new front page, take 1
Josip Rodin
/me prepares for the barrage
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Gustavo Noronha Silva
Josip Rodin <j...@cibalia.gkvk.hr> wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 30, 2001 at 03:32:10PM +0100, Josip Rodin wrote:
> Oh and, obviously, the "quick browse" thing at the top is missing, so the
> page is too newbie-oriented. Maybe we should replace the red navbar with
> something better.
it's there by now, it seems... I completly agree with replacing the red
navbar but with what? I don't think drop-down menus will make people
happy...
I like the page, it is just like /devel now... but I missed
the left menu, I hope it will be there, right?
[]s!
--
Gustavo Noronha Silva - kov <http://www.metainfo.org/kov>
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Josip Rodin
> > Oh and, obviously, the "quick browse" thing at the top is missing, so the
> > page is too newbie-oriented. Maybe we should replace the red navbar with
> > something better.
> it's there by now, it seems... I completly agree with replacing the red
> navbar but with what? I don't think drop-down menus will make people
> happy...
>
> I like the page, it is just like /devel now... but I missed
> the left menu, I hope it will be there, right?
That's the thing I'm talking about in what you quoted above :)
Josip Rodin
> > http://joy.gkvk.hr/newfront/
> >
> > /me prepares for the barrage
>
> girlfriend test. I asked my nonDebianized girlfriend which front page
> she liked better, without telling her which one was the current
> one. She chose the new one, she likes the black headers on the
> sections.
LOL! Cool :)
> I think it would be nice if the headers were clickable.
>
> I like the layout too, although I wondered if the light blue
> background would look better with square corners. Something about the
>
> ( )
> ( )
>
> effect at the top of the page bugs me; when the blue bar was just on
> one side it doesn't bug me.
Yeah, it looks somewhat... fatty, I guess? :)
> I suppose the Help Debian header is made into two lines to draw
> attention; but it looks a little awkward.
It's a bug/feature in some browsers. It's not supposed to wrap. I don't get
it.
> I like the linked hypertext for newbies, as long as there's a popup
> somewhere for old hands' quick navigation.
Yes, like I said, that part is missing.
> It looks OK in Lynx, too, but the old one looks nicer. The hr's in the
> old version really help in Lynx. Maybe you could sneak some hr's with
> the same color as the background in?
Hrm, that would probably look bad in links then... I hadn't checked it with
lynx.
> definitly -> definitely
Thanks.
Chris Tillman
> On Sun, Dec 30, 2001 at 10:00:53AM -0700, Chris Tillman wrote:
> > I suppose the Help Debian header is made into two lines to draw
> > attention; but it looks a little awkward.
>
> It's a bug/feature in some browsers. It's not supposed to wrap. I don't get
> it.
One trick I've used with printing documents in the MacOS world is an
'Option-Space' which is interpreted as a required, non-wrappable
space. Does Linux have such a character?
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Gerfried Fuchs
> http://joy.gkvk.hr/newfront/
I like it. I have just one sugguestion: Don't make it three rows in
two colums, simply make it 2 colums and put in both of them a table with
three rows. I think it would make it align better although it can end
up with quite some space at the bottom of one of the colums.
Just a thought....
Alfie
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Josip Rodin
> > http://joy.gkvk.hr/newfront/
>
> I like it. I have just one sugguestion: Don't make it three rows in
> two colums, simply make it 2 colums and put in both of them a table with
> three rows. I think it would make it align better although it can end
> up with quite some space at the bottom of one of the colums.
Actually, won't that sort it improperly in Lynx?
Peter Karlsson
> http://joy.gkvk.hr/newfront/
I never really liked the /devel layout, so I can't say I dig this:
1. It's messy; different sized (width, height) boxes, with different amount
of text.
2. It's bad coding; it is using <table> for layout, the headings (like "What
is Debian") is not a <h> tag, which disables Opera's heading-navigation
(W/S).
3. There's too many different colours (white on blue on red, yellow on black
on light-blue, black on white on light-blue, etc.)
4. There's no good reading order (should I go top-down or left-right)?
5. It's multi-column. I size my browser to fit as much text on a line as I
can read. I really, *really*, REALLY hate it when pages try to force
their own column widths on me. I can take a navbar on either side with
text that re-flows (like the old one), but I don't like this approach.
But it's good that you throw some ideas around.
--
\\//
peter - pe...@softwolves.pp.se
Joey Hess
> I never really liked the /devel layout, so I can't say I dig this:
Peter sums up my thoughts nicely. Especially points 1, 3, and 5, and
most espcially point 3 (too many color combinations).
OTOH, I think the text and links (especially in the "using debian"
section) are a lot better than the current page.
--
see shy jo
Josip Rodin
> I never really liked the /devel layout, so I can't say I dig this:
>
> of text.
AFAICT the differences in size are rather small. I looked at it in links
80x25 and mozilla 800x600. Can you make a snapshot so I can see if the
picture we're seeing is too different?
> 2. It's bad coding; it is using <table> for layout, the headings (like "What
> is Debian") is not a <h> tag, which disables Opera's heading-navigation
> (W/S).
