[Haskell-cafe] Re: Haskell.org re-design

[Simon Marlow]

On 29/03/2010 13:20, Christopher Done wrote:
> On 29 March 2010 11:19, Simon Marlow<marlowsd at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> Is the footer necessary?  I dislike sites that have too many ways to
>> navigate, and the footer looks superfluous.  The footer will probably be off
>> the bottom of the window in any case, which reduces its usefulness as a
>> navigation tool.
>
> Footer navigations are a way to provide a bit of a sitemap without
> cluttering the top nav, good for SEO, and to provide the user with an
> overview of the hierarchical structure of the site on every page.

IMHO, these aren't compelling reasons.  Note that already on your page 
there is an inconsistency between the tabs at the top and the headings 
at the bottom: I don't know where to look to find the content I want. 
Put the navigation in one place.

A sitemap: sitemaps are for robots.  If you're worried about cluttering 
up the page, use drop-down menus.

SEO: we shouldn't compromise the usability or appearance of the site for 
SEO.  If we do it right, SEO takes care of itself - and it's not like we 
care that much about SEO here, we're not competing with other sites to 
sell you Haskell.

> According to the W3C, headings are easily navigable with a
> screenreader; as someone using assistive technologies I'd get
> something like:
>
> Welcome to Haskell.org
> Events
> Learning
> Headlines
> Latest Packages
> Quick Links
> Download
> Community
> Wiki
> Reports

Making this work right is an important goal, I agree.

Cheers,
	Simon