Other SQL web sites

I looked at four commercial SQL server sites: Informix, MS, Oracle,
and Sybase.

Recent postings to this list have considered other web sites, in an
attempt to define what we would like to see in the PostgreSQL site. 

A friend suggested looking at sites for other SQL servers, to look for
common elements. The idea is not to copy slavishly, but to see if
there might be something that a user would expect or find familiar.

1. All sites use a dual navigation-bar approach, using a bar on top  for going about the corporation at large, and a
barat left for the  immediate "children" of the current page. I don't think we need the  top bar.
 

2. Only the Microsoft pages could expand when I widened my browser  window. The others just grew a bigger blank area at
right.

3. All but the Microsoft page seemed horribly cluttered to me, with  Oracle the worst offender.

4. There *is* common content in the second tier (topics listed in the  home page's left navigation bar). It goes
somethinglike this:    Contact Us    Development    Downloads    Partners    Product Information    Search    Support
For us, "partners" would be related open source projects, including  Apache, Java, ODBC, Perl, PHP, Pike, Python,
Roxen,Tcl/Tk.
 
  We don't have a point of contact for questions. Yes, we have  mailing lists, live and archived, but no place where
someonecan  direct a question - which is why Marc and I see non web-related  questions on a regular basis coming to
webmaster@postgresql.org.
  Our web site should have a search engine, but that's just a weekend  with htdig once the content stabilizes.


Comments on the individual sites-

http://www.informix.com Slowest of the sites, when I checked. Putrescent mustard color for navbars.

http://www.microsoft.com/sql Good per-page information density. Good balance of graphics to text (minimal gratuitous
imagery)Left navbar mostly constant from page to page (bad).
 

http://www.oracle.com Way too much stuff per page. Red-on-white color scheme makes me think of First Aid kits. Two-tier
leftnavbar with second tier triggered by mouseovers (uses too much space). Children of home page have gratuitous color
changemousevers in navbar.
 

http://www.sybase.com Explanatory mouseovers for left navbar (good).

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Hal