[Imc-tech] publish button

[David Young]

Here are a few observations on the reasons that 'publish' is invisible,
and some suggestions for fixing it. I do not mean to impugn anyone's
design ability or anything. (I realize that the template for the home
page was inherited without change from the global organization, anyway.)

    No link or control needs to appear more than once

        There are three links called 'publish'. (One of them is broken,
        BTW.)  It is a rare user who will use a different 'publish'
        link the second time than the first time, and a single link that
        is distinguished by its large size and prominent location will
        advertise the 'publish' feature more effectively than three
        teeny-tiny links scattered all over. Also, it's a whole lot
        easier for the Web admins to keep broken links under control
        when there is one link instead of three.

        When you give three ways to do something, even quite sophisticated
        computer users will believe superstitiously that each link is
        subtly different from the others---why else would the designer
        have made a single option into three?

        So, my first suggestion is to make make three "publish" links
        into one. Put it in the leftmost column near the top. Make it
        at least as big as the other links on the page.

        'About' and 'newswire' are appear three or more times. They
        also deserve one large link, prominently located.

    Put important things at top; conserve vertical space for this purpose

        Scrolling really exasperates users.  All the really important
        links and controls should be at the top of a home page so
        that users don't have to scroll to find them. So you can fit
        everything you need to at top, conserve space there by writing
        concisely and avoiding unnecessary graphic doodads.

        When it makes sense, you can conserve space by making the
        structure of choices "deep" instead of "broad." In other words,
        make a list of closely-related choices into a second page,
        and then link to that page. The list of indymedia centers and
        the list of mailing lists deserve this treatment. The list of
        mailing lists belongs a lot nearer the BOTTOM of the page than
        it is, because most visitors will not use it.

        The graphic in the top-left corner is very nice, but it takes
        up a lot of vertical space.  What if the search feature were in
        that corner, instead, and the 'publish' option pulled up so that
        it was right under 'search' ?

        In the search feature, it is possible to replace the wordy
        explanation '(leave blank if you with to browse all entries)'
        with a button labeled 'browse news'. This simplifies things and
        saves space for links 'newswire', 'features archive', and
        'about', which deserve display near the top.

	If you organize by headings and subheadings, be consistent and aim
	for navigation "at a glance"

        In the leftmost column, there are things under headings
        'participate' and 'independent media centers' that, if I were
        looking for them, I would not have looked under those headings
        to find them.

Dave

On Thu, Apr 05, 2001 at 11:43:28AM -0500, Molly Stentz wrote:
> Hey,
> 
> I'm wondering if anyone has thoughts on how to make the "PUBLISH" feature
> oh-so-much-more prominent on the front page of the site.
> 
> I really like all the new additions lately, including the "how to get your
> story featured" link. I think we need something big (maybe not blinking)
> that says PUBLISH NEWS somewhere near the top of the page, with a brief
> description that ANYONE can post relevant news content to the site. I
> don't think it's clear enough to the average citizen web-user.
> 
> It could be another panel below the Orientation blurb or we could move the
> Participation part on the side bar to the top and add a more descriptive
> blurb. Anybody object to me doing either of those things, or does someone
> have a better idea?
> 
> -Molly
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
David Young                   On the Job Consulting
dyoung at onthejob.net     Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933