[Zope-dev] Re: Threaded discussion usability (ZDiscussion inspi

[Squishdot]

I'm also very interested in opinions/discussion regarding Squishdot's
usability so I think its okay to post this at Squishdot's mailing list
or even post this as an article at the website itself.

ross boylan <rossboylan@stanfordalumni.org> wrote: 

> I posted this at a site I'm working on which uses ZDiscussions.  I thought
> it might be of some interest for the Zope-dev list too.  I know that a
> number of these ideas are in a squishdot direction, so I've added a few
> thoughts on that at the bottom.
> 
<snip>
> ------------------------ sqishdot postscript
> In the above, all the following are squishy:
> * flat hierarchy
> * expand out the postings under the heading
> * reverse chrono sort
> 
> But I think squishdot has some major usability issues itself:
> * The screen is way too busy, and having multiple things going on in
> different subareas of the screen is going to lose people.  I say this based
> partly on general principles, and partly based on having watched a couple
> of people navigating around some sites.

Well, its because I was literally copying Slashdot's design -- its not
inherent in squishdot itself -- you could design a set of simpler screens
or use the plain vanilla mode...

Given the current design, could you give me more details on what and where 
exactly people are having problems with it?

> * As far as I can tell, once stuff disappears off the bottom of squishdot,
> it's just gone.  And there isn't room for that much.
Well, the number of articles  is set via an option in the options tab
And its not exactly gone -- if you search for it, its still there.

The reason why things fall off the page comes from the assumption that
as news gets older, it gets less important --  doesnt it? In fact, thats
the reason for the previous articles box -- it should show all the article titles
for the past week (any older than that would probably be not very important)
and you can also control how old the articles that are listed in the previous
articles box...

However, if you still wanted a list of all articles, I suppose you could 
build a page that did that -- I just think a list of the most recent articles
is the default one that most people would prefer...

> * The novice view should not be the only option.

Exactly what do you mean by novice view?

> 
> Well, this seems like a natural for cross-posting to squishdot, but since
> that is frowned on, I won't.
> 

I, for one,  won't frown on it :).

Regards,

Butch

=====
Butch Landingin
Squishdot maintainer
http://squishdot.org
squishdot@yahoo.com
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