5:26 p.m.
Hey, I am in charge of submitting ideas to improve translate.fp.org and
Transifex ergonomics. The fact is that webdevelopper are not
specialists in ergonomics and so am I. But I had a course this year in
the university about ergonomics on internet, so let's share this
experience to make translators lives better.
Issue #1
When you load translate.fp.org and we you go to transifex, the first
things that breaks the tool is that it is not translated yet. This
remains a problem for translators and for the website constituency.
Issue #2
When you are in transifex, the first things most of translators may
have to do is : login. Then the login area should not be at the bottom
of the menu bar, but on top of it, or on the top right handside corner.
Issue #3
Fedora is a big projet. Fedora has many web pages with a lot of
documentation and information on it. And inevitably, Fedora websites
suck into constituency : pick and choose three links from
translate.fp.org left menu. By chance :
* Join FLP
(http://docs.fedoraproject.org/translation-quick-start-guide/)
* Fedora Home (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/L10N/)
* Planet (http://planet.fedoraproject.org/)
And wow ! Four ways completely different to navigate. It sucks, really,
and it hurts. People have to learn four different ways to navigate and
four different ways to search for the information they want. This *is*
horrible.
Issue #4
The welcome page of Transifex seems to need some improvements as well.
Its menu bar goes into contradictions : there are two "modules" links.
Great, these should link to the same page, as both links have the same
word (modules). But they don't. However, you can know the difference
between the two links when you move your mouse on them. The FLP Home >
modules should definetely be named "translatable modules list" and the
Submit (Tx) > modules should be name "Send your translation" or
"submittable modules". Naming a link is very difficult because one has
to sum up what someone may expect to see once he clicks on the link.
There are two lists modules in our case, then we should differentiate
them by the action people can do with these modules : get information
about them, or submit translation.
Issue #5
On this same welcome page, the link "Jump to the modules" is not
appropriate as well, because it does not help to know where the
translator will be directed to. Which module page is expected to be
loaded by the user ? Will he be redirected to the page to look at
module statistics or to the submit a module page ? It is the second
option, it should be named "Submit your translation".
Issue #6
Let's focus on https://translate.fedoraproject.org/submit/module/ now.
This is quite a long module list isn't it ? The web developer thought
the same and wanted to improve navigation for it. However, some points
are missing. First, the button to go to the second page is not well
positioned. It should be on the right side, not the left one. And there
should be the same button under the module list, on the right side.
Issue #7
The "Back to home" button is not appropriate. Which home is the user
going to be sent to as there are both "FLP Home" and "Fedora Home" in
the menu. So, where is "home"?
Issue #8
On the same page, under the module list, on the left side or on the
right side as well, there should be a "go to the top" button.
Issue #9
On the same page, the cursor changes when it rollover the column
"repository". What for ? If this does not bring new information, it
shouldn't.
Issue #10
Is the information given by this "repository" column relevant for
translators ? It seems it is not the case, then it could be deleted. If
it is relevant for any kind of user (for the maintainer of transifex
for example), maybe it could only be displayed when he is looged in?
Which means to have a profiled website.
Issue #11
The links are not well formatted on the page. Downloading the pot file
is made trough different pattern than downloading a po file. Bug
#427155 explains this in details.
Issue #12
Let's now pick up a module from the list at
https://translate.fedoraproject.org/module/. Anaconda is a perfect
example. Let's focus on the language list. You can notice the list is
not sorted by alphabetically. It should be sorted alphabetically and
not from the statistics of the most translated language. This way, it
would be much easier to find the .po file of your language.
Issue #13
At the end of each branch list, there should be a "back to the top"
button.
Issue #14
In the first part of the module statistics page, there should be a link
to submit a translation for this module, as there is a link to display
statistics when one is to submit a translation on each page module.
Issue #15
Let's now pick up the anaconda module from
https://translate.fedoraproject.org/submit/module/ There two icons on
the right side are should be just before the "Module cache" with a text
link to click on. Icons are not used as links in the website, there is
no reason this should change :)
Issue #16
At the bottom of the page, the "back to module" link is an issue
either, the same as in Issue #5. The link could be called "submit
another module".
I published it as well on my blog at :
http://mrtomlinux.org/blog/index.php?post/Improving-Transifex-ergonomics
We'll discuss it with Dimitris when he'll be back :)
Thomas