[thelist] CSS-P degradation help needed

Patrick Berry pberry at eff.org
Tue Jan 14 19:10:01 CST 2003


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On Tuesday, January 14, 2003, at 04:39 PM, rudy wrote:

> you may not want to hear this, but the problem lies in your choice of a
> 3-column layout
>
> alas, i feel i am whistling into the wind (as it were)
>
> why do so many sites feel the need to cram so much into the page?  are
> y'all
> so paranoid that if there isn't an overwhelming glut of stuff to choose
> from, the user will get bored?  why the intentional information
> overload?
> are you afraid that the user won't "get" what the site is about if you
> don't
> put everything and the kitchen sink onto the home page? is this design
> style
> the result of the instant gratification so typical of this age? do you
> realize how many users you drive away with this "busy" design?  why is
> the
> nav bar so insignificant?  the nav bar should be the primary visual
> focus
> for the user, to draw attention to the content choices available on the
> site, not some oh-yeah-i-guess-we-need-a-nav-bar afterthought

All valid comments.  All I can say is that this "busy" design is
cleaner than what we had.  I think this design has improved people's
ability to a) get a quick overview about EFF and b) navigate to where
they want to go on our site.  That being said, most of the people
coming to EFF get here through a "deep link" to a particular document
and don't dig their way through the site.  While that may be because
our organization is so complicated (our site is what happens when you
throw your ftpd root into your httpd root) that you can't find
anything.  Ease of use is one of the things we are trying to accomplish
with the new design.  The new design isn't just some new graphics, but
real IA on the back-end, which just hasn't caught up to the splashy new
front page.  We have limited resources and had to start somewhere, so
the front page is where it started.

Also, as an organization that has many directions (Free speech,
privacy, etc...), but one cause (protecting freedom) there is a lot of
competition for space on the front page (even though as I stated
earlier most of the hits go to "deep" documents).

> i am sorry for the rant, the EFF is certainly not the worst offender
> in this
> regard, and i know you didn't want this type of feedback

I appreciate all the feedback I can get.  It's not like you think I'm a
complete git and that our org is stupid, just that we choose the wrong
path for the design of the home page. 8-)

> but ya know what?  the overlap problems don't happen with a one-column
> layout

I could code the entire site up in tables and it wouldn't happen
either, but I'm not going to do that.  On nearly every other page in
the site, there will only be two columns, plus the header and footer:

http://www.eff.org/Privacy/TIA/duncan-hunter-letter.php

This one still has the overlap problem, but I know that I can fix this
one (and will).

> rudy

Patrick

- --
Electronic Frontier Foundation Webmaster -- http://www.eff.org
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