: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation_new To answer Jean-Baptiste's question, yes it is localisable. This idea isn't using any special hidden things on the Wiki markup side. It is using a new extension we installed (that I will document in the coming week). C. -- Clayton Cornell [EMAIL PROTECTED] StarOffice - Sun Microsystems, Inc. - Hamburg, Germany - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [documentation-dev] Trying out some ideas for reworking the main Documentation Wiki page
Clayton wrote: Considerably more user friendly approach. Let them pick the general areas of the documentation they want and drill down, no more clutter right on the landing page to have to sift through. I also think that it'll help with organization and maintenance on our end as well. I agree with you Sak, it's more user friendly. May be we could mix the layout of the how-to page with your proposal to get well separated areas for each item? The page I put together was done just to figure out how to use the hidden text blocks. Frank has created and example page that gives a much better idea what is possible with the hidden/expanded text areas: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation_new Hi Clayton, The page Frank put together looks nice. One nit pick however. Using Firefox under Ubuntu just now to view it - if I move the mouse kind of slowly the cateories ( with the arrows ) can start to beat on off some. Leave the mouse cursor just a few pixels below the text and this and it just becomes a regular flashing highlight... - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [documentation-dev] Trying out some ideas for reworking the main Documentation Wiki page
Hi Clayton, Clayton wrote: Considerably more user friendly approach. Let them pick the general areas of the documentation they want and drill down, no more clutter right on the landing page to have to sift through. I also think that it'll help with organization and maintenance on our end as well. I agree with you Sak, it's more user friendly. May be we could mix the layout of the how-to page with your proposal to get well separated areas for each item? The page I put together was done just to figure out how to use the hidden text blocks. Frank has created and example page that gives a much better idea what is possible with the hidden/expanded text areas: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation_new Thank you and Frank for this :) I didn't noticed the More... link at first sight, I think the first reaction is to click on the more prominent link, so I for myself, prefer the first proposal you made with less to read at the first look. However I really like the hidden text blocks. I'll try to make a proposal tomorrow. Kind regards Sophie - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [documentation-dev] Trying out some ideas for reworking the main Documentation Wiki page
hidden text blocks. Frank has created and example page that gives a much better idea what is possible with the hidden/expanded text areas: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation_new The page Frank put together looks nice. One nit pick however. Using Firefox under Ubuntu just now to view it - if I move the mouse kind of slowly the cateories ( with the arrows ) can start to beat on off some. Leave the mouse cursor just a few pixels below the text and this and it just becomes a regular flashing highlight... H I can't duplicate that in openSUSE with Firefox 3.0.4, Opera 9.62 or Seamonkey 1.1.13. C. -- Clayton Cornell [EMAIL PROTECTED] StarOffice - Sun Microsystems, Inc. - Hamburg, Germany - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [documentation-dev] Trying out some ideas for reworking the main Documentation Wiki page
hidden text blocks. Frank has created and example page that gives a much better idea what is possible with the hidden/expanded text areas: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation_new The page Frank put together looks nice. One nit pick however. Using Firefox under Ubuntu just now to view it - if I move the mouse kind of slowly the cateories ( with the arrows ) can start to beat on off some. Leave the mouse cursor just a few pixels below the text and this and it just becomes a regular flashing highlight... H I can't duplicate that in openSUSE with Firefox 3.0.4, Opera 9.62 or Seamonkey 1.1.13. Not reproducible using Opera 9.62 under Mandriva 2009 (64 bit). I suspect it is a quirk of Ubuntu (I've noticed that users of Google Earth who have problems are almost all using Ubuntu or its derivatives - same probably holds true here. They seem to have buggy graphics drivers). C. -- Alex Fisher Co-Lead, CD-ROM Project OpenOffice.org Marketing Community Contact Australia/New Zealand http://distribution.openoffice.org/cdrom/ signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [documentation-dev] Trying out some ideas for reworking the main Documentation Wiki page
sophie wrote: Clayton wrote: The page I put together was done just to figure out how to use the hidden text blocks. Frank has created and example page that gives a much better idea what is possible with the hidden/expanded text areas: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation_new Thank you and Frank for this :) I didn't noticed the More... link at first sight, I think the first reaction is to click on the more prominent link, so I for myself, prefer the first proposal you made with less to read at the first look. However I really like the hidden text blocks. I'll try to make a proposal tomorrow. I very much like the general approach on this page. I agree with Sophie about the More... links not being immediately noticed, so visitors are more likely to click on the prominent links (which take them to a page that is not user-friendly). I'm looking forward to the next iteration of this concept. Definitely a step in the right direction. --Jean - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
