On Mar 26, 2009, at 3:36 PM, Daniel Stenberg wrote:

> On Thu, 26 Mar 2009, G. T. Stresen-Reuter wrote:
>
>> Have the maintainers of curl considered the possibility that the
>> instructions describing which list to post to are not clear enough
>> when subscribing? Maybe we need BIG BOLD RED LETTERS...
>
> We're open for suggestions. Tell us what you think we can do to
> improve!
>
> I've tried to adjust the phrasings and explanations but it seems
> people see "curl" to mean just about everything in our project and
> thus people consider themselves "curl users" when they use the
> library, the PHP binding as well as the command line tool and more.

Hi Daniel.

I realize your area of expertise may not be visual design, nor is
mine, so please take these suggestions with a grain of salt. What do
you think of the following?

1. I would put the most active list at the top of the list
(interchange curl-library and curl-users) since curl-library appears
to have more traffic (and thus those who don't read what each list is
for will be more likely to get it right).

2. I would tweak (increase) the spacing between lines. I would also
work on visually distinguishing the "grouping" of the text on the page
similar to what they are doing on the php.net documentation. One way
to get people to actually read is to improve the "readability" of the
text. If you're interested, I could probably mock up a design that
*might* be more readable (or just adapt one of the thousands of open
source designs on the web). Let me know.

3. I would modify the labels of the links to the list subscription
interfaces. Rather than show the actual list names in the table, I
would use more descriptive labels such as:

curl-library => libcurl Topics
curl-users => Curl <em>Command Line</em> Topics
curl-announce => Announcements of New Versions
curl-tracker => Issue Tracking

I realize the existing names stem from historical list naming schemes,
but since many, many users these days are completely unaware of
netiquette or have little experience participating on Usenet, the full
meaning of the existing labels may be lost on them. Besides, the list
names are used on the actual subscription pages.

4. I don't think I would use a table for the list of lists (ha ha). I
think this is a good opportunity for a definition list (DL, DT, DD)
which can then be styled as needed via CSS. By default, definition
lists make the definition term (DT) bold and the gloss (DD) offset to
the right, similar to what you might find in a dictionary.

In the end it's no big deal for me since I read email with my mouse
hovering over the delete button, but maybe it will save you some
keystrokes when people post to the wrong list (and help them get
answers to their questions).

Sincerely,

Ted

----
G. T. Stresen-Reuter
Web: http://tedmasterweb.com
Blog: http://tecnotertulia.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/tedmasterweb
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