On 14/03/2014 10:38, Robert Sparks wrote:
On 3/13/14, 3:35 AM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
On 13/03/2014 02:11, Ofer Inbar wrote:
Please make existing URLs continue to work to the extent possible.
There are quite a number of URLs that MUST continue to work and
to point to completely static content. Those are URLs that are embedded
in various documents, notably RFCs of course. These need to be identified
spelled out in the SOW.
Do you have any particular URLs in mind that a grep over the RFCs for
"www.ietf.org" would not likely find?
I suggest ".ietf.org" to be sure, and it also occurs to me that we have
URLs in liaison statements etc. that need to be stable but are
not necessarily in RFCs. These will be hard to find. The less we change
the better.
I strongly agree with Martin: "the Revamp should not change existing URIs."
It should be a very strong goal not to break people's bookmarks or
to replace sensible URIs by pseudo-random strings.
I haven't had time yet to analyse the SOW in detail, but while I'm
here I will comment on the high level goals:
Modernizing the website style,
I don't see this in itself as valuable or desirable. At the last
revamp, there was a definite policy to keep the style plain and
simple, and avoid the then-trendy "style", whatever it was. IMHO
we should stick to this policy. We aren't trying to be trendy; we're
trying to be efficient. At the moment the site is a simple and
efficient tool. Please leave it that way.
Making the website work better for all classes of devices,
This is important. I think it's a strong argument for simplicity,
although small screens and a touch interface clearly need to be
supported as well as full size screens and a mouse/keybooard
interface.
Incorporating current best-practices in website design and implementation,
I see no need to do that except for accessibility issues. We are not
in the marketing business and don't need to hook users. I don't like
this sort of buzzword in IETF requirements.
Improving content maintenance processes.
Understood as a need, but please see Martin's comments. I have never
yet seen a CMS that produced sensible static content with sensible
static URLs, but we need that.
If the page layout changes, have appropriate redirects rather than
just redirecting to the front page or the main page of a section
when someone followed a link to something more specific. Keep those
redirects in place for the long term, not just temporarily. Even
better would be for as many paths to stay as is so they don't need
to redirect.
-- Cos
What he said.
Brian