The new web site design
A look at the changes from the original design of this web site.
Last modified: 10/7/98
This web site underwent a redesign in early October of 1998. The redesign coincided with a switch in the tool with which most of the site is written (from Trellix 1.0 to Trellix 2.0). The new tool added some features that made the redesign easier, so many changes to the site awaited that change in tool.

Most of the changes to the site resulted from comments from readers and usability testing.

Page Layouts

Both the title and summary of each page are now at the top of the main page body along with the date the page was last modified. Previously, the summary was in the left border.

Most pages now have improved navigation on the left border. The border no longer has a background image, and it is similar for all the sections. There are four components:

Home Link and Logo


This image has a link back to the main home page of the web site.

Section Links

News
About
Where
Philosophy
Techniques
Samples
Mail
Related
Send EMail

This table includes links to each of the main sections on the web site, with the section containing the current page outlined in red. This gives the list a "You are here" style of navigation. To switch to the main index page for a given section, just click on its link. The "Send EMail" link is a "mailto:" link. There have been numerous requests for this feature. Moving the summary to the main text area and using smaller type made room for this list.

Page Links

News Index
The new web site design
Previous
Next

This table has a link to the main index page for the page's section at the top followed by the title of the page outlined in red.

The "Previous" and "Next" links, if present, take you to the corresponding page in the list of pages for the section. This lets you go from page to page without going back to the index.

Other Links

See Also:
The full report

Some pages have additional links. Links that are centered usually go to other pages. Links to anchors within the current page are usually left justified.

Other Changes

Index Page
The index page of each main section is now more like the regular pages. The extra right-hand border has been removed.

Link colors
Links colors are now set more regularly:
Black in the left border
Blue for unvisited links in the main text.
Purple for visited links in the main text.

Fonts
Font descriptions now include a list of fonts for various computer systems (e.g., "Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif").

The Old Web Site

The old version of the web site from July of 1998 is kept on-line for reference. This should be helpful since there are many references to it in mail and usability comments. It is at:

http://www.gooddocuments.com/olddesign/homepage/homepage.htm

Comments

Comments about this design, as always, can be sent to Good Documents or you can discuss it on our newsgroup.