WRT <table> -- it's the same old argument... :)
I thought I couldn't make those things <h> and Helvetica at the same time,
so I didn't try. Are you saying it's possible?
> 3. There's too many different colours (white on blue on red, yellow on black
> on light-blue, black on white on light-blue, etc.)
Another old argument.
Though I can't say much about the red parts at the top -- I just left those
intact, and worked on index.wml.
> 4. There's no good reading order (should I go top-down or left-right)?
Left to right. How do you read all other web pages? If anything, _this_ can
be assumed...
> 5. It's multi-column. I size my browser to fit as much text on a line as I
> can read.
It's a matter of space. If I made it all into a normal page, the whole page
would have been long and there would be many paragraphs with one-line
sentences. This would undoubtedly annoy many vgreps[1] out there.
Pages that have >= 3 columns and too much contrast (a bad imitation of
newspapers) also annoy many vgreps out there[2] -- that's why I used just
two of them. Two doesn't seem to be excessive to me, even in links(1) which
narrows the page.
> But it's good that you throw some ideas around.
:)
[1] visual grep
[2] including mine, ugh
Jeff Albro
Thanks for putting up a prototype! I like the layout of the new page. It
seems to me to be easier to scan.
Here are my comments:
About the "too many colors" issue. If you make the top nav bar in a
similar style as the rest of the page it will all look fine, and avoid the
"clown pants" effect.
I believe one of the original goals of the redesign RFC was to "clean up"
the About Debian section. It would appear that the new design breaks up
those menu items into "What is Debian" and "Help Debian". I LOVE this as
it breaks up the menu items by the users "intentions" ala, LEARN about
Debian, or HELP Debian. If it turns out that a decision is made against
the new graphical layout, this idea could be used with the current layout.
While I think the new page will be better for new users to scan, I find it
breaks some things I've come to rely on, like a quick link to the mailing
list archives and a quick link to package search. I think the new page
will be less useful to long time debian web-site users. I'm not sure how
I feel about this. I suspect more long term users would want to use the
site map to move around. If so, the site map should be improved.
Currently it's quite hard to scan (or vgrep as Josip says).
Move the developers corner link into the helping debian box. It looks
lonely out there.
Some suggestions that would apply to either this page or the current one:
Add a search entry box next to the search button on the top nav bar. You
have room for it unless you go below 640x480. Users who are looking to
search look for an entry box.
Add the current DWN to the news area, and show less "other" news. The
logs showed (IIRC) that the DWN was far more popular.
-Jeff
PS: I hope everyone is having happy holidays!
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Albro je...@antistatic.com
Customer Interaction Consultant Boston, MA
Jeff Albro
> > Add the current DWN to the news area, and show less "other" news. The
> > logs showed (IIRC) that the DWN was far more popular.
>
> That would be hard, DWN is really not desinged to fit into a little
> box. Unless you mean the (fairly uninteresting) one line summaries of
> each issue.
I do. Such as the short index descriptions on
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/
-Jeff
Peter Karlsson
> AFAICT the differences in size are rather small. I looked at it in links
> 80x25 and mozilla 800x600. Can you make a snapshot so I can see if the
> picture we're seeing is too different?
http://www.softwolves.pp.se/privat/newfront.png is what I see.
> I thought I couldn't make those things <h> and Helvetica at the same time,
> so I didn't try. Are you saying it's possible?
H1 { display: inline; font: Helvetica; background: black; color: #ffd400; }
would probably do the trick.
> Though I can't say much about the red parts at the top -- I just left those
> intact, and worked on index.wml.
Yes, but since it adds more colours it's a bit messy.
> Left to right. How do you read all other web pages? If anything, _this_ can
> be assumed...
Since it's two-column, my first assumption is to read the left column and
then the right column (like a newspaper), but then things come out of order.
--
\\//
peter - pe...@softwolves.pp.se
--
Josip Rodin
> I think that perhaps a main feature/section could cover the top/main part
> of the page - maybe with an illustration or so. For instance, how about
> retaining the "What is Debian?" section on top (as it is now),
You know, that's what my initial redesign sketch used, a few years back. It
was deemed repugnant because of the color scheme, though it seems that part
wasn's such a bad idea after all.
Cf. http://joy.gkvk.hr/greeny/
> with a "Debian" block diagram showing the Linux and HURD kernels at the
> bottom or in the core, with libraries on top, then utilties, GUIs, etc?
Sounds interesting. If you provide such a diagram (in PNG or something)...
> Or perhaps a screenshot of some Debian-specific feature, say, Gnome-APT?
Screenshots tend to take up too much space if not shrinked, or look crappy
and unappealing if shrinked. Once again, if you can provide a sample...
Josip Rodin
> > AFAICT the differences in size are rather small. I looked at it in links
> > 80x25 and mozilla 800x600. Can you make a snapshot so I can see if the
> > picture we're seeing is too different?
>
I see. The top two boxes only differ a couple of pixels (moz) one line
(links) here.
