Design Meeting Oct-09

see page mockups

comment: i have filed tickets for a lot of these notes, but not the ones in italics, as i’m personally not so sure how useful they are. ~mara

Frontpage¶

• Suggestion to have the Upcoming Events include the featured events, as it is confusing to have to go back and forth between the two lists and compare dates
• Login link is too hidden away. It would make sense to have a login link in the main menu, where it is easy to access, rather than hidden away at the bottom. This might also help against people forgetting to log in when posting stuff
• Publish Button is now only on the frontpage, as people might want to go to the publish page from anywhere and we aim a drawing people into the site, it would make sense to have it back in the main menu as well
• the read more button is hidden away, just like the title of the feature is a link to the actual article, the headlines of the newswires (promoted newswire, upcoming events…) should be a link the full wires.

Article View¶

• edit or administer button is wrong/misleading. The administering does not need to be spelled out, as people get a workshop, but the edit button should only appear for logged in users who actually have the right to edit this. For not logged in users, it should read Report this as that’s the function it has for them.
• the button for making additions is very hidden away and hard to find.

Events View¶

• Date and Time of the event is one of the most important infos on that page, but very small and hidden away in the byline. This info needs to be larger and more prominent, ideally next to the location of the event, so all “logistic info” is in one place

Groups:¶

• navigation between groups. We need a better group directory. Also sorting them by topics or categories somehow would be helpful for people who want to know what’s going on and are looking towards getting involved. This could be achieved by tagging groups.
• on articles, have group icon rather than only name in text (maybe also replace :published as part of x-group with: read more by x-group)

Search:¶

• be able to search groups or search specific kinds of posts or media and by date

Other Media¶

• Limit text box link to force people to rather write about the article than repost it.
• add over textbox: “Tell us why you think this article is interesting” or similar
• rename box called source into link
• add source box to make people put in “guardian” or whatever
• have title diplayed with source first (source: title)

Publish Page¶

• confusing, there is too much text, annoying to have to scroll down so far to be able to find the actual publish links
• reorder links, have article publish more prominent (has been blocked at meeting)
• change ‘your name’ to ‘author’ or similar, ‘your name’ in forms generally means real name
• make author name not required and replace with ‘anonymous’ if left blank
• is ‘add link’ really useful/necessary? don’t people just add links in the main text body?
• better use of space on the page, rather than having to scroll several times, provide a better overview. e.g. use tabs for media upload, rather than having a list of one after the other, and have categories down the side or in two columns rather than one long one.
• get rid of sidebar and use full width on this one? (esp if the login button is in the menu
• for events:
  • have repeat this event thing closer to date and time (mayb foldout thing to shorten the form)
  • confusing, needs some sorting, jumps from one thing to another
  • get rid of extra navigation bars (promtoed/open/published, timelin/month/day…)

Wires¶

• more traditional three column indy layout with two wires (but have indy left on out far right for consistency)
• page navigation on top as well as bottom, for faster going back
• archive navigation in far right sidebar (also see Mockup Oct 09)

General stuff¶

• Buttons are hard to find and hidden away, as they are text only, rather than graphic and the link has the same colour as content link
• Links to content could have a different colour than navigation links.
• Exif data on photos need to go away (note: I believe this is done)
• Is it possible to have a clearer separation between ruby and html (note: apparently it’s not html, but urb, so i guess not)
• Text is too small. This has come up repeatedly, so we should do something about it.
• Firefox plays video without flash, so why use flash?