Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-wiki (223 mails)

[Sven Burmeister <sven.burmeister@xxxxxxx>]

Hi!

Somehow, every time I want to d/l the development version, I notice that the 
"menu" at the top of the download-page (Downloads: Released Version - 
Development Version...) but also the one at the very top (Communicate , 
Download...), are just not where I look for what I am searching.

My eyes seem to start reading where the text begins, i.e. "Choose the 
Version". If it is not just me, one could think about how to improve that 
issue, either by changing the format, the place or the arrangement of the 
menus. As the menu above the first heading seems to be a TOC, on should maybe 
arrange its items horizontally, as one is used to from books or wikipedia.

Am Freitag, 10. Februar 2006 17:28 schrieb houghi:
> Thiese are mainly about the left side links. Especially the "Use SUSE
> Linux" should be dealth with better. Proposal:
>
> Use SUSE Linux
>  New Users Start Here
>  Downloads
>  Producs Highlights
>  User Documentation
>  PowerPC Documentation
>  Developer Documentation
>  Projects

What I miss in the wording used in the menus is the word "help". I think that 
users that get on the start-page are either looking for "download" or "help", 
so adding a big icon for "help" would help a lot. Maybe one could even place 
a search next to it.

Clicking on help, should offer the different channels there are for getting 
help. There is interactive help (mailinglists, irc-chat, forums), there are 
articles written by users and there is documentation. I am not sure why, but 
documentation for me is something different than "hints and tricks" or 
HOWTOs. Documentation is more like man-pages, i.e. a manual.

Anyway, clicking on help offers the channels, i.e.:

Interactive help:
IRC-Chat
Mailinglist
Forum
Newsgroup

HOWTOs/Hints
Software
Network/Internet
Sound
Printing

Documentation
User-Manual
FAQ
Admin-Manual

For each section on the "interactive channel"-page, there should be a HOWTO, 
in order to explain the usage of a medium, e.g. clicking on IRC-Chat would 
get you to the IRC-Chat-heading on the channel-page and offer a list of 
channels sorted by language. Yet the first thing offered below the heading 
should be a link to a HOWTO that explains which application to use, how to 
install it, how to set it up. This will ensure that new users can 
participate, even if they are not familiar with IRC.

I think it would also be a good idea to add not only suse-help but also 
IRC-channels, forums and mailinglists for the big software-packages coming 
with suse, like OpenOffice, KDE and GNOME.

Finally I want to mention that I do not think that it is a good idea to 
arrange any TOC vertically, as it is e.g. done in the "Browse articles by 
category". What makes this even worse is the small font. So please increase 
the font-size!

Sven