Re: Beta Testers: Changes to Edge

[Curtis Hovey <curtis.hovey@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 2008-07-09 at 16:18 +0100, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
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> Mackenzie Morgan wrote on 08/07/08 10:15:
> > 
> > On Sat, 2008-07-05 at 17:30 -0400, Jonathan Jesse wrote:
> >> 
> >> Wow you weren't kidding when you mentioned changes to Edge.
> >> Everything that was on the right, karma summary, email, GPG keys, etc
> >> is now on the left?  Was there usability testing done that suggested
> >> this change?  What other reasons behind this?
> > 
> > Eh?  They're all on the right now,
> 
> As I understand it, Jonathan is talking about the "Summary" section on
> the page for a person <https://edge.launchpad.net/~jjesse>. This used to
> be on the right of a page, but (on edge) is now near the center.
> 
> >                                    which is odd, I think, because
> > navigation menus usually go on the left for English-language things,
> > since English starts on the left.  
> >...
> 
> That is true for Web sites with vertical global navigation menus.
> However, Launchpad has no vertical global navigation menus.

The inverted-L is often a better page layout for navigation when used
with left-to-right-top-to-bottom languages like English. The navigation
exists to take the user away from the page. The user needs to see the
page content /before/ judging he needs to navigate to another page.

The upside-down-L navigation layout is very good for sites that are: 

    * Poorly organized.
    * Do a bad job of setting the user's expectations about the content 
      of a linked page.

To say it another way, this form of page design is often well suited to
sites that expect the user to be lost with every page he visits.

-- 
__Curtis C. Hovey_________
http://launchpad.net/

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