I've convinced the higher-ups that we could be doing more with our "what's new" data -- specifically offering RSS/Atom feeds and offering easier access in the form of some sort of web-based reader.
There's a challenge in that the "reader" should be viewable at low resolutions (640x480 lets say), and ideally dual as a mobile page.
Now, it seems like a 3-pane-style view is ideal here:
+---+-----------+ | a | b | | | | | +-----------+ | | c | | | | | | | +---+-----------+
Where (a) is the feed list, (b) is the article summary (titles and dates), and (c) is the full view. Now, i don't imagine that these would be actual scrollable panes due to the that that it should be presentable on a mobile screen.
However, there's also the 3-pane horizontal style which has emerged recently:
+---+-----+-----+ | a | b | c | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +---+-----+-----+
Where (a), (b), and (c) represent the same things as above. The problem is, of course, the horizontal real-estate that it requires -- not exactly suitable for low resolutions.
Since i'm not going to be using real scrollable panes, i could probably consolidate the summary and the full view into one pane, less the summary:
+---+-----------+ | a | c | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +---+-----------+
Given a limited number of feeds (10, maybe) and articles per feed (12, maybe) displayed at one time, this layout might work best.
I could see the full layout as:
+---------------+ | header | | | +---------------+ | menu | +---+---------+-+ | a | c |d| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +---+---------+-+ | footer | +---------------+
Where (d) is a gutter section for persistent/special news items.
Thoughts?
