Mailman user interface: draft of a mega drop-down navigation
Hi,
I´m Claudia Fleiner and I work together with Patrick Koetter and
Florian Fuchs.
Here I will present you our idea of a mega drop-down navigation panel
for the new Mailman user interface:
http://wiki.list.org/display/DEV/Web+UI+Mockups
As the draft shows, a mega drop-down has the following characteristics:
- The big panel is divided into groups of navigation options
- Navigation choices is structured through layout, typography and icons
- Eliminate scrolling: everything is visible at once
As shown in the draft, I put as navigation structure an example of the
"admin navigation options".
This structure will be revised into the right form later.
The icons I used in the draft are just placeholders. Nice Icons well
adapted for the new navigation structure
will be designed in the next steps.
I hope you´ll like our idea of using drop-down navigations for the new
user interface.
Please don´t hesitate to send us your feedback.
Kind regards,
Claudia
state of mind Agentur für Kommunikation, Design und Softwareentwicklung
Franziskanerstraße 15 Telefon +49 89 3090 4664 81669 München Telefax +49 89 3090 4666
Am Südhang 3 Telefon +49 6131 6223149 55127 Mainz
Amtsgericht München Partnerschaftsregister PR 563e
On Jun 24, 2010, at 04:23 PM, Claudia Fleiner wrote:
I´m Claudia Fleiner and I work together with Patrick Koetter and Florian Fuchs.
Here I will present you our idea of a mega drop-down navigation panelfor the new Mailman user interface: http://wiki.list.org/display/DEV/Web+UI+Mockups
As the draft shows, a mega drop-down has the following characteristics:
- The big panel is divided into groups of navigation options
- Navigation choices is structured through layout, typography and icons
- Eliminate scrolling: everything is visible at once
As shown in the draft, I put as navigation structure an example of the"admin navigation options". This structure will be revised into the right form later.
The icons I used in the draft are just placeholders. Nice Icons well adapted for the new navigation structure will be designed in the next steps.
I hope you´ll like our idea of using drop-down navigations for the newuser interface. Please don´t hesitate to send us your feedback.
Very nice. I like it a lot.
While I think we could use some re-evaluations of the categories, presenting them in this way works well I think. I think we won't have such a deep or wide hierarchy that displaying them all will be too confusing. The thing I really like about this is that I can figure out exactly what's going on in one quick glance, and can probably find my way to the section I care about very easily (certainly much more easy than today).
I wonder, would it be possible to put tooltips on those menu items?
-Barry
Barry Warsaw wrote:
While I think we could use some re-evaluations of the categories, presenting them in this way works well I think. I think we won't have such a deep or wide hierarchy that displaying them all will be too confusing. The thing I really like about this is that I can figure out exactly what's going on in one quick glance, and can probably find my way to the section I care about very easily (certainly much more easy than today).
Agreed, both in that it looks lovely and that we need to redesign those categories badly.
I also reiterate that we need a search option for finding admin options. There's just too many for average list administrators (who probably use this part of the interface once a month or less) to remember the hierarchy. Most people nowadays seem to be heavily reliant upon search.
Terri
On Jun 24, 2010, at 11:37 AM, Terri Oda wrote:
I also reiterate that we need a search option for finding admin options. There's just too many for average list administrators (who probably use this part of the interface once a month or less) to remember the hierarchy. Most people nowadays seem to be heavily reliant upon search.
+1
Searching on variable name and description at the least (which we should probably improve too ;).
-Barry
On 2010-06-24 12:09 PM, Barry Warsaw wrote:
On Jun 24, 2010, at 11:37 AM, Terri Oda wrote:
I also reiterate that we need a search option for finding admin options. There's just too many for average list administrators (who probably use this part of the interface once a month or less) to remember the hierarchy. Most people nowadays seem to be heavily reliant upon search.
+1
Searching on variable name and description at the least (which we should probably improve too ;).
