Greetings:
As you might have noticed lately,
I have been tweaking the RF Cafe template. In keeping
with RF Cafe's emphasis on streamlined efficiency,
I am experimenting with how to present the maximum
amount of information in the smallest amount of
space, particularly in the common top border area.
The use of fold-out menus is being avoided because
they greatly increase the page file size (and therefore
load time), and differences between browser versions
still create problems. It is nice to see as much
as possible of what is available without having
to expose menus or jump around to a lot of different
pages.
One major change is to reduce the
number of cycling advertiser logos from six to four.
Since advertisers are the primary source of income
to pay for RF Cafe, it is important to provide them
as much coverage as possible, so the reduction might
not be too popular amongst them. However, my philosophy
is that if page hits are increased because visitors
are more pleased with the faster loading pages and
less commercial clutter, then they are better off
overall (or at least no worse off). Of course, your
visiting the advertisers website, buying books from
Amazon, and purchasing my ridiculously low-cost
software would really help matters, too.
Instead of a menu system or a really tall common
page header, I will be redesigning the Site Map
to be more user-friendly. It will attempt to categorize
the various areas of RF Cafe to make navigation
easier. Having all the major website content listings
on a single page will be more efficient overall
than bothering with menus which only allow viewing
a small portion of available content on each menu.
It also avoids the frustration of not finding information
in a menu where you, the user, thinks it logically
belongs.
Please feel free to submit suggestions.
After all, RF Cafe is here for your benefit (although
I use it throughout every day at work myself). Thanks
for your participation.
-Kirt Blattenberger
