Re: [boost] New boost webpage

From: Beth Jacobson (bethj_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-08-07 19:25:43

Marcin Kalicinski wrote:
> There is a fairly estabilished standard on how links should look in
> "professional" sites. This is either "normally underlined" text in different
> colour, or nonunderlined text in different colour that changes colour when
> pointed by mouse. Microsoft.com, google.com, ibm.com, yahoo.com, amazon.com,
> nytimes.com, you name it, all stick to it. Deviating from that makes me say
> it looks non professional enough for boost.
> 
> 
>>>Additionally, I'd
>>>rather have links in boxes on the right have the same style as links in
>>>the
>>>text.

If I might add my two cents, I agree with the above. I like the look of 
the page a lot, but the link style is confusing and counter-intuitive. 
This makes it a poor introduction to the Boost Libraries. One of the 
things that has impressed me the most in using the libraries is how 
intuitive they are. It's also a marketing issue since "intuitive" 
translates to lower training costs. It would be nice if that quality 
were suggested by the design of the website.

How about using the same blue as the headings for both linked text and 
menu items? The menu headings could be switched to black to maintain the 
color contrast between the menu headings and items. Both text and menu 
links could be underlined on mouseover. I also agree with someone above 
who said that the menu headers shouldn't change on mouseover. The change 
says "link" to users and should be avoided unless that's what it really 
means.

Finally, and much less important. it might be nice to have a different 
link color for visited links, at least in the text and perhaps for the 
menu as well. Especially for someone exploring the libraries for the 
first time, it's nice to have a visual cue to tell you where you've 
already been.

> Also, on my
> machine mouse cursor briefly changes to hourglass when moving on the link.
> It looks like it was flickering.

That could be solved by preloading the image with javascript. I noticed 
there's no js on the page and assume that was by design, but maybe an 
exception could be made in this case, since there'd be no added penalty 
for people without js. They'd just be subject to the same 
hourglass/flickering they've got already.