[geeklog-devel] Graphics

Vincent Furia vfuria at gmail.com
Wed Nov 3 18:40:50 EDT 2010 

Just wanted to add some input from the mentor summit. Saturday morning I
attended the session "Creating the Ideal Homepage for your Project". Sadly,
it looks like the note taker from that session never posted the notes. Here
are the bullets of what I took away from the session:

   - Navigation on the top of the page is infrequently used and often
   ignored entirely. One organization did an eye tracking study and found top
   navigation is least viewed content on the page.
   - Design consisting of solely or mostly text is intimidating. This is
   especially true for dense text.
   - Keeping content for developers (perhaps better labeled contributors)
   separate from content for users ("site developers" in our case) usually
   promotes cleaner more user friendly design.
   - "Screencast" videos are popular among non-contributors, but (almost)
   completely ignored by contributors.
   - Use other open source projects' web sites as examples. Feel free to
   copy design from other sites (with their permission). I think we should take
   a look at other CMSs' sites and figure out which design details are
   applicable to us and try to incorporate those design elements into our site.
   - The group had mixed feelings about whether and how prominently case
   studies and example sites should be featured. Everyone did agree that it is
   a bad idea to commit to a time line to refreshing content (e.g. a site of
   the week) for fear of being unable to keep to an update schedule.
   - The other place of much group dissent was how much, if any, detail
   should be included on the front page describing the project (i.e. an "about"
   section).
   - Prominent "Download" buttons were liked by almost everyone
(geeklog.netis an example of this).

The group also (very briefly) took a look at geeklog.net and had some
suggestions and comments. Sadly, I seem to have misplaced the notes I took
during that time. Here is the what I remember:

   - The prominent download button was considered a good choice.
   - The three column layout was universally panned for being to cluttered.
   - The forum block was praised for keeping content on the homepage fresh.
   - People commented that the site was difficult to take in because of the
   text density.
   - The general color scheme of the site was thought to be pretty good.

I'm not sure how to directly apply all these points to our site layout. I
think a customized front page with a bit less content, but with some
prominent useful links would be a good idea.

There was bit more discussion about other open source projects' sites, but I
don't think I'll go into detail on those as the parts that are relevant to
geeklog.net are covered above. Let me know if you guys have any questions
about the session or any of the notes.

-Vinny



On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 15:50, Tom <websitemaster at cogeco.net> wrote:

> It sounds like most of the problems you have are fixable and just need a
> few
> tweaks here and there. When I start on this I will setup a demo site so we
> all can review (and critic!). Maybe a few people will have some extra time
> to help out with some of the css issues. I hope to get this into 1.8.0 but
> obviously it depends on the time I need to put into it and when 1.8.0 will
> actually come out.
>
> >- It has a fixed width.
>
> I actually prefer the fixed width as it makes designing easier and looks
> better on bigger screens.
>
> Tom
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: geeklog-devel-bounces at lists.geeklog.net
> [mailto:geeklog-devel-bounces at lists.geeklog.net] On Behalf Of Dirk Haun
> Sent: November-03-10 3:37 PM
> To: Geeklog Development
> Subject: Re: [geeklog-devel] Graphics
>
> Tom wrote:
>
> > I also hope to switch over to the css version of the Professional theme
> from
> > Geeklog.jp but I have to look into that a bit more.
>
> I actually had a look at it last weekend to check if it would be possible
> to
> use it in 1.8.0.
>
> While it's obviously a good clean start, there are a couple of things I
> didn't like:
>
> - The font is different, at least on my machine. Despite what's declared in
> the CSS, I get a serif font instead of a sans-serif font (checked with
> Firefox and Safari).
>
> - It has a fixed width.
>
> - Some of the alignments are odd or off, e.g. for the search box in the
> left
> block or the line with the "welcome" and the date above the centerblock. I
> realize not everything can be translated 1:1 to pure CSS, so some of them
> may simply require some getting used to, e.g. the R/E checkboxes for the
> permissions.
>
> - In many forms, text before and after checkboxes needs some horizontal
> space, IMO.
>
> - In the plain story editor, the width of the intro/body text areas should
> be increased. Also, there's a border around the permissions editor but not
> around anything else.
>
> As I said, it's a good start (and I don't doubt it was a lot of work -
> kudos). But I think it needs some fine-tuning before it becomes our default
> theme.
>
> bye, Dirk
>
> _______________________________________________
> geeklog-devel mailing list
> geeklog-devel at lists.geeklog.net
> http://eight.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/geeklog-devel
>
> __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus
> signature
> database 5589 (20101103) __________
>
> The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.
>
> http://www.eset.com
>
>
>
>
> __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus
> signature
> database 5589 (20101103) __________
>
> The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.
>
> http://www.eset.com
>
>
>
> __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus
> signature
> database 5589 (20101103) __________
>
> The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.
>
> http://www.eset.com
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> geeklog-devel mailing list
> geeklog-devel at lists.geeklog.net
> http://eight.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/geeklog-devel
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/geeklog-devel/attachments/20101103/f6cb94cb/attachment.html>

More information about the geeklog-devel mailing list