site map
On Thu, Apr 12, 2001 at 10:35:48AM -0700, Debian WWW CVS wrote:
> CVSROOT: /cvs/webwml
> Module name: webwml
> Changes by: joy 01/04/12 10:35:48
>
> Modified files:
> english/template/debian: menubar.wml
> Added files:
> english : sitemap.wml
> english/template/debian: links.tags
>
> Log message:
> first try at sitemap (obviously not finished yet), uses some tags from
> menubar
Let me explain a bit more: the current "menubar" on the front page is too
short compared to the rest of the page so we're wasting space on people's
screens with whitespace ;) yet it wouldn't be good to add most links into it
since it would make it too long and it might distract the user from reading
what's in the other column.
Just having two columns, content of which is completely different, is
distracting already, IMHO. One might say, it's like that with all other
media like the newspapers, but that isn't so because there you have columns
with text of the same type on the same page, rarely loads of different
things... well, maybe not in colorful teen magazines :> But I digress.
It occured to Jay and me that a better approach would be to have one page
that would have about four paragraphs of text which would explain in short
stuff about 1) Debian in general 2) distribution 3) support 4) development
5) maybe more :) These paragraphs would have a big link to a subpage that
would explain the topic in detail.
For the anxious surfers who know exactly what they want, but don't know
exactly the URL, there would be the site map which would contain links to
all major and minor subpages. I've made the commit so that others can see
the code -- basically, the page calls a function that extracts the title of
the requested file, either from a translated version or from the English
original.
This has a major advantage in that we don't have to maintain a list of those
titles in the sitemap document, but also some disadvantages with regard to
translations. If some of those docs are translated and some aren't, we get
translated names for some, and English for some, which would make the page
look kinda weird. Should we go out of our way to make sure translators can
translate all of the links on the site map, irregardless of whether the
linked docs are translated or not?
--
Digital Electronic Being Intended for Assassination and Nullification
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