The tabs at the top of DG

I'm about to add a tab for the "Garden Products" database that we're beta testing.

On top of that, many of you know that I have a tab coming up for "Videos".

There will certainly be additional tabs coming up as well, especially now that we are adding so many new things thanks to all the extra time I now have to do this kind of work.

This becomes a problem as we only have so much room up there for tabs. In fact, adding "Garden Products" makes the tab bar about as long as it can possibly be without forcing everyone to have to scroll (!) to see it. So, I'm looking for solutions.

One idea was to break it up a bit and have general overall tabs, and once you click on an overall tab, you then get a sub-menu. For example, the tabs might be:

"Home, Community, Research, Publish"

and then when you click on one, you then have a new submenu. So if you clicked on Community, the sub-menu would include:

"Garden Talk, Home Talk, Trading, D-Mail"

Click on "Research" and you get:

"PlantFiles, BugFiles, Garden Watchdog, Go Gardening, Garden Products, Garden Bookworm, Glossary"

and click on "Publish" and you get:

"Journals, Diaries"

I'm just playing around with ideas here, but something needs to be done, and it needs doing sooner rather than later. Any ideas?

dave

I agree with the concept...not sure about the names.

"Home" and "Community" (or "Communities") makes sense.

"Research" - ehhhh, it's okay, but maybe "Resources" or "Guides" or "Learning Center" ...or if we're going the verb route, "Discover" or "Explore" or "Learn"

"Publish" - what about "Blog" (if it's journal & diary)?

Why not move the Journals and Trading tabs down to where we have our mail, info, etc?? They are more personal anyways and it would give you 2 tabs to play with up there??

Good feedback.

I was trying to think of the most self-explanatory names possible. "Research" as drab and boring as it is, is quite descriptive. Learning Center might work, I like Guides and Resources might work. I think "Discover, Explore, or Learn" aren't descriptive enough.

"Blogs" sounds good only because that's terminology that everyone in the world understands.

Another thought, instead of "Blogs", is "Personal Tools" which would include the trade tracker, diaries/journals and such-like.

threegardeners: we're looking for a long term solution to the tab overload. Your suggestion would buy us a little more time but it's not the solution we need.

dave

Would it be possible to put 'personal' tabs in the gray bar? like 'my info', 'mail' 'journal' 'blogs'? Or possibly add a second tier to the blue bar? (I can see stuff like BirdFiles and AnimalFiles in the future....)

ok...I like the "Personal Tools" idea, even I couldn't misunderstand it :)
I don't like "Research"....."Guides and Resources" is a nice description....

I think many people like to be able to easily access the tabs they use most without trying to remember which tab they should click on to find what they want. To use too general titles could be off-putting.

I would suggest keeping the 'Garden Talk', 'Home Talk', 'Plant Files' and 'Bug Files' as they as they are probably the most used.

I think the title 'Publish' would confuse, but the rest of the tabs could be put under some general headings.

Plant Scout, Bookworm, Garden Watchdog and Glossary would naturally fit under one Tab to my way of thinking. The Tab title 'Research' would seem appropriate.

Journals, Trading, Diaries and anything else related seem to fit another tab, something like 'Community' seems to fit that as they are all to do with the DG community.

Ditto for "Personal Tools", or even "My Stuff". LOL "Guides and Resources" is a great section title.

I like the idea of the categories--and to help people who might not remember what's where, maybe there could be something where when you have your mouse over a particular tab, it shows the links to the pages that are under that tab. I know that probably doesn't make sense, so here's a link to Target's website, take a look at what happens when you hover your mouse over one of their tabs
http://www.target.com/gp/homepage.html

ecrane, those menus look nice, a drawback is they are not friendly to the visually impaired.

"Guides and Resources" does sound nice.

I like "My Stuff" but... "Personal Tools" or maybe "My Tools" are probably the responsible choice on that one. :)

Responsible...Harrumph! ;)

How bout instead of "Guides and Resources"..sounds too much like school :), you do a "Look it Up" tab?

gardenwife--the way those menus like the one on Target's site work, if you're not visually impaired and you can see the links that pop up when you hover your mouse, then you can get to the page you want to go to with just one click. But if you are visually impaired and can't see the links that pop up, you click on the tab name and it takes you to a page that has all those same links. So it takes two clicks to get where you're going, but if the popup thing isn't there then everyone's got to do two clicks anyway, so having menus like that would at least take away that extra step for a number of people, without making things any harder for anyone else than it would have been otherwise.

