I don't think that the wish for top-of-the-page tabs in the subject guides was motivated by any particular reason other than they are a popular navigational feature that provides a compact way of moving between related pages easily. I am not aware of any empirical research on whether users find tabs to be more effective than vertical menus (such as Drupal's navigation menus) for moving between related pages of content but it would be interesting to see if that's the case.
I think a more useful feature for the creators of library subject guides is the ability to add blocks containing syndication feeds and other dynamic content or widgets. In Drupal it is possible to give users the Administer blocks permission, but the interface is block-oriented, not page-oriented -- by that I mean that the user is presented with a list of all blocks and then needs to use a combination of Region and Operations tasks to make a block appear on a specific page or set of pages. This all needs to be done outside the context of the page(s) that the block is to appear on. The drag and drop placement feature in D6 is great (I've seen developers and site admins drool over it), but to allow a user to add a block from the page they want it to appear on by dragging it where they want it and then configuring what it does using a few simple choices would be a truly killer feature in library sites (or any others) where there are a large number of content creators who may want to add blocks to their pages.
I like your idea of defining the usability requirements for library sites. If drupalibers want to pursue this I suggest setting up a forum topic on it. Let me know and I can do that, or feel free to do it yourself.
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In situ block configuration more impressive than tabs
Hi Michael,
I don't think that the wish for top-of-the-page tabs in the subject guides was motivated by any particular reason other than they are a popular navigational feature that provides a compact way of moving between related pages easily. I am not aware of any empirical research on whether users find tabs to be more effective than vertical menus (such as Drupal's navigation menus) for moving between related pages of content but it would be interesting to see if that's the case.
I think a more useful feature for the creators of library subject guides is the ability to add blocks containing syndication feeds and other dynamic content or widgets. In Drupal it is possible to give users the Administer blocks permission, but the interface is block-oriented, not page-oriented -- by that I mean that the user is presented with a list of all blocks and then needs to use a combination of Region and Operations tasks to make a block appear on a specific page or set of pages. This all needs to be done outside the context of the page(s) that the block is to appear on. The drag and drop placement feature in D6 is great (I've seen developers and site admins drool over it), but to allow a user to add a block from the page they want it to appear on by dragging it where they want it and then configuring what it does using a few simple choices would be a truly killer feature in library sites (or any others) where there are a large number of content creators who may want to add blocks to their pages.
I like your idea of defining the usability requirements for library sites. If drupalibers want to pursue this I suggest setting up a forum topic on it. Let me know and I can do that, or feel free to do it yourself.