Discussion: Testing ... minor change to USOF Home page

Dear orienteers-- In trying to improve the workability of the USOF site (minor change though it may be) I plan to add a "jump" menu (or quick-link menu) at the top of the Home page. This menu can be used to quickly jump to often-used pages or items without having to search through the pages themselves. Pages for which there is already a button (Clubs, Who We Are, Events, Results, etc.) are not included. But items within a page, such as the Standard Entry Form, Rules of Competition, BOD meeting agendas/minutes, etc. have been listed, allowing you to access them more quickly.

Try it out here, before I load it permanently as the Home page. If you would like another quick link added to the list, please let me know.

If you have an older system and do not see the menu, it could be because you have Javascript disabled, as the menu works with Javascript. If you have any other problems with the page, or any other page within the site, be sure to send me feedback.

If I do not hear of major problems in the next week or so, I'll go ahead and make this change to the Home page.

Thanks for your input.
JanetT
USOF Webmaster
> usofweb AT gmail DOT com, or the address listed on my profile page

Is this going to replace the current menu that is built into the actual HTML as it is displaying right now, or are you just going to add it above the current menu? I would be careful about removing the links from the actual HTML completely because that will make it difficult for the search bots to get through the whole site.

Hi John, my intention is for it to be a supplement to the current contents list for the time being. I suppose the better place for it is in the contents frame of the main page rather than the "home" frame.

It has been suggested that I get rid of the frames completely (which would require a total rework of the whole site and a lot of time). Someone on the discussion of the IOF's new site, however, said they didn't like how the menu had to reload every time they changed a page because there weren't frames. What do others feel about frames vs. no frames?

Good effort. The USOF page is difficult to negotiate. Any help is useful and the things you have started with are always hard to find. Keeping the frames is a good idea.

BTW - is there a more descriptive term than Virtual Binder? What really is it supposed to be?

I'm not a big fan of frames, mainly because they can make bookmarking pages difficult. I prefer to use tables and stylesheets for layout. I don't see what the big deal is about loading menus unless you're doing something annoying like using really big graphics as selectors. I typically expand/collapse sections of menus to reflect the current navigation, so the menu gets reloaded anyway.

All modern browsers cache page elements anyway so any elements that aren't changing will reload extremely fast (as you can see on AP). Frames are a pain for most users and I don't know any designers today who still use them. I have to admit I am baffled by that comment about having to reload page elements on the new IOF page. I'd be interested to know why it is bad practice since almost every web site I can think of does it that way. Maybe it's just that it is usually so fast that you don't notice it and there could have been a delay on the IOF site for other reasons...

I too am not a fan of frames, for the reasons mentioned (bookmarking certain pages, especially). I'm seriously considering redoing the site without frames, but it's going to take awhile to make sure all the links still work correctly! And it would certainly look a bit different too.

'walk', the Virtual Binder is on Robin S.'s page and includes just about everything she has related to USOF. Could several someones visit it and tell me what you think I could use to better describe it? :-)

I believe the Virtual Binder got its name because it's an electronic version of the actual "binder", the looseleaf notebook full of various kinds of official paperwork that each club gets from USOF.

J-J is correct. I had one of those binders once upon a time. I just think it's a rather bogus expression. Would be better to break it apart into its important/useful components. Pitch the rest.