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New ATS menu inconsistencies

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posted on Sep, 15 2010 @ 04:18 PM
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The current handling of the menu is inconsistent.

First...

1) Start at abovetopsecret.com. Mouseover the "Member tools" and you'll get a drop down menu. Click on "private messages."

2) The "member tools" button is now highlighted gray, and it is no longer a drop down. The items on the dropdown list are now text links on the row below the menu. So, next let's click on the "MyATS" text link.

3) The menu is restored, the text links are gone and member tools is no longer highlighted. Click on "member tools" again, and this time select "account settings."

4) Once again the "member tools" button has lost its drop down, and everything it contains is now a text link.

I think I understand what was intended. When the user is viewing something that is a "members tools" item, the menu button is highlighte to indicate that it's the current choice. But the handling is inconsistent. For example, if you go through all the various options on the "About us" dropdown, not a single one of them behaves this way, and in no case do the contents of the dropdown go away to become text links.

Proposed solution:
Standardize the handling for "Member Tools" options to resemble the handling of the "about us" button.


Next...


There are several inconsistencies, redundancies and some general strangeness amongst the various items on the "members tools" dropdown and the text items on the list that appears when certain items on that list are selected. Current members tools dropdown list is:

"My ATS"
"Private messages"
"ATS Chat"
"Public Profile"
"Account Settings"
"My Pictures"
"Change Password"
"Change email"
"Media Center"
"more..." (Note that this link goes to the private message page)

Whereas the text links are:

"MyATS"
"Messages"
"Complain"
"Account Settings"
"Email"
"Password"
"Subscriptions"
"Members"
"Profile"
"" (Blank? Not used? Or is that a redundant field separator? A typo?)
"My Pictures"

Note that these lists are not always the same on all pages. For example, when I first come to abovetopsecret.com, the first three dropdown items are "MyATS", "Private Messages" and "ATS Chat". But if I click on "Public Profile" suddenly "Submit Alt. Breaking news" appears on the list, where it did not appear before. This dropdown list needs to be the same regardless of which page of the member center we're looking at.

Proposed Solutions
* Change email and change password can be integrated into the account settings page.
* Eliminate the "more..." link. It doesn't need to exist.
* Add "subscriptions" to the dropdown list
* If for aesthetic or political reasons you don't want to place the "complain" link directly on the members tools dropdown where people will see it constantly, you could change it to the less provocative expresson "Site feedback."
* "Media Center" and "My Pictures" are redundant. They both appear on the dropdown menu, but they both go to the same page. Get rid of one of them.
* Note that if the text links list is made to go away, there is currently an empty field just before "My Pictures." That might just be a typo. Somebody typed in two |'s instead of one, for example. But it's possible something was intended to go there and that field is a placeholder. Someone might want to check that.
* I'm not sure that "Submit alt. breaking news" needs to be on the member center pages at all. It doesn't really make sense for it to be there. I would rather have it in the "Breaking Alternative News" forum. I propose that it be removed from the dropdown completely. But if you really must have it there, it should consistently appear on the dropdown for all member center pages, rather than only some of them.



posted on Sep, 15 2010 @ 04:23 PM
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It would be best if you post your observations in the following thread:

ATS 2010 Updates Thread

This way your comments will not go unseen.

Closing



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