A bit of ranting about Ubuntu.com

[Henrik Nilsen Omma]

Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
> Andreas Lloyd wrote:
>   
>> Support:
>> But, as others have pointed out, "Support" seems to be the
>> near-universal category for Documentation, Help, Guides, Manuals,
>> HOWTOs, what-have-you. It seems obvious to have Support link directly
>> to user help and documentation that is the help.ubuntu.com page -
>> which is basically where (I suppose) we want people to look first.
>>     
> Except that every single example in there is actually some form of
> documentation. I really think that people think of support as "something
> given to be in real time by someone else" though it could include both
> community (free-of-charge) and commercial (for-fee) support. Because of
> this, I think we should distinguish between Docs and Support in the
> major tabs.
>
>   
>> 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.
>   
>> 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.
>   
I don't think it's something we need to consider just yet. The 
navigation of the pages can be improved a great deal by simplifying the 
structure and making the main section pages more intuitive.

Drop down menus have accessibility issues, but also just usability 
issues. The information density becomes to high, but it's not all that 
pleasant to use IMO.


/me goes to lay out a community page in the wiki; let's see how far we 
can get along those lines.

- Henrik