Page Titles Could be More Useful

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Page Titles.png (6.6 KiB) Viewed 8761 times

Just change the order for the Title Tags or Abbreviate the Text.

Instead of :
<title>OpenOffice.org Community Forum &bull; View topic - Index Page</title>

Use :

<title>Index Page &bull; OpenOffice.org Community Forum</title>

Or :

<title>OoCv &bull; Index Page</title>

[TerryE]

Good Suggestion. We'll add it to the list.

[DrewJensen]

Not only that but I believe a fairly straight forward change - it is also a great idea...thanks

[kingfisher]

"OpenOffice.org Community Forum" could be omitted altogether. Anyone who does not know which website they are visiting can always check by looking at the current page.

[acknak]

"OpenOffice.org Community Forum" could be omitted altogether.

The problem with that is that the titles often appear in lists (e.g. window lists) that include other websites, possibly including other forums, so it may not leave enough information if we toss it altogether. Maybe abbreviating it to "UCF" or "OOCF" or something like that would be enough.

[TerryE]

OK so do we use say

• OOoCF <title>
  or
• <title> — OOoCF

[floris v]

I'd opt for title - when you get more tabs you still run into trouble quickly.

[acknak]

Agreed. Title first.

[DrewJensen]

OK - well here is what I get if I do a 30 second change to the forum package -

Page titles changes

Enough of a change?

[kingfisher]

The "view forum" and "view thread" are surely superfluous. The main thing you want to see is the board name or thread title.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

It won't help: All I will see is View Forum on every tab, instead of OpenOffice

[DrewJensen]

Fine - I'll dive down one more level....

[TerryE]

What this really should be is a discussion on how to make the titles more meaningful left->right so that we get the best information from a left truncation. For example:

• OpenOffice.org Community Forum • Post a reply -> Replyto: <title> — OpenOffice.org Community Forum
• OpenOffice.org Community Forum • View forum - Beginners -> Forum: Beginners — OpenOffice.org Community Forum
• OpenOffice.org Community Forum • View topic - Open Office Email -> Topic: Open Office Email — OpenOffice.org Community Forum

etc.

[DrewJensen]

What this really should be is a discussion on how to make the titles more meaningful left->right so that we get the best information from a left truncation. For example:

• OpenOffice.org Community Forum • Post a reply -> Replyto: <title> — OpenOffice.org Community Forum
• OpenOffice.org Community Forum • View forum - Beginners -> Forum: Beginners — OpenOffice.org Community Forum
• OpenOffice.org Community Forum • View topic - Open Office Email -> Topic: Open Office Email — OpenOffice.org Community Forum

etc.

Well that is pretty much what I did -

• OpenOffice.org Community Forum • Post a reply -> Replyto: <title> — OpenOffice.org Community Forum
• OpenOffice.org Community Forum • View forum - Beginners -> View forum.Beginners — OpenOffice.org Community Forum
• OpenOffice.org Community Forum • View topic - Open Office Email ->View topic.Open Office Email — OpenOffice.org Community Forum

The problem for some folks seems to be that the pre-fix ( view forum, view topic ) is too large and on their screens that is all that they will see. The change that I made was fully implemented in a single line of code, in 3 html template files. In order to change the tags ( View Forum, etc ) I will need to make another change to the php files, where the variables used by those template files, are filled. Not that big a deal but it does mean I'll need to test a bit more.

One other issue with this further change - by only changing the templates I did not have to concern myself with any native language issues - when I change the string building routines for the variables I will, I believe, and that will mean another spot where any native language packs will need to be customized for our board.

[kingfisher]

The point is that we are using tabbed browsing. For tabs to be useful, their width has to be restricted. It would be helpful if the first words displayed are distinctive. I am attaching a small snapshot of the three forum tabs I have open. The first is adopting my bookmark title: 'oo nf' is the name under which I've bookmarked the forum index.

[DrewJensen]

Alright then - you have only 5 displayable characters on a tab, it looks like you have maybe 5 or 6 open tabs on that screen, so that is going to be common I suppose. Even if I change the titles to this

Forum:Writer
Topic:Outline Levels in Writer

you will be seeing

Forum
Topic

I'll need to go the full path then and make the change to be:

For a forum / sub-forum display the name of the forum first.

