[www-redesign] banter

[Michael Curtis Napier]

Swift posted his roadmap to:

http://dev.gentoo.org/~swift/www-redesign/roadmap.html

I took the liberty of converting it to guidexml and posting it on the
test site:

http://curtis119.no-ip.org/proj/en/infrastructure/www-redesign/index.xml

I've added some updates to the roadmap and some news. This is not an
official project page nor does it replace swifts' roadmap. This is my
personal project page showing news/status of what I am doing.

------------------

I have a basic layout for every page except bugs.gentoo.org and More
News. I should have them done by tonight. After that I will start
working on the sitemap and should have something up by tomorrow or
possibly tonight. Once the sitemap is done I can start working on the
menu system. The refinement of the layout is priority 1 after that.

I will need input for the sitemap. swift already has a basic outline
here:

http://dev.gentoo.org/~swift/www-redesign/structure.txt

It needs to be updated and completed. I will use this as a base and
build a complete site map. It is my understanding that the gentoo store
is now closed. Will we have a new store sponsored by the Foundation?
Until I hear otherwise I am going on the assumption that the store is
no more and removing it from the site map.

-------------------

I have a plan for the guide.xsl that includes breaking it down into
smaller templates (like project.xsl is now) so it will be easier to
update/maintain. I also want to redo the menu template in guide.xsl so
that it creates the menu dynamically. Changing according to which page
you are on. For example:

the gentoo logo in the upper left corner should always point back to
the main index (or the site map?). Even on the Forum (currently links
to the forum index). This is normal web design to have a main link on
EVERY page that points back to the index in the same prominent place.
The menu bar would then show the links relevant to the page with the
first link being the sub-page (like docs) and then the other menu
entries would be specific to the category. It should be the site map in
menu form. I have 2 ideas on implementing this:

*make a new xsl template that reads a new xml markup tag <menu></menu>
from the actual xml itself. This would be hard because every page would
need to be updated. Any page that wasn't would use a generic menu. This
would be good for dev space pages. Each dev can create a custom menu
for their page.

*create a dynamic menu in guide.xsl and use the existing ID of the page
in a series of xsl IF statements to generate the menu. This is the
easiest way IMHO but I am not an xsl guru by any means. Dev space pages
can have a generic menu relevant to every dev with custom links on the
index.xml page.

It will be a few days/a week before I can start working on this. Input
from relevant devs would be appreciated.

------------------

If anyone has comments/questions/suggestions or just wants to pitch in
and help please feel free to post to this list. I posted some
screenshots in the redesign forum thread for public viewing:

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-2421342.html#2421342

My test site is located at:

http://curtis119.no-ip.org

I will be doing extensive changes/testing over the next few weeks so if
it is down just wait an hour or so and it should be back up.

Please don't give out the curtis119.no-ip.org URL to anyone outside the
mailing list. This site runs on my home dsl line and I have limited
bandwidth. 

Thanks everyone.

ps. the project was mentioned in this weeks GWN. Thanks Pylon!:

http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20050523-newsletter.xml
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