// A great help for the best D, I think //

[Michel Fortin]

On 2010-05-01 19:37:44 -0400, Walter Bright <newshound1 at digitalmars.com> said:

> Ary Borenszweig wrote:
>> Then a long text below that, the links on the left are at the same 
>> level as the title and the text. But the other links (wiki, search, 
>> etc.) are above all of that, so I don't see them. And as far as I 
>> remember, other people couldn't see them either.
> 
> I wonder if it's ad blindness.

I'd say it's more a lack of visual hierarchy or bad categorization 
problem. If you look at any page in the D section of Digital Mars, 
here's what you notice most, in that order:

- Digial Mars Logo
- A main menu (Home, Downloads, Search, Wiki, Forums, D)
- A divider bar
- A side bar where the first link is [D 1.0] or [D 2.0]
- The actual page content

The divider bar before the content makes it looks like the menu above 
applies to the Digital Mars site as a whole. The truth is that some 
items in the main menu apply to Digital Mars (Home, Search, Forums), 
some apply to D (Downloads, D), and one is about the current page 
(Wiki). It doesn't really make sense, and thus it's confusing.

You need to make the page hierarchy clearer:

- Digital Mars
  - D
    - Page Content

Then you can put links where they belong. A link that is related to the 
actual content of the page (like the Wiki link that points to comments 
*for the current page*) should be visually attached to the page's 
content). Other links need to belong to their corresponding section. 
Here's my suggestion:

Digital Mars:  [Home] [Search] [Forums] ... anything about digital mars
--- some kind of divider bar ---
D:  [Home] [Downloads] ... anything about D
--- some kind of divider bar ---
sidebar: not too bad as it is
content area:
	Title         Floating right: [On the wiki: \n Additions & Comments 
about this page]
	Content...

By placing the wiki link at the same level as the content, you're 
indicating that this link applies to this content. It's even clearer if 
you specify in the text the linked wiki page relates specifically to 
this page.

Obviously, this could be better. In particular, having two links named 
"Home" -- one for D, one for DM -- is confusing. It's probably better 
to merge both "Home" button with the logo for that section: [Digital 
Mars] becomes the link to DM's home, and [D] becomes the link to D's 
home.

If you want, I can draw a mock up of what I'm thinking about.

-- 
Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
http://michelf.com/