I agree with Glenner. Too much information is counterproductive because, in my experience, most people do not read more than a sentence or two. In other words, most people do a very quick scan.
Stuffing more details on a page increases the likelihood that people will not find what they are looking for with a quick scan of the page. As I see it, the main purpose of the NeoWiki is to provide support tips.
It is just an observation - I haven't thought about it in detail. NeoLight will be needed by every user of NeoO if they want to use Spotlight. If NeoLight cannot be integrated into the NeoO installation then it will probably have to be mentioned as a separate programme.
I see no reason why it cannot be integrated with NeoOffice. Separate info on NeoLight is very useful to people who use OOo X11. It is also the only place where you can find info on NeoLight and for a Versiontracker- and Apple-listed app, documentation is a good thing to have
Which brings me to a very practical reason why OOo is on the main page:
With support facilities being pretty slim at the time the first OOo 2.0 betas came out, we had to compile our knowledge so that the frequently asked questions would not be repeated so frequently (as they were driving some of us utterly nuts).
But OOo should still be on the main page if only to grab people looking in the wrong place and funnel them to the right place.
So in principle I agree that less is more, but there are a few practical considerations that explain why the page is the way it is now and which should be kept in mind when making changes.
I would suggest:
-try to move the language options into the left bar.
-put the headings next to the logos
-Move Terry onto a news heading or even a seperate news page.
-Consolidate the Neo topics into fewer such as : Introduction, Tips and Solutions, Development and Distribution.
Getting it to fit within a single screen would be a Very Good Thing indeed .
I will go and sleep now (biological clock is still off after summer time scheme entered into force).
Best wishes,
Oscar _________________ "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea!"
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
lots of things to reply to, sorry if this post is all over the place =)
I agree that the main purpose of the wiki is support. One of the aspects of that lately for the oo.ox11 builds has been links to where to download (esp for the Intel builds), this is what got me thinking about moving things around.
AFAIK, neolight is included already with every download of neooffice. However, as the wiki is basically the documentation for it, it needs to live on its own. Also, it is an invaluable plug-in for oo.ox11 users, and as it is not included with that download, hopefully this will help people find it.
though i advocate linking this wiki with the oo.o wiki, i think we should still stay independent of it when possible. the Neowiki is very clean and user centric, whereas the oo.o wiki is developer centric, with recent user additions (as it seems to me, opinion subject to change).
like it or not, we provide a good amount of support for oo.ox11. every article added to the wiki helps with this. the wiki and this forum have always been open for users of both programs, i don't see a need for separation now.
as for the reason we are here today, i agree that leaving the main page the way it is, mostly, is probably the best way to go. i'll play with the picture alignments, see if we can consolidate some.. though i'll admit smokey is better at the wiki code than I am. i am too fixated on the real HTML code...
hm.
good conversation, btw =D input is always appreciated. even when it's "dude, what are you doing??!!"
Joined: Feb 03, 2004 Posts: 241 Location: Scotland
Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2006 12:02 am Post subject:
ovvldc wrote:
I see no reason why it cannot be integrated with NeoOffice. Separate info on NeoLight is very useful to people who use OOo X11. It is also the only place where you can find info on NeoLight and for a Versiontracker- and Apple-listed app, documentation is a good thing to have.
That is a valid point. Can it not be listed as "NeoOffice's integrated Spotlight feature (NeoLight)" which would still allow for the above benefits? I had another look at the Main Wiki page. Would it also perhaps make the page less daunting if the different logos for OOo and NeoLight were less prominent, i.e. were immediately perceived as sub-categories?
Bandwidth and maintenance is a very valid consideration.
ovvldc wrote:
I would suggest:
-try to move the language options into the left bar.
-put the headings next to the logos
-Move Terry onto a news heading or even a seperate news page.
-Consolidate the Neo topics into fewer such as : Introduction, Tips and Solutions, Development and Distribution.
ovvldc wrote:
Getting it to fit within a single screen would be a Very Good Thing indeed .
I like that. Also would take care of Jake's point:
JakeOSX wrote:
....the Neowiki is very clean and user centric, whereas the oo.o wiki is developer centric,
I would also suggest to drop the Info at the bottom and place it under Development or similar. Again, people can hardly grasp the difference between NeoO and NeoO/C and - if they do not read further - may come to the conclusion that NeoO is no longer being developed.
The last revision basically involved 1) belatedly acknowledging that Neo/C had been dead for a while and was never coming back and 2) Jake wanting to make OOo feel less like a step-child. Moving Neo/C to a line in "More Info" was easy, but making OOo less of a step-child required extra emphasis on NeoLight (necessary for OOo folks anyway, since it's not bundled for them) to balance the design.
I certainly wouldn't mind making OOo and NeoLight go back to how they were before, i.e., headings with brief descriptions and one link to more content (NeoLight is only one page, anyway; the OOo section has sorta "grown" of late, but we could still safely link to the lead page for that section) or even putting NeoLight down in "More Info".
Doing that (plus killing the "Welcome!" header and some tweaks here and there--the 1-line News thing Orgleser has proposed) could get the entire Neo box and probably the OOo section above the fold, and leave NeoLight and the rest of the "More Info" below (none of which are critical to most people).
(The OOo the lead page is 13th in page views, btw, behind both NeoLight and the "Archive Screenshots" illustration the Neo/J 1.1 Alpha 1/2 Aquafication process, which I think is only linked to from 2 pages! )
A few other points: I'd rather not completely remove that line about Neo/C from the More Info section, but the ordering of those three lines could (should!) be altered.
Also, even if we get the language links in the sidebar, on the Main Page I don't want to remove that language box; it makes it easy to see that we have multiple languages. It's front-and-center, while the sidebar most certainly is not. (On the individual pages, I'm fine with just letting the sidebar links do their thing, although the bar there is at the bottom anyway...).
I definitely would like to "collect" our three problem-solving pages together via a single link--again, not merge the pages physically, because they're all too long as-is, but have a more "Support"-like link with the "Download" links right under the Neo logo. The two columns of links could be reordered (maybe 3 columns with Oscar's "topics" as headings?), but I think all those links belong on the Main Page.
Anyway, I think we're making progress and coming towards a consensus
Oscar's post brought up one more thing:
ovvldc wrote:
Separate info on NeoLight is very useful to people who use OOo X11. It is also the only place where you can find info on NeoLight and for a Versiontracker- and Apple-listed app, documentation is a good thing to have
Actually, NeoLight is not on VT/MU/*, only on Apple Downloads. I asked Ed at release time about this and don't recall getting an answer (not sure why we did Apple Downloads, though...maybe that was an executive decision based on Apple nagging us via community@...?).
Would it help things if I were to list NeoLight on VT and MU (and some Spotlight plugin emporium, if there's such a thing) so that users of non-Neo apps (OOo, AbiWord, K-whatever) that read/write OpenOffice XML (.sx*) and OpenDocument (.od*) files can more easily find NeoLight and get it to index their OOXML and ODF files (while making it very clear that users of NeoOffice must not install it or Spotlight will do screwy things)?
Smokey
Edit: added the page views pgh _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
All times are GMT - 7 Hours Goto page Previous1, 2
Page 2 of 2
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum You cannot attach files in this forum You cannot download files in this forum
.
)