Re: Proposed improvements to the mailing lists archives

le lun 25-03-2002 à 18:07, David Booth a écrit :
> 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/ .

Good point, but not really in the scope of this project.
 
> 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

David, wai-xtech is a public mailing list. Could you forward your
examples to a public archive (www-archive@w3.org for instance)

> 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.

Regarding your navigation bar, here are my comments:
- there is no a real hierarchical relation between http://lists.w3.org/
, http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ and a given mailing list. Let me
explain:
- we don't really have a hierarchical tree in our web site, it's more a
graph approach 
- if we wanted to make a tree navigation for the mailing lists, the real
upper level would be more the homepage of the group owning this mailing
list (if any). And this information should be given by the mailing list 
maintainer themselves (note that each list maintainer can create and
update a text appearing at the very top of the mailing list).

> 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.

The order of some of the links has been determined to be the most useful
for aural browsers (for accessibility reason). I like your idea of
moving the starting and ending dates and I'll try to implement it.
Besides, you're right that we are not very consistent in separating
vertical navigation from actions and horizontal navigation. I'll try to
make it clearer.

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

See above.

>          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.

Not really in the scope of the project, but I think you're right and try
to fix it at some point.
 
>          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].

Same as above.

 
Thanks a lot for your very thoughtful comments!

Dom
-- 
Dominique Hazaël-Massieux - http://www.w3.org/People/Dom/
W3C's Webmaster
mailto:dom@w3.org

Received on Wednesday, 27 March 2002 08:48:14 UTC