Hi all, I still have a hard time finding my way around the website since it was restructured. I'm having at least two problems: 1. I can pretty much guarantee that manually changing a URL in the address bar of my browser will fail, I think because the URLs are deep and relatively unforgiving. Unfortunately I have little or no insight into what would fix this problem. 2. Many files have version numbers in their URLs, and there doesn't seem to be any way to link to "whatever the latest is." Also, once we have that shouldn't we try to encourage search engines to prioritize that URL as opposed to any of the many near-duplicates (not that I know how)? 3. I can't get a good feeling for what's on the site and how it's structured without hopping around all over the place. For example, if I'm looking for mailing lists, do I want "community" or "support?" The answer isn't immediately obvious. http://www.boostpro.com has drop-down menus that are entirely done with highly portable CSS; I got the base code from http://www.cssplay.co.uk/menus/final_drop.html. Something like that would be an immense help in finding what I'm looking for. Thoughts? -- Dave Abrahams BoostPro Computing http://www.boostpro.com
On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 5:23 PM, David Abrahams <dave@boostpro.com> wrote:
Hi all,
I still have a hard time finding my way around the website since it was restructured.
Me too.
I'm having at least two problems:
1. I can pretty much guarantee that manually changing a URL in the address bar of my browser will fail, I think because the URLs are deep and relatively unforgiving. Unfortunately I have little or no insight into what would fix this problem.
2. Many files have version numbers in their URLs, and there doesn't seem to be any way to link to "whatever the latest is." Also, once we have that shouldn't we try to encourage search engines to prioritize that URL as opposed to any of the many near-duplicates (not that I know how)?
Hum... There are at least some cases where "whatever the latest is." works. For example, www.boost.org/libs/filesystem does forward to the latest version's docs.
3. I can't get a good feeling for what's on the site and how it's structured without hopping around all over the place. For example, if I'm looking for mailing lists, do I want "community" or "support?" The answer isn't immediately obvious.
Yeah, I get "community" or "support?" wrong all the time.
http://www.boostpro.com has drop-down menus that are entirely done with highly portable CSS; I got the base code from http://www.cssplay.co.uk/menus/final_drop.html. Something like that would be an immense help in finding what I'm looking for.
Thoughts?
Maybe someone could do some experimental rearranging on beta.boost.org, and ask folks if it is an improvement? --Beman
Beman Dawes escribió:
On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 5:23 PM, David Abrahams <dave@boostpro.com> wrote:
2. Many files have version numbers in their URLs, and there doesn't seem to be any way to link to "whatever the latest is." Also, once we have that shouldn't we try to encourage search engines to prioritize that URL as opposed to any of the many near-duplicates (not that I know how)?
Hum... There are at least some cases where "whatever the latest is." works. For example, www.boost.org/libs/filesystem does forward to the latest version's docs.
Yep, but the problem is that it's a *redirect*, which ends up exposing version-labeled URLs. This is not ideal, as discussed in http://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost/2008/10/143160.php Joaquín M López Muñoz Telefónica, Investigación y Desarrollo
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joaquin＠tid.es