Subject: Update to the IETF Web Site

From: IETF Chair <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:25:16 -0700 (PDT)

For the last 10 months, the IETF Secretariat at the direction of the
IAOC and input form the IESG and the IETF community has been working on
an overhaul of the IETF web site.  The goals for the new site were simple
and included:

1) Make it easier for those who are new to the IETF to get involved;

2) Make it easier for experienced community members to access the  
   tools and information they most need; and
   
3) Ensure that the web site is compliant with W3C standards and  
   accessible to as many people as possible.

The revised web site is currently located at www6.ietf.org.  Please
explore it.  One of the first places you may want to start is at the
very bottom of the left navigation bar, where you will see the
"Customize View" link.  The default view is "Normal" and if you click
on one of the other views you will see slightly different views of the
navigation bar and home page.  As you move through the rest of the site,
the navigation bar will be appear as you selected.

On July 6th, the new web site will go live as www.ietf.org.  The old
site will then be accessible at www4.ietf.org, but the Secretariat will
not be updating it any longer, so it will quickly become stale.

At the end of August, the old web site will be takes offline.  These two
months will be used to ensure that all of the web content is available
on the new web site and allow any tools that extract content to be
updated.

Any web site is a work in progress.  The IAOC and the Secretariat are
committed to continuing to improve the web site.  So, please let us send
email to the IETF Executive Director, Alexa Morris <[email-masked]>,
with suggestions for further improvements.  She is looking forward to
receiving your suggestions and constructive criticism.

Russ Housley
IETF Chair

---

From: Leslie Daigle <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:32:21 -0300

I do note, with favour, that it at least implies there will still be 
text (and html) agendas in the future.

Leslie.
... still trying to figure out why there is only a PDF version of the 
IETF75 agenda on the current website...

IETF Chair wrote:
> _______________________________________________
> Ietf mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

-- 

-------------------------------------------------------------------
"Reality:
      Yours to discover."
                                 -- ThinkingCat
Leslie Daigle
[email-masked]
-------------------------------------------------------------------

---

From: Alexa Morris <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:03:36 -0700

We are currently experiencing some problems with the agenda tool, and  
until they are addressed we are not able to generate an html or text  
version of the agenda. We hope to have the tool repaired shortly.

Alexa

On Jun 23, 2009, at 2:32 PM, Leslie Daigle wrote:

> ... still trying to figure out why there is only a PDF version of  
> the IETF75 agenda on the current website...
>
> IETF Chair wrote:
>> 2) Make it easier for experienced community members to access  
>> the     tools and information they most need; and
>>   3) Ensure that the web site is compliant with W3C standards  
>> and     accessible to as many people as possible.

-----------
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---

From: Dave Cridland <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:51:11 +0100

> 1) Make it easier for those who are new to the IETF to get involved;
Might want to be clearer on what the "Note Well" link is to -  
experienced IETF people know what that is, but few newcomers would  
guess it's the IPR policy and participation terms and conditions.

It might be useful to have a non-normative, but friendlier, overview  
of those terms, too.

Dave
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---

From: "Dearlove, Christopher (UK)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:01:53 +0100

I asked a colleague who is not involved in the IETF for a
comment, to see how it passed test 1 below. His first
reaction was positive. But then we noticed a problem.

He's running Firefox with noscript. He gets a simplified
version of the left hand bar - no subentries. And there
is no indication to him he was missing links, and even
when he, say, clicks on About the IETF, the page below
doesn't have substitutes for the missing Mission,
Standards Process and Note Well links (which I think
it should - I haven't checked the other similar cases).

He, and I, don't see any reason why this should be script
generated - or if the alternative views is seen as so
important (I'm not sure why) why the noscript version
doesn't show all information.

-- 
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Technology Leader, Communications Group
Networks, Security and Information Systems Department
BAE Systems Advanced Technology Centre
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-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
IETF Chair
Sent: 23 June 2009 21:25
To: IETF Announcement list
Cc: [email-masked]; [email-masked]; [email-masked]
Subject: Update to the IETF Web Site 

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For the last 10 months, the IETF Secretariat at the direction of the
IAOC and input form the IESG and the IETF community has been working on
an overhaul of the IETF web site.  The goals for the new site were
simple
and included:

   

Russ Housley
IETF Chair

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---

From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:21:04 -0400

I'd definitely like to continue to be able to use the ietf website
from text browsers.  That's not an absolute requirement for me, but it
is very convenient.

---

From: Marshall Eubanks <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:23:22 -0400

> guess it's the IPR policy and participation terms and conditions.

I had suggested, and will again, that there should be a

"New to the IETF ? Click here"

button or link which would take you to the Note Well and that this  
link should be in a prominent place at the top of the page.

