Re: suggestions for UI improvements

Hi Ruud,

Thanks for your thoughts.

On Jul 31, 2007, at 18:50 , Ruud Steltenpool wrote:
> Some thoughts that can help in making the UI design cleaner:
>
> matters that partly go away when JavaScript is turned on (though no  
> mention of it):
> looks like tabs, but aren't

How would you suggest to display them when there is no JS? True, they  
"look like TABs but aren't", but they do serve the purpose of giving  
a shortcut link to each interface form.

> much repetition: 4x "validate by"

I think earlier versions didn't have the repetition, but it was  
argued that the full sentences were more accessible to some classes  
of UAs.

> important notes not very noticeable:
> -I suggest changing "Note: file upload may not work with Internet  
> Explorer on some versions of Windows XP Service Pack 2, see our  
> information page on the W3C QA Website." into "(does not always  
> work with some versions of Internet Explorer)" as a link to the  
> information page on the W3c QA website and positioned right after  
> the file-upload button

I wish we had an authoritative list of the platforms with which there  
is a problem. Never managed to quite get that, but I reckon most of  
the windows users must have automatically upgraded by now? So maybe  
the note should *only* be in the error message when the content-type  
is text/plain and browser shows a Windows platform (and thus removed  
from the interface, where it does look ugly).


> -I suggest changing "Check the markup (HTML,XHTML) of Web  
> documents" into "Check the markup of Web documents<br>(<a>HTML</a>,  
> <a>XHTML</a>, <a>SVG</a>, <a>MathML</a>, <a>SMIL</a>)<br>
> <i><small>for CSS-, RSS/Atom- and link-checkers see <a>other  
> validators and tools</a></small></i>

I disagree - the tagline is on every single page, and this is too long.
I could live with "Check the markup (HTML,XHTML, …) of Web documents"  
but would not like it lengthened and complicated with links.


> -I suggest a prominent "how to improve?:<li><a>install locally</ 
> a><li>help on <a>the source code</a><li><a>donate</a>.

I don't think we should overload the home page with prose. Focus on  
the interface is what 99% of the people are here for. But we could  
reword/rework the bottom link bar.
Suggestions?

> - maybe put "About News Docs Help & FAQ Feedback" within the big  
> top blue bar, positioned at the right

Cleanliness of that top bar and of all the space down to the main  
interface, is what makes the validator's design rather pleasant and  
to the point. Having the menu at the bottom, at least for the main  
page, is a result of our AI study. I would not like to backtrack on  
this without a very good reason.

> (maybe just "About" to refer to all the further information, maybe  
> put the top news item headlines in the page itself at the right side)

This used to be the case. Did you ever look at the latest news item?  
Did you often need to look

> some FORM elements, or INPUTs are grouped a bit awkward: for  
> example the 3 radio button options with direct input

ack. Suggestions to reorganize them?

-- 
olivier

Received on Monday, 6 August 2007 07:08:43 UTC