Gentoo Archives: www-redesign

From: Aaron Shi <aaron@××××××××.com>
To: www-redesign@l.g.o
Subject: RE: [www-redesign] status of http://wwwredesign.gentoo.org
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 08:52:30
Message-Id: 000001c5f4c2$f6f102f0$6402a8c0@vega
In Reply to: Re: [www-redesign] status of http://wwwredesign.gentoo.org by Curtis Napier
1 1.
2 The gray background for the jumppads and ad bar is wrong (it's the wrong
3 gray and for the jumppads, you can also tell that the corners are off). It
4 almost seems that someone just took the graphics, turned them grayscale and
5 turned down the brightness in Photoshop. Notice for the ad bar that
6 originally CSS was used to tile the gray bg for the ad bar, and the graphic
7 in the footer connects to it. Now it's disjoint when the page is long. (And
8 the bit that's sticking out of the bottom right of the footer has nothing to
9 connect to.) Both grays for the jumppads and ad bar are the same, a very
10 light gray.
11
12 2.
13 There is a white line (1px) between the top of the ad bar and the dark gray
14 bar at the top; it's not supposed to be there. There is also a 1px white
15 line on the right of the ad bar between it and the scroll bar -- not
16 supposed to be there either.
17
18 3.
19 The new donate button looks sexier than the plain button.
20
21 4.
22 The news headlines are not vertically lined up with the author/date.
23
24 5.
25 For some reason, the current font is bigger, but it's not sharp?
26
27 6.
28 With regards to the navigation in the top right, what I said before was
29 *not* to make it *all* green, but rather make the *current* site's link
30 green (and leave the rest light purple as before), so people can tell what
31 site they're on. The light purple version that Curtis did a few days ago
32 also had better vertical centering for those links and the arrow. Since
33 they were changed to all green, the alignment is a bit off.
34
35 7.
36 For the content area, I'd make the margins equal on all sides. Otherwise,
37 it looks unbalanced.
38
39 8.
40 The bg for the author list for articles should be a very light purple --
41 gray on light gray is kind of hard to read. Same with code snippet bg, etc.
42 wherever the gray is used, please change it back to light purple. Check here
43 for the appropriate bg color: http://www.aaronshi.com/gentoo/guidepage.html
44
45 9.
46 For headings with light purple bg, I'd make give them a small padding on all
47 sides, i.e. so the characters are not right up against the edges. The
48 original intent for the bg was *not* to make it for all headings, but rather
49 *for news headings only* to highlight them on the front page where obviously
50 the content is not the main attraction (but none the less news headings are
51 important info and deserved to be put on par with the rest of the front
52 page). The news headings should be clickable, since what's displayed on the
53 front is only an abstract and it'll lead to the full article.
54
55 10.
56 While the bg for headings look okay, they seem a bit counter intuitive. The
57 green headings are main headings, and hence should be bigger and more
58 prominent. Right now, the purple subheadings are the same size as the green
59 ones and appear more prominent with the bg highlighting it. This is
60 opposite of what they should be doing and it's not user friendly. Please
61 refer to http://www.aaronshi.com/gentoo/guidepage.html to see how headings
62 should be used.
63
64 11.
65 Double check the colors for the warnings/important/notes etc., e.g.
66 http://wwwredesign.gentoo.org/doc/en/openmosix-howto.xml Important and note
67 are hard to read due to their color.
68
69 12.
70 Consistency is also a concern, things look in symphony when they are
71 consistent. There are a lot of inconsistencies that present serious
72 usability concerns.
73
74 Heading in the right direction though. ;)
75
76 > I've had individual reports from a few key people and can
77 > safely say that it renders correctly in all browsers with the
78 > exception of IE5 on mac. I decided that it was not used
79 > enough to justify the hack it would require to support it and
80 > there are alternative browsers for the mac all the way back
81 > to OS8.X that don't have outstanding security issues as IE5
82 > does. I hope the few users of this browser will understand.
83
84 Fully agree with this decision.
85
86
87 Aaron
88
89
90
91
92 > -----Original Message-----
93 > From: Curtis Napier [mailto:curtis119@g.o]
94 > Sent: Monday, November 28, 2005 10:06 PM
95 > To: www-redesign@l.g.o
96 > Subject: Re: [www-redesign] status of http://wwwredesign.gentoo.org
97 >
98 > I got together with the project leads and we finalized some
99 > decisions.
100 > The site, http://wwwredesign.gentoo.org, is now in it's final
101 > state except for the search and donate.
102 >
103 > The search is going to be implemented using google as a back
104 > end as an interim solution. The only free version of google
105 > site search that is available to us is the normal one that
106 > anyone can use. We are not the right kind of non-profit to
107 > get the free, customized search. This means you will be taken
108 > out of the gentoo site to a google controlled page.
109 >
110 > The good news is that it will allow us to do a very
111 > comprehensive advanced search page where you can fine grain
112 > your search to any of the gentoo web sites. You will be able
113 > to search documents by language, forums, developer pages,
114 > etc.... We will also hook into the bugs and forum native
115 > search engines to further enhance the search. You will be
116 > able to specify google or forum search as the search backend
117 > when you search the forum.
118 >
119 > We will be investigating alternative search engines that we
120 > can host ouselves so that we have maximum control. I won't be
121 > able to get around to that until after the other gentoo sites
122 > are migrated to the new design so google will be the default
123 > for a while. If anyone wants to do some preliminary research
124 > and start submitting suggestions I would appreciate it.
125 >
126 > I'll be setting up the search over the next week or two so stay tuned.
127 >
128 > As you can see Aarons reference site has been implemented
129 > pretty accurately now. Comments and suggestions are welcome.
130 >
131 > I've had individual reports from a few key people and can
132 > safely say that it renders correctly in all browsers with the
133 > exception of IE5 on mac. I decided that it was not used
134 > enough to justify the hack it would require to support it and
135 > there are alternative browsers for the mac all the way back
136 > to OS8.X that don't have outstanding security issues as IE5
137 > does. I hope the few users of this browser will understand.
138 >
139 > There was a small bug in konqueror that I finally got sorted
140 > out, thanks to dangle for being my tester.
141 >
142 > I'll report back when the search is ready for wide testing.
143 >
144 > Thanks everybody
145 > --
146 > www-redesign@g.o mailing list
147 >
148 >
149 >
150
151 --
152 www-redesign@g.o mailing list

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