Front page UI improvements

Hi,

Since I come here occasionally and enjoy your documentation/efforts, I
thought I'd deposit my 2 cents on future improvements to the W3C front page....

1. Put the site navigation in either the upper middle or left column.

Past experience shows that users are most comfortable and interact more
with the upper middle part of the screen. The main content should be just
below that, above the fold. Alternatively, sites usually use the left
column for navigation, so it would be fine to have it there.  Perhaps use a
mix of the two methods. Traditionally the right column is more of an ad or
promotional space so I would avoid putting main site navigation there. 

2. It's good that you broke the navigation into chunks, but there are some
problems. 

All of the right navigation has the yellowish highlight, which makes it all
look the same.  Perhaps this was done to signify navigation, but I think it
just makes it more confusing.  Take the yellow stuff off, label the
sections better.  You may want to put the most frequently accessed sections
near the top (maybe you already did that but I usually go for the stuff in
the lower right, which is less obvious). Perhaps bold a couple standouts
like HTML. Also I would separate out the tools like the HTML validator - I
assume it get more traffic than, say, Jigsaw.  

3. Search, one of the most used but least thought about website tools,
should be near the top of the page, perhaps right of the logo. It should
not be at the bottom of the page!

4. The purpose of the W3C should be clear to the user with 10 seconds. Put
a blurb near the top of the front page. For example: "The mission of the
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is to lead the World Wide Web to its full
potential by developing common protocols that promote its evolution."

Just the changes above would be a great improvement. :)

Chris
_____________________________________
Chris St. John
Manager of Web Operations and Production
chris@mp3.com - http://www.mp3.com/
MP3.com - Premier Music Service Provider (MSP)

Received on Wednesday, 12 July 2000 15:13:23 UTC