[WEB4LIB] Re: test page - take another look!

[Kevin W. Bishop]

Some observations in IE 5.5 and Mozilla 1.1b (Win2K) ...

"Skip Navbar" appears in the upper-left-hand corner of Mozilla's 
window.  Was this for non-visual user agents?  As a shortcut to the first 
bulleted list, are you referring to the drop-down menu as a navbar?  I 
don't see what I would normally consider a navbar.  In effect, it doesn't 
skip much ... but I'll confess that I'm one of those "lazy" users who won't 
often bother with drop-down lists if we can help it.

The footer doesn't wrap as a block element.  In IE, "Library / SUNY College 
of Agriculture " appears in the right hand column and the rest of it flows 
aligned left.  In Mozilla, that breakage is found between the zip code and 
phone number.

In IE, the line-height for the list items is too small ... esp. in the 
right hand column ... the lines are almost on top of one another.  You have 
plenty of white space to increase line height and the margin/padding 
between list items as well ... for better readability.

In Mozilla, hovering over the links shifts the text into bold.  When the 
line wraps, depending on the width of the window, it forces subsequent 
content to "jump" in order to accommodate the increased size of the 
link.  Try it: you'll see what I'm not saying too well here.  ;)

A personal preference: the left column and the footer do not line up.  It 
feels to me like the pieces are disjointed.

Like Andrew, I think the content in the right-hand column is important.  In 
my experience, checking building hours is a very common use of library web 
pages.  (The web site search feature as the last element on the page also 
seems overly de-emphasized.)  My question however is why "Help and What's 
New at the Library" is grouped with a list of access points to your 
collection(s) instead of the library-related links in the right-hand column.

For what it's worth ...
-kb


At 11:09 AM 8/14/2002 -0700, you wrote:
>I disagree with Andrew on a couple of points.  I don't believe the design
>relegates the content on the right to a lesser position.
>Actually the important content is on the left.   The design is actually much
>closer to our current web page in its appearance. As far as ending up on:
>
>  http://www.pirated-sites.com/
>
>The ALA people want to share the design.
>
>It also degrades much better in the various older browsers such as Netscape
>4.7.

_________________________________________
Kevin W. Bishop   >   bishopk at rpi.edu
Communication & Collaboration Technologies
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
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