My WineHQ menu structure proposal - counterproposal

Andreas Mohr andi at rhlx01.fht-esslingen.de
Sun Nov 3 09:08:40 CST 2002


On Sun, Nov 03, 2002 at 07:52:09AM -0600, Igor Izyumin wrote:
> On Sunday 03 November 2002 03:09 am, Dimitrie O. Paun wrote:
> > On November 3, 2002 02:35 am, Francois Gouget wrote:
> > > Too much nesting just hides information and forces the user to dig down
> > > to find what he is looking for.
> >
> > I am sorry to do a AOL -- me too post, but I do agree 100% with Francois.
> > For WineHQ, I _strongly_ feel it's a big mistake to have more than 2 levels
> > of menus. Just top level, and a sublevel is more than enough.
> >
> > Here are the principles I used for my proposal:
> >   1. Just two levels
> >   2. The more some info is accessed, the fewer mouse clicks
> >      should be required to get to it.
> >   3. Menus organized by usage patterns, rather then strict
> >      technical category.
> 
> I agree with the first two, but the third is wrong.  Information should not be 
> split up into illogical categories based on what you think is a logical usage 
> pattern.  The fewer splits you can make, the better it is.  If I'm looking 
> for a FAQ, I would first click on Documentation, but if it's buried in 
> "Support" I would not even bother clicking there.  The best structure would 
> have clear, logical categories and you would not have to guess where a 
> certain document would be buried.  Keep in mind that it is better to group 
> all information into as few logical categories as possible.  There should be 
> no guessing involved.
Agreeing 100%.

> > Similarly, for the Development/Contributing. Time and again OSS
> > project push only the "Development" part in front, scarring
> > away non-programmers from contributing, just to realize later on
> > that they do need a lot of non-programming help as well. Case in
> > point, instead of spending my time on the controls, I do other
> > things that could be handled by non-programmers :). It's a natural
> > split, the Development area is very important for Wine, and people
> > going there are not interested in items that are listed in
> > "Contributing"; also, we should show people there are many other
> > ways to contribute, appart from coding. BTW, the Contributing
> > section is is Francois idea, but I strongly support it.
> 
> OK, this section needs to be renamed, too.  'contribute' is a transitive verb, 
> and in a context of a free software project implies contributing code.  A web 
> guru would never click on a "contribute" link because they think it's 
> instructions for sending in Wine patches.  "Help out" or "Volunteer" or 
> something like that would be much more accurate.
Great idea !
Contribute is in fact not "aggressive" enough, as it hides what the
intentions behind that are.

-- 
Andreas Mohr                        Stauferstr. 6, D-71272 Renningen, Germany
Tel. +49 7159 800604                http://mohr.de.tt



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