Just a thought .. why not just add another row of tabs over or under the first Tabs row... you could make them another color or different shape top. Then it's still right there where you are already accustomed to looking for things???


MsC

I like that one Look it up leaves no confusion.

I like the "Guides and Resources" - reminds me of a Field Guide, like those for plants, trees or wildlife.

I hope Mail stays on the homepage. : )
~Lucy

I'm not looking to change the homepage; only the tab navigation up top.

dave

Dave,

I like the "My Stuff" idea....I'm a "stuff" person, too. I have tons of folders on my desktop labled my stuff, my stuff2, more stuff, pic stuff, stuff stuff stuff....8-). I also like the idea of having two rows of tabs across the top.

On a side note...how come the tabs are centered on the home page but left aligned everywhere else? When they are left aligned, you could put about 6 more tabs up there before you would have to start scrolling, (at least on my display).

Gardenwife - just curious - what about targets tabs are hard to see? Is it the grey lettering on a grey background?

Thanks, Dave - really looking forward to the video tab.

C

Web Forums and Blogs = Garden talk + Home talk + Book talk + DG News + Chatroom

Research and Information Aids = Plant files + Bug files + Glossary + Search

Personal Logs = Garden Journal + Garden Diary + Dmail + My Info

Products & Sources = Watchdog + Garden Products + Plant scout + Go gardening + Trading List + Classified Ads + For gardeners, by gardeners

MultiMedia = Video + DG member photo album + DG Logo kits for cards, wallpaper, labels + DG online version cookbook + Dave's attic

Site Aids & Rules = F.A.Q + Member List + B-day List + Address List + Find other DG subscribers in your area + Friends of Dave's Garden + Coop Guidelines + DG plant and seed trading primer + DG daily gardening quotes

Logout and Login

My 2 cents, Boom. Patti




This message was edited Jul 4, 2007 5:23 PM

I suggested "blogs" because of the prevalent use of the term today ;o) Hopefully it has staying power!

I wondered about the placement of the dmail and trading tools:

On one hand, keeping them under "community" is a good idea - it reminds us that those are our tools for communicating with other DG members, and is part of how we interact within the DG community.

On the other hand, having our "personal tools" all together is pretty intuitive too: tradelist, tradetracker, journal/diary and dmails would all fall under that heading.

And.....we could call it "My Tools" to be responsible and personal all at once! *chuckle*

Bottom line - I'd be fine with either combination ;o)

Home

Communities
- Garden Talk
- Home Talk
- Trading
- D-Mail
- Journals
- Diaries/Blogs
- Member List (find other members in your area, etc)
- Your Friends/Groups

My Tools
- A starting point for your contributions to DG.
a. Your blog
b. Your journal
c. Your D-mail
d. Your tradelists
e. Your lists of images posted to PF, BF, etc.
- Preferences
- Favorites

Guides and Information
- PlantFiles
- Garden Watchdog
- Go Gardening
- Garden Products
- Garden Bookworm
- Glossary
- Articles
- Videos

Products and Sources
- Garden Watchdog
- Go Gardening
- Garden Products
- PlantScout
- Trading lists
- Classified Ads

About Us
- FAQ
- AUP
- Coop Guidelines
- Trading Primer
- Gardening Quotes

WOW! That's great, Dave!

It looks perfectly logical and ordered, but I don't see BugFiles. Other than that I wouldn't change anything, great !

Looks good to me!

way to go Dave

wallaby1, thanks. I added BugFiles to my list.

soooo...when is this gonna happen?

truly a work of art ;)
It'll be very nice when it's live. Kudos!

It might not happen yet for a few weeks, but I'm at least working to get it all straightened out in my mind. :)

I like it.

I do, too.

I vote FOR

Nice. Looks well organized.

Bravo! Very organized.

Dave, you are going to need a sun lamp with all the time you are spending coming up with changes on DG site, you aren't getting outside enough!!
Good job, loving your hands on and sharing of the ideas up front with us.

Okay....will someone please tell me what "blog" means? You all keep saying it's so prevalent, but ...well....it is only obvious to those to whom it is obvious, to everyone else its obscure....guess I'm more "out of it" than I realized.

http://www.answers.com/blog&r=67

:)

Oh! geesh, now everyone thinks I'm an idiot, geesh Thank you....I feel so much ..... uh.....better, now. Once again its SuperDave to the rescue!

Now really! How could I not have known that? But, I really didn't....so silly.

This message was edited Aug 1, 2007 1:43 PM