Re: Proposed improvements to the mailing lists archives

Dom & Al,

Thanks for doing this.  I was just talking at lunch last week about the 
confusing format of the list archives, and how I had not yet figured out 
how to easily navigate them.

Here are my suggestions.  Note that I have created some annotated screen 
shots for explanation, and also some suggested new HTML markup, all 
referenced below.

1. At present, http://lists.w3.org/Archives/  yields nothing.  Make it 
forward to http://lists.w3.org/ .

2. The hierarchical structure and navigation of the many lists is not 
clearly reflected in the page format.  See this annotated example of a 
message page:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Team/w3t-archive/2002Mar/att-0225/01-archive-msg-problems2.JPG

And this annotated example of a list page:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Team/w3t-archive/2002Mar/att-0225/02-archive-list-problems2.JPG

This problem can be solved by placing a consistent navigation line at the 
top of each page, to indicate the current position in the hierarchical 
structure, with the higher elements hot-linked, like these:

         [1] (Message) 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Team/w3t-archive/2002Mar/att-0225/03-archive-msg-format.html
         [2] (List) 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Team/w3t-archive/2002Mar/att-0227/01-archives-list-format.html
         [3] (Public) 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Team/w3t-archive/2002Mar/att-0225/04-archive-public-format.html
         [4] (Top) 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Team/w3t-archive/2002Mar/att-0225/05-archive-top.html

Note the addition of the navigation line at the top of each page, showing 
our context in the list hierarchy.  Sorry about the crude arrows in the 
navigation line.  They should be replaced with something more attractive, 
but I didn't have anything else handy.

3. The pages above ([1] [2] [3] [4]) also contain a few other format 
suggestions, to help clarify the pages, save space, and increase 
consistency.  In particular, they contain the following suggested changes:

         In [1]: Moved the hierarchical navigation to the top of the page, 
as explained above.  Moved the Starting and Ending dates to the same line 
as one displaying the number of messages, to save vertical space.

         In [2]: Added the hierarchical navigation line to the top.

         In [3]: Changed the heading and title to "Mailing List Archives: 
Public".   (The "Member" and "Team" versions should be changed 
correspondingly.)  Added W3C logo and the hierarchical navigation line to 
the top.

         In [4]: Changed the heading and title to be more user 
friendly.  Changed the list descriptions to  be more consistent.  (So each 
one is called ". . . list archives".)  I neglected to put the hierarchical 
navigation line at the top, but maybe it should be there, for consistency 
with [1] [2] and [3].

The MOST important of these suggestions is to use a hierarchical navigation 
line at the top.

Thanks,

David Booth
W3C Fellow / Hewlett-Packard
Telephone: +1.617.253.1273

Received on Monday, 25 March 2002 12:07:32 UTC