ClearFoundation

The top part of the page (highlighted above) is typically used for:

• Login/logout (typically top right)
• Search (typically top right)
• Production logo and release

Certainly no surprises here. In ClearOS, there might be an opportunity to display important system messages, for example:

• Notify the user of a critical software update
• Notify the user of a critical issue (hard disk space running out)

As it stands right now, you can certainly make the argument that the banner is wasting a lot of vertical space.

In ClearOS, the top part of the body (highlighted in the picture above) contains summary information. In version 5.0, the following information was provided:

• A 1-sentence description
• A web link to help
• A small logo

ClearOS 5.1 was updated to provide more information:

• A web link to technical support
• A web link to the related report (e.g. the Web Server page will have a link to the reports)
• A web link to the related status information (e.g. the Intrusion Prevention page will have a link to the real-time status page)
• A standard “breadcrumb” (e.g. Network > Proxy and Filtering > Web Proxy) to give the user some navigation help.

We also made the summary box more flexible and extensible. In the future, you may see other tidbits of information:

• Version information
• Vendor/Author if the feature is from a third party
• Software update information (e.g. “a software update is now available for this feature”)

In ClearOS, the menu system is difficult to get right (the 5.1 beta 1 is highlighted in the picture above). The system needs to be:

• Intuitive
• Easy to navigate

There are many types of navigation design patterns available. When deciding on the right menu system, there is one very important aspect worth highlighting. Unlike a relatively static web site or even web application, the ClearOS menu system is much more dynamic. You may have the whole kitchen sink installed, you may just have all the network-centric applications installed, or you may just have a minimalist file server. The ClearOS menu system needs to be flexible enough to cover many deployment scenarios.