pcplantdb

[John Schinnerer <john@eco-living.net>]

Aloha,

> ∑ I don’t like links embedded in text when it’s not obvious where they 
> lead, i.e. “Eden and the accompanying dataset will be extended 
> dramatically to fulfill the goals of PIW.” – it’s not clear where the
> PIW link at the end of the sentence leads.

Should link 'goals' instead of 'PIW' to vision.

> ∑ Why is there no nav bar?  We don’t want to make people fish through the
> text to find what they’re looking for.  Please create one with all the 
> links.

Put it on the right side of page.
Two most common user actions are clicking on navigation links and 
scrolling up and down pages reached by navigation links.
Scroll bar on browsers is on right; main nav should also be on right to 
minimize left-right mousing.

For basic UI common sense, studies, research, etc. (as opposed to what 
most sites actually do :-p) see useit.com (Jakob Nielsen, long-time 
usability guru).

I want to pick a web page standard to use for validation of all our web 
content.  I'm not attached to only one specific one, I just want one 
agreed upon.

I nominate XHTML 1.0 transitional.  Offers the stricter/cleaner 
structure of XHTML while still allowing some tweaks (e.g. to deal 
reasonably well with particularly heinous browser bugs, etc.).

Also, I want us to use CSS to separate content and presentation in all 
our web content (and valid CSS while we're at it).

I want a web standards notice that displays itself automatically top of 
page on non-standards-compliant browsers/internet devices with text 
functionally equivalent to:

This web page is accessible to any browser or internet device.  It will 
look better in a browser that supports _web standards_.  This message is 
not displayed in browsers that support _web standards_.

In the above, _web standards_ links to webstandards.org.

And, in keeping with the above, pages should *in fact* be accessible to 
any browser/internet device, even though they may not be "pretty."
In other words, the *content* needs to be accessible even if the fancy 
formatting is not.


cheers,
John S.


--

John Schinnerer - MA, Whole Systems Design
------------------------------------------
- Eco-Living -
Whole Systems Design Services
People - Place - Learning - Integration
john@eco-living.net
http://eco-living.net