Working prototype: feedback request
Dear all,
It’s just a shell so far, and its aesthetics are not set in stone: right now we’re mostly working on functionality. But I’d like to get your feedback, from a user’s perspective.
The prototype is here. I’m pointing you to the login page, but the login engine doesn’t work yet, so you don’t have to worry about having a username and password. Just play around with the menus up top, and let me know what you think.
All the texts links lead to one dummy table of contents, and all the index links – to a single dummy index. The links from the entries in the index will eventually lead to a page with a list of the places where the name appears.
The main question I have is: is this intuitive? Does the design itself make sense? If you the user have a question about the functionality of the tools on the site, is it obvious where to go to get an answer?
UPDATE. The first bug report has come in: the site doesn’t seem to be working on browsers running under Mac OS 9. So please look at the prototype using either Mac OS X, or a Windows machine. As always, please let me know if it doesn’t work for you. If you’re submitting a bug report, please include the browser you’re using, the version of that browser, and your operating system.
Vika, menus do not work with Explorer for Mac X either
MR
Your XHTML doesn’t seem to validate - missing alt attributes and proprietary elements.
Have you tested it with Firefox 1.0? The overlays for encoding etc don’t always appear properly on the screen nor disappear when done with.
Rebecca,
Thanks so much for your comments. I fixed the code, so that it all validates now — at least with the W3 XHTML validator. I’d been testing the site with the preview release of Firefox 1.0, and didn’t catch the fact that the menus were wrapping when the window was too small. They no longer wrap — which means the overlays should function fine. If you notice anything else, please let me know; thanks again for taking the time to look at it.
The menus don’t work on my machine, either, running IE 6.0 on Windows XP.
G
Here’s a dynamic dropdown that I used on another site. It works fine with IE.
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex1/hvmenu/
I set it up very similarly at: http://www.holycross.edu/departments/mll/website/flas/flafront2.htm