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From: buzzard@TheWorld.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: New Inform Home Page
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Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2002 18:08:19 GMT
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Graham Nelson wrote:
>All those interested in Inform are cordially invited to
>visit the new site, which is something of a "public beta".
>There are a few minor omissions (the installation notes
>are the main example) and one or two further areas will
>follow, but the site is essentially complete.

The content looks good, but I find the presentation slightly
confusing. The site is structured hierarchically, with a
header region showing you how far you've drilled down.
At each node in the tree above the leaves, you get a
little page with links to the nodes below in the form
of text-stored-in-images. All fine so far, although that
part is wastefully slow to browse.

However, in many cases, the last node above the leaves
is special. Some nodes, such as "Inform - Welcome - About This Site"
are nodes which have children that are leaves (areas, links, and committee),
but when you select the node (in this case 'about this site'), you're
dropped straight into the leaf ('areas')--there is no actual 'about this
site' node at all--and a separate little bar on the left--which looks
totally different, using a very tiny font instead of the huge text
images--allows you to navigate between the other leaves of this node.
I can see how somebody would think this is more convenient when browsing,
but the inconsistency totally confused me at first, and caused me some
confusion about the structure of the nodes I was in and the availability
of additional information within that node. This is particularly confusing
when the texts do not match each other (in this case, 'areas' vs. 'areas'
allowed me to orient myself); 'inform - welcome - software' has a child
named "Shopping List" which presents itself as "What Software You Need",
so then of course it's not at all obvious of the items in the list
you're currently browsing.

If you want this sort of convenient browsing, it would be better
to show the full structure of the site in the lefthand bar, showing
nodes without their children if they're not an ancestor of the current
node: e.g. in this case

  Welcome
    What is Inform?
    Software
    Manuals
    About This Site
      Areas
      Links
      Committees
  Resources
  Support
  Z-Machine

and this could be done at every node, not just nodes-right-above-the-leaves.

If not that, I'd still get rid of the inconsistent presentation of
the children using the little text bar and the huge images
in the nodes that have no leaf children.

At a minimum, the lists like "areas / links / committees" should
make the currently-browsed node not a link to provide feedback
as to which item you're currently browsing. (Providing links
from a page to itself is a general usability no-no, anyway.)
That will address the inconsistency between "Shopping List"
and "What Software You Need".

SeanB
