My WineHQ menu structure proposal

Sun Nov 3 04:28:54 CST 2002

On Sat, 2 Nov 2002, Dimitrie O. Paun wrote:

> This is my proposal for the WineHQ menu structure,
> based on the discussions I had with Francois.
>
> The Home Page should just be our news page. Many
> projects opt for this, and I think it's good:
> News are 'zero' click items.

I think the home page should be targeted to people who may not know what
Wine is. Thus it should *answer* the question 'What is Wine'. The Gimp's
web site (http://www.gimp.org/) is a good example in that respect. The
first paragraph of the page answers the question 'What is the GIMP?'.

Thus I think there should be a link to the News page but no more. The
news page is for returning visitors and if that's what they care about
then they should bookmark that page rather than the home page.

Other things I have now realized:

 * I said before I prefered a non-expanded menu (again, ala Gimp) to a
fully expanded one. Now I changed my mind. If the menu is not fully
expanded from the start then it's hard to figure out what the heck is in
the unexpanded items. Proof: the current WineHQ site. Other proof, The
Gimp's web site. Click on Documentation. Wow! Eleven items appear!
Before expanding the menu, did you know that mailing list was in
Documentation rather than in Resources? No? Well, you had no way of
knowing anyway.

 * having a fully expanded menu means we must have fewer items otherwise
it risks being overwhelming. Things are not as bad as they seem because
in my proposal I tried to include every item currently in the web site
and I gave it a place in the hierarchy. But some of these items should
not have a menu entry for themselves but just be a section on a page.
Which brings me to the next item:

 * there are ambiguities in the way we describe the menu hierarchy. Some
items are not items at all but sections on a page. So now I will give
numbers to menu items, '1.' or '2.3.', and letters to sections like 'a.'
(plus an extra indentation). Pages that contain multiple sections should
have a table of content which I imagine as being a box very much like
the 'Wine Weekly News' box. Finally, if an item contains more than one
thing I'll just put them in parenthesis.
   I realize that page sections are almost like third level menus.
Jeremy is going to hang me saying this proposal is just as nested as his
<g>. However I think mine has all the important items visible right
there on the first page and not at the third level. Also I think this is
just a consequence of trying to list everything that currently exists in
the web site to make sure I'm not forgetting something (which may happen
anyway) that we would then not know where to put.

 * In the previous proposal we sometimes had two menu items that refered
to the same thing. For instance:

     > 1.  About
     >   1.1  Intro

   Both 'About' and 'Intro' point to the same place. At least that's how
I understood it (and meant it in my proposal). Now I think this
unnecessarily makes the menu longer but this is partly contingent to how
the menu is presented. With some menu system 'About' may not be a
hyperlink at all. Finally it may not always be natural to cook up a page
that is meaning full for top-level items.

 * One thing that causes me trouble is Bugzilla and the Application
Database. I strongly feel that they must have a menu entry because they
have to be accessible. But when you click on them you leave the WineHQ
web site. For instance the WineHQ menu disapears and is replaced with
either the Bugzilla or the Application Database menu. That bothers me
and may be confusing. But I don't see anything we can do about that.

 * That brings me to another point. I like the menus in Bugzilla and the
Application Database:
   http://wine.codeweavers.com/bugs/
   http://appdb.winehq.com/
   I vote for using the same system for WineHQ. This would also bring a
better unity of style. Each top-level menu is a 'box' that contains all
the level two menu items.

 * Who cares about an 'Applications Database'? What's that anyway?
Would a potential Wine user want to have dealings with a database?
Nah. Must be for geeks. What users want to know is what applications run
in Wine and thus that's how the menu entry and the thing itself should
be called: 'Supported Applications'. Even if the truth is that it lists
applications that do not work too.

 * I'm moving the Who's Who to the development section. Now it seems
clear to me that people trying to have an idea about what Wine is don't
care about Who's Who. On the other hand, developpers, i.e. people more
involved with the project, would certainly be interested to know
more about their fellow developpers (in fact it's almost a developper
list).

 * Contributing is important. I'm glad Dimitrie agrees with me. But now
I'm not sure we should have a menu entry for each of its sections. So I
moved it to 'About Wine'. This means it gets nearer where people new to
Wine (i.e. who are not involved in Wine yet) are. Maybe that compensates
a bit...

 * In the same spirit there are things that must be there but that fewer
people would look for. So I created a 'Misc' top-level section which
would be the last section to regroup these and unclutter more important
sections such as 'About Wine'.
   As a guiding principle I tried to imagine someone new to Wine who is
not a developper, determine what he will want to see first, and put
these first. Then come potential developpers but I know they will zoom
in on the 'Development' and 'Forums' categories and go there.

So, here goes:

Home
(no menu item for this one, just click on the Wine logo)

1. About Wine
   1.1. Introduction
        a. Intro
        b. Why Wine
        c. Myths
        d. Technology
        e. History
        g. Companies
   1.2. Screenshots
   1.3. Supported Applications
   1.4. Contributing
        a. Application maintainer
        b. Bug triage
        c. Website maintenance
        d. Development
   1.5. News
   1.6. Press

2. Download
   2.1. Binaries   (installing from binaries)
   2.2. Source     (installing from source)
   2.3. CVS        (installing from CVS)

3. Support
   3.1. FAQ
   3.2. Howto
   3.3. Bug Tracking
   3.4. Troubleshooting
   3.5. Forums
        a. Mailing Lists
        b. Newsgroup
        c. IRC Channel

4. Documentation
   4.1. User Guide
   4.2. Developer Guide
   4.3. Packager Guide
   4.4. API Docs

5. Development
   5.1. Developer Hints
   5.2. Submitting Patches
   5.3. TODO Lists
       - 0.9/1.0 TODOs
       - Tasklist/bug 395
       - FIXMEs/bug 455,
       - Tasklets/bug 406
       - most wanted bugs
   5.4. Status
   5.5. Resources
        a. LXR
        b. CVS Web
        c. Who's Who
        d. Tools
        e. Win32 Documentation, X doc, etc.

6. Miscellaneous
   6.1. Community
   6.2. Related projects
   6.3. Contacts
   6.4. Legal

'Just' 33 menu items (down from 44 for both Dimitrie's and Jeremy's
proposals). WineHQ is a big site... Hopefully there's not too much
hiding.

-- 
Francois Gouget         fgouget at free.fr        http://fgouget.free.fr/
            "Lotto: A tax on people who are bad at math." -- unknown
          "Windows: Microsoft's tax on computer illiterates." -- WE7U