[kdewebdev-site] New Design

[Chris Hornbaker]

On Saturday 01 May 2004 01:08, David Joham wrote:
> On Friday 30 April 2004 12:39 pm, Américo C. Santos Neto wrote:
> > Can you please send a real size JPG? I'm having trouble opening the file!
> >
> > Thanks in advance,
> >
> > Américo
>
> Here you go Américo.

That's interesting! I sent Américo a PNG and it was only 14KB. I thought 
people said PNGs were larger? :-D

> Chris, this is really nice. I have some questions for you. Can you get back
> with me on these please?
>
> 1) Other than screenshots, what did you have in mind for the boxes? I'm
> thinking that they would be for tool logos and quick blurbs about the tools
> we offer (logo of quanta with the tag line "World-Class Web Development)
> and would be good jump points to the appropriate <tool>.kdewebdev.org site.
> The boxes are nice in that they draw attention to the tools while still
> conveying the idea that they are all part of a suite.

Yes, that would work too.

>
> 2) I'm concerned that the boxes are on the bottom, though. If we have too
> much content in the center, they'll scroll off the page unless we use
> frames (over my dead body) or some other HTML wizardry that will probably
> never work in IE (yes, looking good in IE is a requirement). Maybe we could
> move them to the top so they're always in view? What are your thoughts on
> this? Américo?

I think that'll make it look cluttered. I was going to place them vertically, 
but that little bit of whitespace on the sides made it look much less "busy".

I'm against frames, too. If there's too much content, then we could use 
<object> and add some controls to "flip" the page. Easy.

> 3) How many tools do we have in kdewebdev.org? I asked before which tools
> we were going to include, but all I got was an answer of "All of them" :)
> What ones are "all of them". One problem with using boxes for outlining a
> tools is that it will be considerably more difficult to add a tool in the
> future. We'll have to lay the site out again and decide what to do if we
> have an odd number.

5, I think. If the number of tools gets larger, we can always just make the 
boxes smaller. (By such a time, I would imagine that we'd be looking for a 
new design anyway, so... whatever :-)

> 4) I'm not sure the boxes belong on the tool site. The tool site should
> concentrate specifically on the tool being presented. What would you put
> for content there? I'd also like a little more visual difference between
> the portal site and the tools sites to help emphasize that the portal is a
> website for the suite of tools while the tools sites are for the individual
> tools.

You could put rants and raves. Awards. Message from the/a developer. Anything 
really.

I don't know about you, but I'm suddenly reminded of Chapter 11 of the Tao Te 
Ching ( http://www.nokama.com/tao/index.cfm?fuseaction=chapter&ch=11 ), which 
ends with:
Therefore profit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there.

> 5) Curves in HTML are evil. Your mockup looks really nice with them, but
> are you sure you want to go there? :)

YES! Curves are easy.

> 6) I'm not sure tabs are the appropriate navigation metaphore for the tools
> site. I think I'm OK with the portal site having them since there isn't a
> whole lot of places to go, but there are a lot of links (8 or so as
> described in the vision statement) in the tools site. 8 tabs will get awful
> crowded on an 800X600 screen (maybe even a 1024x768) and won't leave us
> much (if any) room to expand in the future if we want to. Could you maybe
> work with Américo and take a stab at having a left column navigation
> structure for the tools sites to see what it would look like?

Left column navigation is no different than what I propose -- except for LCN 
being UGLY. It'll clutter the design. Tabs will work beautifully, IMHO.

>
> Any other feedback from the list?
>

Stop by http://www.alistapart.com some time a look around.


-- 
Christopher Hornbaker           
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