Re: Mailing List Archives improvements: big progresses!

Great improvements!

The attached page illustrates some suggested tweaks for 
http://www.w3.org/2002/03/archives-improvements/implentation-test/ that I 
think will significantly improve the user experience.  They are:

1. The format of the starting and ending dates is hard to visually 
parse.  I suggest making the words "Starting" and "Ending" bold (or in 
<dfn> tags).

2. I find the date format "Apr 01 2003" harder to visually parse than 
"01-Apr-2003", so instead of
         31 messages: Starting Tue, Apr 01 2003, Ending Tue, Apr 01 2003
I suggest
         31 messages: Starting: Tue, 01-Apr-2003 Ending: Tue, 01-Apr-2003
However, this may be entirely subjective, and it is very minor, so feel 
free to ignore this suggestion if you think differently.

3. Keep the list of "Sort by" options consistent in all views, and disable 
the current one.  For example, when the list is sorted by date, the "[ date 
]" option should still appear, but disabled (i.e., no longer a link).

4. Provide a quick link to search within the current list.  I.e., 
pre-populate the current list name into the search form.  (The attached 
example shows an easy way to do this with a link.)  I suggest changing the 
Help line from
         Help: [ How to use the archives ] [ Search in the archives ]
to
         Help: [ How to use the archives ] Search: [ All ] [ Public lists ] 
[ This list ]
where "Public" would be either "Public", "Member" or "Team", as appropriate.

Thanks!


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