Re: Proposed improvements to the mailing lists archives

At 07:06 PM 2002-03-27 , David Booth wrote:
>Dom,
>
>Okay, I hope I got this message right this time.  Again, I apologize for 
>missing your reply earlier.
>
>At 02:48 PM 3/27/2002 +0100, Dominique Hazaël-Massieux wrote:
>>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).
>
>I agree that more than one hierarchy could be used to navigate the list 
>archives in various different ways.  But I don't think this means that we 
>shouldn't have ANY hierarchical navigation system.  To my mind, *ANY* 
>hierarchical navigation bar would be better than NONE.  Just looking at the 
>URL, it looks very much like a hierarchy that is organized:
>

AG:: I concur (strongly) with David on this one.

If we are going to have links to these places, and we construct the URLs in the similacrum of a hierarchical container structure, then by all means use the mnemonic value of this tree topology.

There is no other choice.  URLs are user-visible strings.

I REST my case.

To continue...

The labels using the word 'other' that we have been using for these links are wrong, give false information, to begin with.  Where those lists take you are to listings of super-containers which _include_ the current context that you are moving up from which 'other lists' _does not_.  The notion of Up, Up, Up, as where you are going for ever-widening circles of inclusion is a very good fit, here.

Sorry for shouting.  But David's assertion as to what is the incumbent hierarchy in this case is what greater than 85% of all users would instinctively assume; and not to play to this interpretation is just poor design.

Al

> From the list archive root:
>http://lists.w3.org/
>Then by access (Public, Member, Team):
>http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/
>Then by list name:
>http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/wai-xtech/
>Then by month:
>http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/wai-xtech/2002Mar/
>Then by specific message:
>http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/wai-xtech/2002Mar/0040.html
>
>So a hierarchical navigation bar based on this hierarchical view would be 
>easy to implement.  But I certainly don't mind if a different hierarchical 
>navigation scheme is used instead.
>
>It is true that I can (rather painstakingly) navigate through this 
>hierarchy by manually editing the URL in my browser.  But this is an 
>unnecessarily difficult way to do it.
>
>It is also true that the existing message display format does have a line for:
>"Other mail archives: [this mailing list] [other W3C mailing lists] "
>but it is hidden among the information that pertains specifically to the 
>currently displayed message, so it was over a month before I even noticed 
>that it existed.  Personally, I think it is very important to visually 
>distinguish the higher-level navigation from the message-specific 
>information.  And I think the higher-level navigation should be in a 
>consistent location on the page, at the top.
>
>Again, thanks for your efforts on this.
>
>David Booth
>W3C Fellow / Hewlett-Packard
>Telephone: +1.617.253.1273
>

Received on Wednesday, 27 March 2002 22:19:02 UTC