Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: www.userland.com
Author: Emmanuel M. Décarie Posted: 9/5/1999; 12:33:17 PM Topic: www.userland.com Msg #: 10610 (In response to 10564) Prev/Next: 10609 / 10611
First, let met congrat the UserLand team for the hard work in overhauling all the UserLand web sites.Here's are my comments and suggestions.
What is the UserLand logo?
It seems to me that UserLand have no logo now. I might be wrong, but IMO, all the western imagery is related to Frontier which name embodies this imagery (for the people who don't know, for a while, the Far-West was called the last Frontier in the US history).
If Userland had a logo, this could help to boost the identity creation process of UserLand (the process of creating a logo is at the very heart of defining what is the mission/identity/brand of a company, see the numerous literature in graphic design on this topic). It could also help to differentiate UserLand from Frontier
What is "Home" and where it is?
In my opinion, I just have one main home and the left link that bear this name should reflect this ( I guess that's why the metaphor was adopted in the first place). But on the userland.com, "Home" means a lot of different things depending where you are on userland.com. It can mean the default page of www.userland.com, frontier.userland.com, news.userland.com...
And since, all the userland.com share the same template and don't include for most of all visual clues on which userland.com sub web sites you are on (there is no images that reflect the identity of each web site), why not put instead of "Home" something like "UserLand Home", "Frontier Home", "News Home"...
This could help alleviate the problem of the homogeneity of the template used on userland.com.
I'm interested in Frontier and the only pointer I have is www.userland.com
The "What is UserLand.com" is a great piece. Its clear and concise. For me, its maybe one of the best new pages that was done for the overhaul of userland.com. Unfortunately, if you miss the left link (it happens) mentioning Frontier, you have to read 493 words or 59 lines (in Mac Netscape 4.5) before you'll see the first mention of Frontier.
Even if the page is concise, its a long page (5 screens in Mac Netscape with verdana 12). Why not providing at the top of the page (in the body), a TOC of the page?
I'm interested in Frontier and the only pointer I have is frontier.userland.com
I like very much this page now ( I didn't like it at all the first time I saw it). Its readable, it get immediately to the facts and have a nice summary (although IMO this summary should be at the top of the page).
I find strange that the first page of www.userland.com is presenting userland.com but that the first page of frontier.userland.com is not presenting what the user will find on frontier.userland.com, and also how to use this interactive web site (one of the major feature of the new Frontier site).
Why not providing a left side link "About Frontier.Userland.Com" or "About the Frontier web site" explaining how to use the web site, pointing to other important ressouces (like docserver.userland.com which *ought* to have a left link on frontier.userland.com)? The "About" page could also point to www.userland.com to help the user understand how Frontier fits in UserLand Software.
TOC TOC TOC, Who's there?
The top categories in the TOC are meaningful. But IMO, the presentation could be better. In Mac Netscape, the page have 4 screens. I think its too much for a so much important tool for navigating frontier.userland.com. I'd like to have the whole TOC fit on one screen with the comments. I think that its mucho important that the user could embrace the whole TOC in one glance.
Also because of its importance, I think the TOC left link could be in bold of anything that can help this link to be immediately seen (like the Members box).
Inner Linking in the tutorials
On frontier.userland there is a couple of tutorials that span on multiples pages. When you access theses tutorials, you have on the first page a TOC of the tutorial. Then if you go to read one page in the tutorial, there is no more inner links to help you navigate the tutorial. You are on you own. There is no Previous/Next links, and no more TOC. IMO, this is the biggest mistake I see in the whole overhaul of frontier.userland.com.
I wish the tutorial could offer something like what you find in the WebMonkeys tutorials or in the Script Meridian tutorials; the TOC of the tutorial on each page, and a way to show where you are in the TOC (look at the bottom of this page for an example).
MainResponder documentation
Missing here is a tutorial like the Web site and Scripting Tutorial. I hope Brent or Matt are thinking about writing one. Because for now, even if the documentation is ok, its not easy to follow it.
Downloading the documentation
With Frontier 4.xxx you could download the whole scripting.com site. With Frontier 5.x, it was possible to download the web site and scripting tutorials. Now with Frontier 6, It seems that the only documentation that I can download is the DocServer root/web site.
Why not offering downloadable versions of the most important tutorials before, I hope, UserLand provide printable PDF versions of the documentation?
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