[ZWeb] A new proposal (long)

Trevor Toenjes zope@toenjes.com
Wed, 10 Apr 2002 15:31:12 -0400


Seb,
Thanks. I checked out the links.  Good stuff!
I like Lennarts breakdown of navigation and areas.  Very clean.

I am not used to a process that would attempt to finalize visual before IA,
hence my earlier feedback.  It would be easier to follow if the current IA
is incorporated into the current visual comp.

Based on your survey results, one might conclude that those most interested
in the community  (thus responding to the survey) are the ones that dont
have experience programming on other platforms.  Therefore, your results
show this user-type is dependent on the community and interested in the
success of Zweb projects.  Experienced developers are busy on other
important Zope projects like 2.6/3.0 and product development.

So a major goal could be, to engage the experienced developers by making it
easier for them to contribute to the community (thus helping to develop the
average user to a level where experienced users dont feel like they are
carrying the technical development of Zope).  It would be interesting to
find out if Zope could attract PHP/ASP developers that felt they could have
more of an impact on the zope community, and that we wanted them...

So I further segmented the categories of users.

What about Newbie Links for the home page targeting different groups?
After all, newbies only describes new to Zope, but doesnt address the wide
range of experience among zope newbies.

Developers
 - python
 - perl
 - java
 - Coldfusion
 - ASP
 - PHP
 - XML

Designers
 - HTML
 - javascript
 - Flash

Admins
 - IIS
 - Apache
 - Coldfusion

Solutions...Zope as...
 - web server
 - web application platform
 - CMS
 - intranet
 - extranet

These might help with further sub-page areas.

I think it would help to put some focus on explaining ZODB (OODB) as well on
the home page.  Especially with the External ZODB initiative. To use zope
you must learn ZODB first. The survey showed everyone is technical, so let's
give them something technical right on the home page.

For Login ... what about adding "Why join?" either in the newbie area or the
header nav.

Finally, my earlier premise is supported in my design of the products page,
that allows experienced users to post a product, and allow community members
to add better descriptions, how-tos, etc without burdening the author.

-Trevor

> -----Original Message-----
> From: zope-web-admin@zope.org [mailto:zope-web-admin@zope.org]On Behalf
> Of seb bacon
> Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2002 3:00 PM
> To: Trevor Toenjes
> Cc: Olivier Deckmyn; zope-web@zope.org
> Subject: Re: [ZWeb] A new proposal (long)
>
>
> Trevor,
>
> thanks for your feedback.  Note that many of your points are about
> Information Architecture - positioning of elements on pages,
> nomenclature, etc - and this thread is about visual design.  Much of the
> content on Olivier's layouts is 'made up'.  Paul is in charge of
> producing an Information Architecture (by today I believe).
>
> I am in charge of making sure the project moves on.  I'm afraid now is
> not the time for any large changes to the design, since we simply must
> move on with the next stages.
>
> I agree about justified text, and that the navigation could be visually
> more separate.
>
> I also like the idea of a strap line.
>
> > Final feedback is that this design is not enough of a departure from the
> > existing zope.org page to make a difference.  It does not
> improve upon the
> > targeted purpose of making the page more friendly for the purpose of
> > increasing the adoption of Zope by first time viewers of the page.
> > Those of us that invested unnecessary time exploring zope.org for useful
> > information now know where to find it.  Therefore we dont need
> a new design.
> > The new design should be to grow the community...hopefully
> attracting much
> > more talented programmers than I who can contribute to the core and to
> > Product development.
>  >
> > Suggestion: re-evaluate the content areas with a question like
> "What is the
> > main objective of the home page and of the website?" and then "Does the
> > layout provide clear descriptions for people to navigate to
> their area of
> > interest in one-click?"
>
> We've done a lot of work on this already.  See the survey feedback
> summary for some data regarding peoples' feelings about the site
> (below).  In general, people like the current design, it's just the
> structure which is poor.  That is why there has been a separate
> information architecture stage.  There is (just) still time to feed back
> into that.  In particular, I feel we need more detail on the site
> taxonomy.  I've provided some links below to the work that's already
> been done.  Please, please provide some more feedback on this part of
> the project!
>
> Survey Responses:
>   http://www.zope.org/Resources/ZOST/ZopeOrgReorg/SurveyResponses
>
> Paul's draft IA (writeup of IRC meeting):
>   http://www.zope.org/Resources/ZOST/ZopeOrgReorg/Apr02Results
>
> Lennart's take on it + thread:
>   http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope-web/2002-March/001067.html
>
> seb
>
>
>
>
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