A suggestion

[seaweed]

First of all, I LOVE this site! I have found it quite addicting at times :)

I think it would be cool to remove "Q and A" from the "Resources" category on the left and let it be it's own category (called "Forums"?), with links to the different forums directly directly underneath it. This would save one click for a lot of people (the user could go directly to a forum from the main page).

I was thinking that you could have tool tips for each forum hyperlink providing a description of the forum, and you could (maybe?) have the lightbulbs next to the forum hyperlinks. Also, you wouldn't have to get rid of the main Forums page, you could create a link to that from the category header.

Or maybe I am just being lazy! I know there is a fine line between providing a confusing site with links to EVERYTHING on one page, and a highly-nested site where it takes 20 clicks to get where you want to go. It's just something I was thinking of and I wanted to share :)

Anyway, I love what you are doing here. Keep up the good work!

~seaweed

Edited by seaweed on 02-27-2000 at 01:44 AM

[James]

I think it would be cool to remove "Q and A" from the "Resources" category on the left and let it be it's own category (called "Forums"?), with links to the different forums directly directly underneath it. This would save one click for a lot of people (the user could go directly to a forum from the main page).


Good idea - I'll see what we can do!


I was thinking that you could have tool tips for each forum hyperlink providing a description of the forum, and you could (maybe?) have the lightbulbs next to the forum hyperlinks. Also, you wouldn't have to get rid of the main Forums page, you could create a link to that from the category header.


I'm not sure about the tooltips... once the reader visits the forums for the first time and finds out what subject questions are posted in each forum, including the tooltips on each page will become a little superfluous - it could also increase page loading time.

The lightbulbs in the menu is a great idea - but this would involve generating each and every page of the site dynamically... which would place a huge load on the server. Only yesterday we doubled the amount of RAM on the box to 256Mb to cope with peak period demand :)


Or maybe I am just being lazy! I know there is a fine line between providing a confusing site with links to EVERYTHING on one page, and a highly-nested site where it takes 20 clicks to get where you want to go. It's just something I was thinking of and I wanted to share :)


I think at the moment we've struck a pretty good balance between having a monster page of links and the "highly-nested" type of site. But we're constantly tweaking!

Thanks for all your comments.

All the best,

James

[Juan Carlos Rey]

I never go to main page, as I have General Qestions Forum right in my Favorites!

I have a suggestions thou: can you remove that blue strip at the left? Or place it horizontally at the top of the screen? When you go one or more pages down it only wastes space narrowing the useful screen. It is rather unnoying to have to use horizontal scroll to read at the posts and at the same time to lose about an inch and a half at the left.

Just my sand grain... :)

[QWERTY]

I love that Blue Strip on the left. It is very useful. Everytime I know that I can find answer to someone else's question I just click on Tips (http://www.vb-world.net/tips) and that's it.
About having it horizontaly. It would be annoying to have space wasted from the top (at least for me). I would rather stay with present appearance. It looks quite neat. :)

Edited by QWERTY on 02-28-2000 at 06:33 PM

[seaweed]

One idea that might solve Juan Carlos Rey's problem with the blue index on the left without upsetting QWERTY would be to add a close button on the strip. That way, if you dont want it, you just "close" it. If you want it back, perhaps there could be a hyperlink ("Show Table of Contents"?) you could click that would resore it. This would be similar to Microsoft's MSDN Library (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/) website, with the "Hide TOC" and "Show TOC" links.

~seaweed

P.S. Just to add my vote, PLEASE keep the blue index strip! I would not mind seeing it in a seperate frame, however, so that the topics are always visible even when scrolling to the bottom of the main page.

Edited by seaweed on 02-29-2000 at 01:36 PM

[onerrorgoto]

I have a suggestions thou: can you remove that blue strip at the left? Or place it horizontally at the top of the screen? When you go one or more pages down it only wastes space narrowing the useful screen. It is rather unnoying to have to use horizontal scroll to read at the posts and at the same time to lose about an inch and a half at the left.


Hey James
I think what Juan is after is something like this.
A Hidebel menue (http://www.thescarms.com)
If you click on Visual Basic, then you get a second menue that you can hide/show.
It works like the MSDN solution given by Seaweed.
It serves well if the user has a small screen to be able to hide the menue, and if you dont wanna
hide it. Leave it visible then :)

Edited by onerrorgoto on 03-01-2000 at 09:09 AM

[Gimpster]

This would be similar to Microsoft's MSDN Library (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/) website, with the "Hide TOC" and "Show TOC" links.


The only difference is that Microsoft is using ASP on their site, which makes that sort of thing MUCH easier to do.


P.S. Just to add my vote, PLEASE keep the blue index strip! I would not mind seeing it in a seperate frame, however, so that the topics are always visible even when scrolling to the bottom of the main page.


On this subject, I would just like to say that I am a frame-hater. I don't like them. They make the site look ugly, they take longer to load, and it looks unprofessional. My vote is to leave it like it is.

[da_silvy]

what about if you had the toc in a separate frame,

then if you had a button, in the toc that says hide me

and in the code for the button have

document.location = "http://www.vb-world.net/forums/postingswithoutbluestrip.htm"

hey??