>Hi Michel,
>
>So far the infrastructure changes haven't affected my usage of the UT except for a few things I'd like to comment on:
>
>There is (was?) no consistency on the behavior of hyperlinks on the page. Some links open a new browser, others take you to the linked page within the same browser session (I noticed this some time ago when clicking on the news items on the opening page of the UT).
>
>Regarding the news items, there is (was?) further inconsistency here: sometimes I was taken directly to the article and others I was taken to a one paragraph abstract of the article (still within the UT) and then I could click on yet another link to actually go to the article.
>
>----
>
>The downloads area used to be accessible directly from within the forum. This was great. Now I have to click on the link to the Forum's main page and then click on downloads to get to them. I don't use this that often, but it was certainly better to have to click only once as opposed to twice now.
>
>If the reason for this is that there is no space on the left panel for more buttons (probably the case for 800x600 anyway), why not get rid of the TODAY, YESTERDAY, LAST WEEK, LAST MONTH, and CURRENT buttons?
>
>If anything, the yesterday, last week, and last month do pretty much the same except they give you more or less days in the drop-down. I don't see the logic behind this. There could be a single button (last month) that allows you to go all the way back to 30 days, which, btw, you could do anyway with the calendar, can't you?
>
>Besides, changing this would lead to a cleaner interface.
>
>-----
>
>Messages/Replies/Agent/Private buttons used to be AT THE BOTTOM of the left panel, which made them very easy to reach. The REPLIES button was particularly well placed there because I could click on it and just move the mouse a bit to the right and be precisely over the replies.
>
>Adittionally, the readablity of the numbers next to those buttons was better when they were at the bottom of the left panel.
>
>If we take the static/dynamic approach to this, it's much easier from a usability perspective to have static content at the top (the buttons that don't change), and dynamic content at the bottom (messages/replies/agent/private buttons, whose numbers change constantly).
>
>The users' eyes "navigate" with more ease to the END of a column under which there is white space, than to the top of that column, where there is no white space but more links and then the browser's controls on the top.
>
>----
>
>I think that the buttons should be moved to the bottom, and the today/yesterday/etc buttons should be consolidated into a single one, thus improving the visual navigation through the screen, and avoiding redundancy respectively.
>
>Alex

Alex,

I agree with you. Just add your comments to the new document in the documents section. Or, if you want, I'll do it for you.

I also like Messages etc. buttons at the bottom. Drop-down combo with Today/Yesterday etc., as it was before, was fine with me. Static content should be easily accessable from Forum main page and from the Left panel, as before...