A bit of ranting about Ubuntu.com

[Cefiar]

On Wednesday 08 February 2006 11:14, Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
> Andreas Lloyd wrote:
> > Services:
> > Centralizing the free community help directly through the "Support"
> > tab necessitates another main tab called "Services" which contains the
> > Canonical, paid support and the Ubuntu Marketplace pages and links.
> >
> > I don't know if that would make it sound like Ubuntu is selling
> > commercial services, but it will make good sense to visitors who care
> > little about who delivers the support services - as long as they're
> > available. Of course, there should still be a link to the Services
> > section from the Support section front page so as to make it clear to
> > people that there is professional support to be had.
>
> I like the idea of a Services tab, because this could include not only
> services provided by Canonical but those provided by the whole ecosystem
> of companies and communities that work with Ubuntu.

This is a very good idea IMO.

> > Participate!:
> > Dennis has made some excellent suggestions on how to develop the
> > Community page. Still, since Ubuntu is so community-driven, I'm afraid
> > that it is simply too big a category for just one tab. Since it is so
> > central to Ubuntu to have contributors, it might well be necessary to
> > have another tab called "Participate" (or maybe "Contribute!" or "Get
> > Involved!") leading directly to the pimping descriptions of the teams
> > and other good stuff that Dennis has suggested.
> > As far as I can see, most Open Source projects have a category called
> > "Developers", but since Ubuntu spans wider than that (and that title
> > isn't as intuitive as you'd hope), it would be good to have something
> > similar as a tab on the front page.
>
> With nested pages, we currently have the problem that you have to CLICK
> on the top-level page ("Participate!") in order to get a sense of the
> other pages that are available below it.
>
> How do you guys feel about those drop-down menus that some web sites
> have. When you mouseover the top tab, it shows a list of the
> sub-sections that are part of that tab.

My 5 cents (2 cents isn't legal currency here in Australia anymore):

I'm happy with mouseover stuff as long as:
 1. This is still usable without the mouseovers (ie: no javascript).
 2. The mouseovers aren't too big vertically (ie: no more than say 4 options 
per menu, to keep it clean), or put the horizontally across under the 
existing tabs.
 3. Alt text for each tab if javascript is disabled.

This should give the most flexibility and the most information that the user's 
web browser can display, without making it too cluttered.

-- 
 Stuart Young - aka Cefiar - cef at optus.net