Marshall

---

From: Alexa Morris <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:30:41 -0700

Marshall,

The "New to the IETF" area has not been forgotten, and is under  
development right now. It will be the final area that is added before  
the new site transitions to www.ietf.org.

Alexa

On Jun 24, 2009, at 8:23 AM, Marshall Eubanks wrote:

>> It might be useful to have a non-normative, but friendlier,  
>> overview of those terms, too.
>>
>> Dave
>> -- 

-----------

---

From: Alexa Morris <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:06:14 -0700

Sam,

We tested this and it seemed to work fine for us -- are you  
experiencing problems accessing the new site from text browsers? If  
you are, can you please provide me with a bit more information so we  
can look into it further?

Alexa

-----------

---

From: Elwyn Davies <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:05:16 +0100

I agree with this point.  It would also be good to have 'parent' links 
on these sub-pages.
I note that the same problem occurs if you select the 'Brief' option on 
the menu.
[Q: will the 'customize view' be something one can select on startup 
(e.g. by a ?string in the URL)? - I am not sure how useful the different 
versions are if you have to decide to go to brief (for example) by an 
extra mouse click.  If I like that
style it would good for me to bookmark the style.]

(More points below)

> doesn't show all information.
Additional points:

NOMCOM:  Only appears on the Home 'at a glance list' and not in the 
menus  -  A set of 'other bodies' menu links would probably be useful 
with Nomcom, iaoc, rfc ed, tools team, edu team (etc)

Various things irritated me about the left hand menu:
- The style is very inconsistent between pages at present.. maybe this 
will be fixed in due course (e.g. data tracker pages have a different 
menu style and colour, tools site is different, wikis are different).  
IESG pages are not all the same.
- The change of style for the 'advanced' menu seems rather gratuitous at 
present (I don't see anything new in the way of access methods etc. ).  
I am unclear that  four choices is really essential.
- Using Firefox v3.0.11 the aesthetics of the display of the menu are 
rather horrid in some cases (I think this is to do with first visits to 
a page)  - The menu first displays with some large blocks with the upper 
level titles in white on larger deep blue boxes (if I can hold the flash 
in my mind correctly) before redisplaying in its final form.  This is 
unpleasing.
- Is it deliberate that the top level links don't change colour after 
you have visited them whereas subsidiary and on-page links do?  I don't 
know that colour change is really useful for the menu.. but actually I 
found the menu more pleasing and helpful with the 'visited' colour 
scheme (i.e. top level links in dark blue, sublevel links in red/brown).

Overall: The main page had a terribly cluttered feel to it.  I would 
prefer more white space and the logo writ large.  Provide the 'At a 
glance' page as a site map on a separate page - after all it mostly (but 
of course not quite) just duplicates the menu at the moment.

The direct links to the RFC Editor site don't fit in very well because 
of the different style.. yes they are useful but psychologically they 
should be clearly distiguished by being in an external link category (or 
have their style brought into line).- the relationship between IETF and 
RFC Editor makes this all a bit strange.  And there is no menu to help 
you get back.. I believe you could display the RFC Editor site pages 
with the left menu still in place (Don't know the details but it is 
faniliar from shopping sites etc)

Similarly the direct displays of RFCs etc lose the menu so you can't 
navigate back other than by browser back button - not perhaps so much of 
a problem for say the RFC repository (although I would often find it 
useful). However, some pages take you to a display of an RFC by other 
routes (e.g the WG chairs page, MIB Review Guideleines displays RFC 
4181).   One solution for the repository would be a 'display in a 
separate tab/window' button as well the straight 'Go' (I can't right 
click to specify new tab/window).

There is still a learning exercise to be done when using the site: The 
menus do not contain all of the links that appear on the various 'at a 
glance' pages.  That means there are (slightly) hidden things  Maybe 
hanging all the 'at a glance' pages together into a directory/site map 
(maybe with next/previous links)  would make it clearer to be able to 
run through ALL the options when  you believe there is something there 
but *just can't find it* (like when I was trying to track down the 
nomcom link just now).

Regards,
Elwyn

---

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:45:58 -0400

>   accessible to as many people as possible.

Going at number two:
I see that the URLs for the working group charters change:
  OLD...
    http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/dkim-charter.html
  NEW...
    http://www6.ietf.org/dyn/wg/charter/dkim.html

The thing is that people have placed links to the working group
charters in many, many places, some of which will be cumbersome to
update (blogs, for example).  The same is true for RFCs, and, less
importantly, though not to be ignored, Internet Drafts.  Because the
documents don't have links off of www.ietf.org, they'll probably be
OK.

Please, I strongly urge you to at least make aliases so that the old
".../html.charters/WGNAME-charter.html" links still work.  There
really are links to them all over the place.

Thanks...
Barry Leiba