Mmmh. Nice looking Blog Mr. Scorm! Me like. I’m still in SF, site seeing and all, thinking about Da Book to end all books.
While munching on my egg sandwich this morning I realized even the structure of the material could be left “opened”. How? Like this: keep an evolving table of content! This table would be made up of many “main” topics which would have an almost infinite (to be discussed) amount of sub topics.
Example:
1.0 The Flash interface [0]
1.1 The Stage [0]
1.2 The Work Area [0]
1.3 The Menus [0]
1.3.1 The File Menu [0]
1.3.1.1 The New Menu Command [0]
1.3.1.2 etc. [0]
1.3.2 The View Menu [0]
2.0 The Panels [0]
3.0. etc [0]
You get the idea.
Everyone could contribute to modify the structure until we get as close to a complete, logical and smartly hierarchical structure as possible.
The number in square brackets would indicate how many articles are written so far in each category. This way, people could easily see what is most in demand content-wise. This could also inspire people to write in areas with little or no articles. We could also maybe have a number for the amount of available fla/swf files in each area?
Anyway. That was my thought this morning. Those eggs are sure good! 
I’ll try my hand at an initial structure over the coming week-end, when I’ll be back home.
Take care folks and … Viva la revolution!
Stephane
Aaron
| 11-Apr-05 at 4:13 pm | Permalink
I like the idea of flexible navigation. My caveat to that is that we need to identify when changes have been made. I’m not as versed as others in our group on Human Interface Design, but my guess is that there would be some usability issues if we left the masses to hunt and gather too much.
If we start applying “categories” to our blog entries, you should start seeing this in some effect. Granted, we’re not necessarily sticking to this tool, interface, whatever… but my point is that there some of this that we can be doing already.
I’d also mention that if we don’t number a table of contents, then we never need to re-number the table of contents.
Will
| 14-Apr-05 at 12:36 am | Permalink
I like the use of such a universal concept as the table of contents. I do agree with Aaron that we’ll still run into the issue of leaving the user in a mess of content if we’re not tagging each entry into some type of searchable category.
If the user comes to find an answer, provide them with the simplest way to find their info. If the user is coming to update his or her previous entry, can he search by his name? topic? title? etc. I imagine giving every user his own storage would become taxing to the servers over time. I’m not sure.
Personally, I’m still thinking that we need to maintain the numbering for referential purposes and rapid indexing for the final “product” created when we cut the branches off come Fall. It may seem confusing if the branches grow, but most branches can be subdivided effectively to keep the depth to a relative minimum, and once we cut the branches, the indexes won’t change, so they can be associated with a permanent chapter number. Why not keep this going on at least in the background?
On the user side, though, I may be angry if I come to the site, look up 1.3.2.4.1 and it’s been changed to 1.3.3. I guess the simple solution is to keep the search function limited to content and not direct thumbing to a chapter in case a chapter’s numerical value changes. Thoughts?