archives

[Magnus Danielson]

>>>>> "CF" == Claire F <wils0450 at itlabs.umn.edu> writes:

 CF> Hello all.

Hej!

 CF> We had a synthesis group meeting this week and talked a lot
 CF> about what we wanted to do with the web page. One of the big concerns was
 CF> to make it as friendly as possible for the begining hobbiest. The only
 CF> problem  is, we are all beginners and haven't built a whole lot of
 CF> projects. 

Just get going, once you see it you figure out what went wrong and
what went right. If you look at many of the pages out there, they have
too evolved over a long time. The key however, is to from the start
think big and allow for future expansion over years to come, without
breaking the old material. Think URL conservatively, that is, once you
put some page up, let that URL be there, since people will link it
from all over the place, thus trowing that page will trow a lots of
links to you, which is a bad thing. This requires that one try to put
some vauge basic structure up first, but which allows for expansion
later. The exact design is a moving target issue. Also, throw most of
the flying gizmo's stuff, it just anoys people, takes longer time to
download and rarely add any value to the content. Frames, JavaScripts,
jingles etc. are among the things I am talking about. Structure and
content beats all that, few people understood the need for both.

 CF> What I was hoping was that we could "mirror" a lot of the projects that
 CF> you guys have designed and made available on your pages with a link to
 CF> your page from each project that you would allow us to have on the site. 

Link all you like.

 CF> If this doesn't sound like something you would want to do, I beg you to at
 CF> least send me a short desc. of a poece or two from page with an
 CF> appropriate level of difficulty. A one-to-ten scale would be easiest for a
 CF> lot of people to understand (I think), because of the movies and all.

This varies in the world, a 5-grade scale is not uncommon, also in US
you see a lot of 5 and 6 grade scales. Then there is these that go very
hard on things and only see things in a 2-grade scale (good/bad, white/black).

I would settle for a 5-grade scale, it would give enought hints, also
consider that everyone does not have the same reference of what is
easy and what is difficult. What I may consider fairly simple may be
an astonashing mountain of diffictulties for others. How, would they
then consider the things I consider hard? They would settle for no
less than a full-blown rocket science project. Try to get some scale
up where we may compare things, then we have something common to
releate to. Also, there is allways diffrent difficulties, so one
should know what they are. Judgement without colourary comments are
hard to understand.

Dont forget traceability of information, in many cases one see that
information just pops up, and you don't know how to trace it to the
source either to learn more or to find an error.

 CF> Looking forward to any contribution anyone wants to make, as well as the
 CF> usual criticisims, etc...

 CF> Kind of a community action one-stop DIY spot.   :)

Ah, well...

PS. Check out my page at http://www.it.kth.se/~e93_mda/

Cheers,
Magnus