Am I understanding the draft correctly in that at this level 2 page, all level 1 menu options will be shown in a horizontal layout? I can see where this would give maximum flexibility for an experienced user to jump quickly from task to task, but I'm concerned that it uses a lot of the page for items that are not relevant to the current task.
If the bold-face level 1 item indicates this level 2 page's ancestor, that suggests that the drill-down levels are known such that a more compact "breadcrumb" sort of interface could be used. This could be a huge benefit to anyone trying to maintain a list from a portable device (smartphone).
I've been very happy with the enhancement to the Windows Explorer address field in Vista. Each component of the path has become a button/link, allowing you to jump up to that ancestor folder. Separating path components are triangles which open drop-down menu, allowing you to select a different subfolder from that point. Applied to Mailman, this model would give something like:
Listname >>> Level 1 >> Level 2
- "Listname" would be a link to the listinfo page;
">>>" would open a popup menu showing all Level 1 options for the list; e.g.,
"options","subscriptions","identity","statistics"- "Level 1" would link back to this level 1 page (equivalent to the bold level 1 button in the webinterface draft), e.g., "options"
">>" would open a menu showing all Level 2 options for the level 1 ancestor of this page; e.g.,
"general","topics","plugins"- "Level 2" is plain text indicating the current page; e.g., "general"
Looking at the global requirement for a task based interface, I'm not seeing where on the page a user would find confirmation of the current task.If you liked the single-line breadcrumb style, there could be an extra menu in there: Listname >>> Task >> Level 1 > Level 2. In your designs, I wonder whether the text in the red stamps ("requests (moderator)", "configuration (owner)", etc.) might be useful to actually display them after the listname, above the level 1 lists.
Thanks for your work!