beta.w3.org

Hey all.

Great work on the new beta site for W3C.

I've posted some thoughts here:
http://yousayyeah.com/article/2009/04/thoughts_on_the_world_wide_web_consortiums_beta_site

Full text:
Wow. There is some chaos going on when you shrink your browser window  
here http://beta.w3.org. The behaviour actual seems much more correct  
in Safari 4 Beta than Firefox 3 on the Mac. More on the motivation in  
this A List Apart article on Fluid grids.

More importantly, there are two odd design decisions which affect you  
when you're not goofing around with your browser size:

• The contextual left nav shows on the homepage, but disappears on all  
other landing pages, only to reappear when you click through from a  
landing page to other content within the section. I get that the  
landing page has pretty icons which point you to the sub nav sections,  
but that's no reason to force people to find the link they're looking  
for in the main body, particularly on subsequent visits. Inconsistent  
menu behaviour is simply frustrating as hell. Especially with the  
homepage defaulting to show the Standards sub nav, which is way out of  
context at that point. Just leave the left nav on the landing pages  
instead of jumping on and off the screen.

• Also, I'm getting used to the Talks, Events, News content sub-sub  
menu on each of the Standards section sub pages, but I was initially  
surprised at the lack of method to visually identify this content  
which shows further down on each sub page (showing in two columns,  
same text formatting, with Events buried under Talks). Never mind that  
there's a whole section of key info underneath the Talk, Events, News  
menu that isn't categorized. (So what's this stuff? Size and hierarchy  
says it's more important, but you've got to read through to the links  
after each of the descriptions to figure out what you're clicking on,  
particularly here: http://beta.w3.org/standards/xmlcore/. This section  
should be prominently labelled in the Talks, Events, News menu, no?  
Say, called Specifications.
Finally, is there really no line spacing support in mobile browsing,  
because the mobile view is illegible. One line of text is literally  
sitting on top of the next. Maybe line spacing is set on the mobile  
browser itself and, as a non-mobile browser, I should quit making  
assumptions about mobile line spacing. Either way, mobile browsing is  
clearly broken.


Talk to you soon.

Lee Dale
Culture, Inspiration
& Community
________
Say Yeah!

416.642.9694
877.729.9324

http://yousayyeah.com

Received on Thursday, 9 April 2009 15:47:26 UTC