New International web page suggestion: MTG PREREAD

Chaps,

Enclosed is a rough sketch proposal from Phil Arko for a new look for
the I18N Activity home page (the current version is
http://www.w3.org/International/ ).  

Please send in any thoughts you have on this, and let's discuss on
Wednesday.  I have already shown it to Karl Dubost (QA), who agreed with
the sentiment, and Janet Daly (Head of Communications) who thought it
looked really nice.

There is also an interest in this from the WAI Education & Outreach
folks.  Shawn Henry is leading a task force looking at redesigning the
WAI web site http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/2003/wstf (with the possibility of
spreading the lessons they learn to other parts of the W3C).  I'd like
to encourage Phil and Leslie to become involved in that activity, if
they are willing/interested.  The WAI folks have been doing user
analysis so far, but Shawn asked me to send a copy of this since I
showed it to her recently.

RI


MY THOUGHTS

I quite like this approach.  Phil is suggesting that we make our page
more 'graphical', reducing the wordage and scrolling found on many W3C
home pages, so that it looks more like the kind of thing that UI
designers out there are actually producing. The underlying message is:
"W3C stuff applies to cool site designers too" - which I think is a very
valuable idea for I18N to consider given our outreach mission.

This is still just an illustration - see the notes below.  


NOTES


-	Important for w3c to have something that looks cool because many
modern designers would say to themselves: "if it's not representative of
what I want to design why should I read it".  For education and outreach
this is a key audience.

-	Font: wants better more readable font - may use Verdana as the
primary setting - good because geared to younger content audience

-	Content: most of the readable content removed from this page but
accessible with a single click - benefits: cleaner navigation (from the
tutorial I attended last week, this appears to be standard usability
practise); actual information gathered in a single location (better
maintainability and cleaner reading experience for visitors).

-	Flags : Phil took the photo himself, so no copyright issues -
wants
to take another with less building in the background

-	Colour scheme: builds off W3C home page - infers branding

-	Layout: Trying to keep clean - layer motif highlights key
information - want to give idea of building up information - news and
questions are highest layer

-	Links: suggests we get away from underlining for this page -
consistent with current trends - links still blue though

-	Expansion: Horizontal growth for question and news - thought
given to the page 'fold' 

-	Pages below: capture the theme w3c & internationalization -
continue colour scheme - consistent hat - eg .aol time warner - perhaps
some breadcrumbs, "sometimes don't know where you're at on W3C pages"

-	My requirements: utf-8 encoded xhtml strict with all appropriate
styling in stylesheet - minimal text in graphics - good degradability
for older browsers and accessibility - ability to add scraping related
information

-	I'm starting to think we should replace the heading Question of
the Week (currently Latest FAQ on the real site) with "Recently
published" or something similar.  Then include links to new stuff, be it
FAQs, articles or tutorials - perhaps using standard icons to identify
each - this ties in with the idea I had recently to unify the pages
pointing to FAQs, articles and tutorials.


============
Richard Ishida
W3C

tel: +44 1753 480 292
http://www.w3.org/International/ http://www.w3.org/People/Ishida/