Writer - Forum
Templates - forum
Extensions - Forum
External Data Sources - Forum
External Programs - Forum

There is only one conflict with forum titles and a limit of the first 5 characters. Of course it involves the Macro section...damn macros get yo in trouble every time.

Now for the special pages:

View new posts
View unanswered posts
View your posts
Search
Frequently asked questions
Members
User Control Panel

I suppose a change to:

New posts
Unanswered posts
Your posts

Then leave the other special pages unchanged.

Have I missed anything?

Edit: Ok- missed a few. Index page Post a new topic Post a reply Edit Post Could become Index page New topic Reply to post Edit Post

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

I don't think you missed anything, but we may need to rename the tutorials unless there is an icon we can use, e.g.

[Tutorial] Typing Special Characters

Typing Special Characters Tutorial

"Frequently asked questions" could perhaps be renamed to FAQ.

Renaming "User Control Panel" to "UCP" is not such a good idea as few people know what it means: "User..." is good enough.

[DrewJensen]

Good catch. [Solved] is gong to pose the same problem.

Edit: And I see one 'new' conflict New posts ( from View new posts ) New topic ( From Post a new topic ) So perhaps a change to New Posts Create topic

[kingfisher]

Either accept that Tutorials and Solved topics are exceptions or change the practice to placing tags at the end of the title instead of the beginning: eg 'Page Titles Could be More Useful [SOLVED]'. Most people probably use wider tabs than I have. A title without two capital 'O' will display six characters even on my relatively small tabs.

The issue does not affect me particularly but I can see where others could be affected. My complaint is that there is excess, uninformative verbiage when I use the mouse pointer to raise the 'tip' associated with each tab. For example, one tab now reveals that the page is

OpenOffice.org Community Forum · View Forum - Site Feedback

It would suffice to see "Site Feedback - oocf".

It's good that a matter like this can be raised and discussed in a businesslike way.

[TerryE]

It's good that a matter like this can be raised and discussed in a businesslike way.

Kingfisher, one of the reasons for this is that on this forum we have the freedom to fix many of these issues, hence the discussions have purpose. Many of us we (and still are) supporters of OOoForum, but here we could discuss forever, but we are not allowed to change anything.

[kingfisher]

That's a pleasant change for an OO support facility. Let's hope it stays that way. It is appreciated.

[foxcole]

For example, one tab now reveals that the page is

OpenOffice.org Community Forum · View Forum - Site Feedback

It would suffice to see "Site Feedback - oocf".

It would suffice for you, but I often use that "breadcrumb" information to tell me where in the site the "Site Feedback" resides. I like the idea of moving the page-specific information to the front so it's the first to show on the tab. How about just reversing the order of the trail? "Site feedback - View Forum - OOCF"?

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

What happened? Did it turn out to be too difficult to fix?

[DrewJensen]

Not at all - there has been no change to the official sites software at this point.

Primary reason - as you recall we installed 3.0 RC 5, then did the upgrade patch to RC6, then RC8 and finally 3.0.0 stable. Well as it turns out if you run a diff against a 3.0.0 and our site you do not get the same packages on both sides of that. ( not with standing the changes to the header and footer templates for our site )

Terry and I have been pondering this for moving forward with the changes and for building a simple roll out mechanism for additional forum installations ( e.g. Hungarian, Spanish, ???? ). As part of that I have set up a pure 3.0.0 site ( no upgrades, built from the final release package ) and moved a full copy of our database to it. No problems. The test forum on the server was really hacked by me, but again it started as that odd 'not quite out of the box' 3.0.0 set of files.

Anywhow - yesterday Terry and I went over all this again on the phone and at his point the idea is to just jettison the test forum setup. Put a pure 3.0.0 install on the server and then run a pearl script Terry has produced that should produce a change delta and a script to automatically bring the live site right up to the out of the box 3.0.0 file set.

The script is then the basis for the deployment program.

Then I, he and who ever...*smile*. can merrily start hacking at the new_test forum with the change list we have compiled. When it is good ( or more likely incrementally ) well run the pearl script and move the mods to the live installation.

So - be patient, it hasn't been forgotten or lost - it isn't full time work for any of us, but we are trying to do it in the most professional way we can..and yet still have some fun at it.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Looking better now. Site Feedback forum is still showing "View Forum" as the title, but other pages are good.

[TerryE]

Done — now shows as Site Feedback (View forum) • OpenOffice.org Community Forum

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

That's fine now. Much easier to use for those who like to multitask.