[Actionchix] State of the new website

[Akkana Peck]

chris writes:
> So, if we go to a 2-column layout with no top navigation, then on the
> homepage, the news will either go away or it will go back into the main
> content area. However, it will likely be pushed down below most people's
> viewport, meaning visitors have to know it's there and scroll vertically
> to see it. I think the news feed is more usable in the right column.

Most sites either have News as the main content on the home page,
or have a separate News page. Either solution works fine.

If we have news as the main content on the home page, I do think we
should start with a brief "What is Linuxchix?" blurb -- as the
current site already does. I hate it when I go to a project's page
and have to spend ten minutes fishing around to find out what the
project is because they use the home page as news for people
who are already involved.

> If we place all of the navigation into a tree in the left column, I'd
> highly recommend using a collapsible tree menu (=the submenu of section
[ ... ]
> The default state would be to show the entire menu so anyone who does
> not have javascript enabled can use it; to help make it more accessible

I'm all for hierarchical categories like in the bitkeeper example.
(Your IA document showed a hierarchy of categories like that,
which looked sensible and easy to navigate.)

I'm not sure where the JS comes in -- the bitkeeper page just has
static categories, where the current category is always expanded
and the rest are not. Do you have JS code to expand/collapse the
categories in place? I could imagine that being useful.

> I like Jen's suggestion of placing the logo to the right - we need all
> the space we can get to put the navigation on the left. However, that
> gives us a 3-column layout again. It would be more ideal to have a
> landscape oriented logo that went in the top of the page. 

It could go on the top right of the main content area. This logo
isn't going to be huge, is it? Personally I don't care whether
it goes at the top left of the page, the top left of the main
content, or the top right of the main content, but I don't see any
need to make a whole separate column to hold the logo.

-- 
	...Akkana
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