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Letters, Addendum, Errata

I Just thought I would tell you that you web pages have always been such a pain to figure out that I've never used them. It has been way too hard just to try to get to these articles that you advertise. They looked good, but it was too hard to find them! I have to go down about 4 links and guess right that 'OS/2 Features Section' is where I eventually want to get to, so I never used your pages. 'Current Issue - OS/2 Features Section' should be one link off your main page that takes me right there.

I'm not trying to be mean, so hopefully you will consider how to make it easier to

Stan Towianski

Editor's Response:

You have me stumped. In three years you are the first person to complain that the newsletter is poorly designed. We have gone out of our way to make our site and the Newsletter as simple and as easily accessible as possible. We don't use Frames, or any java(exception being the search feature on the Master Index).

I agree that the features section is the most popular, and that is why we created the Feature Master Index - http://www.os2voice.org/VNL/past_issues/vnlindex.html So you can just go directly to any of the feature articles for the past year. However the Newsletter includes a lot more then just the features, and not including a direct link to the Newsletter, or parts of the Newsletter was a conscious decision on our part. There is the Events Calendar, the compiled Monthly OS/2 News, and information about VOICE and VOICE membership. To be honest, this is a user group newsletter and our goal is to have people join our organization as well as help educate the OS/2 Community at large.

The more that folks join the bigger voice we attain. :-) Most all of our work(done entirely by volunteers) is available to non-members as well, so I don't think we are asking too much to have people start at the beginning and read through some of what we have to offer. You don't have to register or pay to use the information at our site. We also provide download versions in both HTML and INF format, with links included in the announcement that goes out for each issue. We couldn't provide what you ask for because of the added work it imposes on the webmaster, since each issue is in a separate directory for archiving purposes.

I honestly don't see how 3 or 4 mouse clicks is all that much to ask for in return for all that we offer. But why not just bookmark the Master Index page and then you can get to all the feature articles with 2 clicks. I will run your suggestion past the rest of the editors, and see if they have any suggestions for improving the access.

Thanks for writing,

Mark