[Vit-discuss] Redesign 2005 Blog

[John W. Long]

David A. Black wrote:
 > Very nice work by all concerned.  I don't have a strong preference as
 > between the two on view.  One question for John: would it be possible
 > to avoid the duplication between the navigation bar and those
 > navigation squares?  I know what people are going to say: the navbar
 > has to serve on different sub-pages and therefore can't be changed.  I
 > tend to think it should be anyway :-)  It looks a little cluttered to
 > have "Learn Ruby" and "Download" right about "Learn" and "Download".

That's an interesting suggestion. I suppose that it would depend on how 
the site was structured. I personally believe it is important to repeat 
the major site sections on the home page in the header and footer. I 
really value the importance of simple designs with lots of repetition 
(between pages). Perhaps the solution is to make the Download, Learn, 
and Build sections subsections of other major sections. For instance, 
Learn could easily be a subsection of the documentation section.

On the other side, I'm not sure the ideal (no-repetition on the same 
page) is worth splitting hairs over. Sometimes the search for the ideal 
can lead to very unpractical solutions. I much prefer the pragmatic 
approach. At some point we need to map out the site completely. Right 
now we are just experimenting. Once we get down to the "raw" html we may 
change quite a few things.

"In theory there is no difference between practice and theory, in 
practice there is."

--
John Long
http://wiseheartdesign.com