How about also including a checkbox option (unchecked by default) to 'include online Knowledgebase/FAQ in seach results' (separated from hits in the Admin intrfce itself)? Or would that be overkill?
On Thu, 24 Jun 2010, Claudia Fleiner wrote:
Here I will present you our idea of a mega drop-down navigation panel for the new Mailman user interface: http://wiki.list.org/display/DEV/Web+UI+Mockups
Can anyone explain this a bit for those of us who can't see this image? Or better still, point us at a coded example?
Geoff.
- Geoff Shang <geoff@QuiteLikely.com>:
On Thu, 24 Jun 2010, Claudia Fleiner wrote:
Here I will present you our idea of a mega drop-down navigation panel for the new Mailman user interface: http://wiki.list.org/display/DEV/Web+UI+Mockups
Can anyone explain this a bit for those of us who can't see this image? Or better still, point us at a coded example?
The overall style is light. Lot's of whitespace creates room to distinguish object from each other.
The compositional focus is on the content area. Logo and navigation stand back to let users concentrate on the task they need to accomplish.
The page is white. The navigation color scheme used is dark blue for typo and light blue as background color. There's a broad border around the navigation pane. It is semi-transparent.
When opened, i.e. when level 2 and 3 are visible, the navigation layers over the content drawing users attention to the navigation only.
The navigation is horizontal to make way for applications that take place beneath; applications usually require more place than text/images pages.
You can see navigation level 1.
The navigation differs from traditional navigations in a few ways:
- When you hover the mouse or focus a menu entry using keyboard navigation you get to see both, level 2 and 3, at once. A large rectangle (wider than higher) creates the canvas for for both levels.
- A topic specific icon prepends evey level 2 item.
- Level 2 items are aligned to the left and in bold text.
- Level 3 items, if there are any, follow right hand to their correspondent level 2 entry on the same line. They are displayed in regular font weight.
- If there were so many level 3 items that they needed to wrap to the next line, they would indent starting at the same left margin where the first level 3 item started.
-- state of mind Digitale Kommunikation
Franziskanerstraße 15 Telefon +49 89 3090 4664 81669 München Telefax +49 89 3090 4666
Amtsgericht München Partnerschaftsregister PR 563
--On 24 June 2010 19:18:22 +0300 Geoff Shang <geoff@QuiteLikely.com> wrote:
On Thu, 24 Jun 2010, Claudia Fleiner wrote:
Here I will present you our idea of a mega drop-down navigation panel for the new Mailman user interface: http://wiki.list.org/display/DEV/Web+UI+Mockups
Can anyone explain this a bit for those of us who can't see this image? Or better still, point us at a coded example?
The page is a Mailman page that looks like it's for list administrators, but that's not made clear anywhere.
Top left is a nice new Mailman logo, but if you can't see it, that doesn't help! Maybe the logo should be implemented in HTML5 such that the text ("Mailman GNU" is machine readable).
Below the logo is a horizonal set of tabs with text labels: "Maintenance", "Options", "Subscriptions", "Statistics", "Plugins". I'm not sure that "maintenance" and "options" are good labels. If maintenance relates to pending moderation requests, perhaps it should be labelled "requests", or "queues". I'd prefer "configuration" for options, given that there are options (by definition) in every menu.
Below are some paragraphs of Ipsum Lorem text.
As a result of a mouseover on the "options tab", a vertical menu of options has popped up: "General, Non-Digest/Digest, Filter, Bounces, Archive, Gateways, Auto-responder, Plugins".
Two of these options have submenus - fully visible and aligned horizontally: "General - Subscription Rules, Language", and "Filter - Sender, Recipient, Spam, Message, Topics".
There are icons adjacent to each of the options.
-- Ian Eiloart IT Services, University of Sussex 01273-873148 x3148 For new support requests, see http://www.sussex.ac.uk/its/help/
participants (7)
-
Barry Warsaw -
Claudia Fleiner -
Geoff Shang -
Ian Eiloart -
Patrick Ben Koetter -
Tanstaafl -
Terri Oda