um... josh... your opinion isn't even as valuable as the opinion of a member 2 minutes old...

you're soo overrated...

* officially opening this up to comments and criticism and suggestions *

Not a user friendly decision, IMO. If the feature is available, stick to it. If it's not, what's the most obvious feature to enter when selected. I don't think it's fair to force a double mouse movement/click when changing forums.


Then don't remember it there.



OK, here goes:


OK, it works. But why don't IMG tags work?

>But why don't IMG tags work?

I would guess it has something to do with this:
http://www.daniweb.com/forums/post329034-4.html

Walt ... the way it is now, it has the same functionality as the standard two-level menu, which most people are familiar with. Whenever you select something in the top level, you're staying within your category. Whenever you select something in the bottom level, you're going to that section's homepage, where you can see a forum index, latest forum threads, code snippet languages, featured directory listings, etc.

Also ... as it is, when you're in the Site Management, etc categories, the Code Snippets section is unavailable. I don't want to do that both ways where someone arriving in our Code Snippets section doesn't know all of the topic we cover because Site Management just so happens to be unavailable for Code Snippets.

Also, it is bad usability to not be consistent ... the user should be able to know where they're arriving before they make the click ... not a "second choice" location for some categories and a different page for others.

Also, it shouldn't take you any extra clicks to get somewhere. Let's say that you are in the PHP forum and you want to see the C++ forum. Just use the dropdown menu. Now let's say you want to see the entire Software Development category ... if you click on the Software Dev button, you'll be able to see which Software Dev subforums have new posts, and the last couple of new posts, but if you want more detailed information, just click the "Forums" link in the breadcrumb right from that PHP forum page you're currently on. If you are looking for Tech Talk, you might have to scroll a little bit because it's not JUST one category on the page, but it gives you all the same info in one click.

I guess that makes sense...

Dani:
Update on the update:
With the forum index on the HOME page, I have no 'real' problem with the HOME page default, just a philosophical one. Especially if you can implement the read folder double-click.

And I still feel the images should be made a little shorter.

The new page layouts look really good. I like the idea that the code snippets and blogs follow the second-line topic.

> And I still feel the images should be made a little shorter.
I don't understand what you mean.

> Especially if you can implement the read folder double-click.
Done.

Looks a bit more sophisticated than the previous one and above all, it's usable, something which Dani was not planning to do at first. ;-)