David Abrahams wrote:
Beth Jacobson <bethj@bajac.com> writes:
Most of your objections seem to be with the new page's usefulness in searching, and I agree that the arrangement I'm suggesting is less than ideal for that. Maybe the answer is to have separate pages: one for browsing and one for searching. If I understand correctly, David's objection is that that two category pages (or one 'by category' and one 'by type') will be confusing because people have no good way of choosing between them. David, could we avoid this just by changing the name of the new page from 'By Type' to 'Browse the Libraries' or something like that? If we try to make one page work for both browsing and searching, I'm afraid we'll end up compromising on both.
I'm afraid I don't understand the distinctions you're trying to draw. When I think of "searching" in conjunction with the web I'm thinking about using a search engine. Everything else is browsing to me. So, no, I don't think that would reduce confusion.
I guess both 'browse' and 'search' are poor choices for describing web pages. Let's try a low-tech example. Say you pick up a book on C++. If you want to read up on variable scoping, you'll probably go straight to the index and under the entry 'scoping' find listings for functions, classes, namespaces, etc. But maybe you just picked the book up because someone recommended it or the cover looked interesting. In that case, you'll probably flip through the table of contents to get an idea of the sort of things the book covers, and maybe the introduction to get feel for its purpose and direction. I see the category page as an index, a way to find a particular library or group of libraries. It should should be lean and mean with simple, straight-foward category names and a minumum of supporting text. The new page should be a sort of a cross between the table of contents and the introduction. It's intended for people who don't know much more about Boost than that it's a collection of C++ libraries. The page should spark people's interest and encourage them to spend a little time there. It's meant to introduce people to the various solutions Boost has to offer, not to help them find a particular one. Maybe the category page should be called something like "Category Index" and the new one something like "Explore the Libraries" or "Library Overview".