> > I thought I couldn't make those things <h> and Helvetica at the same time,
> > so I didn't try. Are you saying it's possible?
>
> H1 { display: inline; font: Helvetica; background: black; color: #ffd400; }
>
> would probably do the trick.
Oh, of course.
/me kicks himself, remembering he uses the same thing on his homepage
Which reminds me, I need to bug the admins again (JT?) to change the log
format so we can see useragents. I'm really starting to believe CSS would be
acceptable for the vast majority of viewers, but we should have more
numbers.
> > Left to right. How do you read all other web pages? If anything, _this_ can
> > be assumed...
>
> Since it's two-column, my first assumption is to read the left column and
> then the right column (like a newspaper), but then things come out of order.
Well, it's not two-column. It's a matrix of boxes, that's why they have the
black outline around them.
Jeffrey C. Albro
> > http://www.softwolves.pp.se/privat/newfront.png is what I see.
>
> I see. The top two boxes only differ a couple of pixels (moz) one line
> (links) here.
I have found that different browsers can interpret cellpadding,
cellspacing and border widths differently. If you want a truly consistant
layout you can set all those values to zero and use extra cells with a
specified pixel width. It's a bit ungainly but it works.
-Jeff
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Albro je...@antistatic.com
Customer Interaction Consultant Boston, MA
Josip Rodin
> > Which reminds me, I need to bug the admins again (JT?) to change the log
> > format so we can see useragents. I'm really starting to believe CSS would be
> > acceptable for the vast majority of viewers, but we should have more
> > numbers.
>
> me and I'll figure it out myself. :)
Actually, for testing purposes I tried doing it locally but I can't seem to
get it done. I tried using 'CustomLog /var/log/apache/access.log combined'
in /etc/apache/httpd.conf but it didn't change the log file. After
restarting Apache, of course.
But it's somewhere along those lines...
Peter Karlsson
> Well, it's not two-column. It's a matrix of boxes, that's why they have the
> black outline around them.
Yeah, but it's in a sort-of-two-column matrix... The reason why I don't like
"boxes" like this is because they remind me of newspaper (or web)
advertisments, and I have carefully trained my eyes not to read those, which
makes me miss all the important stuff if I browse with my brain in
"automatic" mode...
--
\\//
peter - pe...@softwolves.pp.se
Peter Karlsson
> I see. The top two boxes only differ a couple of pixels (moz) one line
> (links) here.
It might also be because I have
TABLE, TR, TH, TD {
width: auto !important;
}
in my personal style-sheet as an override to brain-dead web-duh-signers that
like to use <table> to layout text to fixed widths that look good to them,
but sucks with my settings.
--
\\//
peter - pe...@softwolves.pp.se
Craig Small
> On Mon, Dec 31, 2001 at 12:12:48PM -0500, James A. Treacy wrote:
> > > Which reminds me, I need to bug the admins again (JT?) to change the log
> > > format so we can see useragents. I'm really starting to believe CSS would be
> > > acceptable for the vast majority of viewers, but we should have more
> > > numbers.
> >
> > Tell me the change and I'll do it. If you want me to do it, just yell at
> > me and I'll figure it out myself. :)
>
> Actually, for testing purposes I tried doing it locally but I can't seem to
> get it done. I tried using 'CustomLog /var/log/apache/access.log combined'
> in /etc/apache/httpd.conf but it didn't change the log file. After
> restarting Apache, of course.
That's the right command, depending on which log file you want to use.
I'm surprised it didn't work though there was some strange issue about
virtual hosts and log formats but that was a while ago and I
don't remember specifics.
You also need a line like:
LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined
It's like common except it has referer and user-agent.
BTW, I think using CSS would be a great idea and would then clear up a
lot of things and make them standardised. For example if we didn't
particularly like that particular yellow we can change it, also you
start to use things like h1 instead of font which is good for links.
Netscape will bork them up, but then again Netscape screws pretty much
everything up so I wouldn't be too worried about that. My version of
Gaelon messes some things up too, but Galeon is buggy; it renders a page
I know differently every second refresh, nice huh.
A bad example that is almost w3c compliant is at
http://people.debian.org/~csmall/ipv6/
It's good enough for me, I suspect it needs a bit more work but I'm not
too worried about it. It's also xhtml. BTW Dennis, I haven't put your
no <ul> in <p> changes yet :/
- Craig
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Denis Barbier
[...]
> It's good enough for me, I suspect it needs a bit more work but I'm not
> too worried about it. It's also xhtml. BTW Dennis, I haven't put your
> no <ul> in <p> changes yet :/
As you mentioned this problem more than once, I'll say some words about it ;)
Many pages do contain
<p><ul>...</ul>
or
<p><pre>...</pre>
tags. The first idea when adding closing tags is to write
<p><ul>...</ul></p>
Unfortunately this is wrong, because <p> cannot (as defined in HTML specs)
contain <ul> tags, and previous syntax is in fact equivalent to
<p></p><ul>...</ul>
I would suggest to recommend validation by wdg-html-validator instead of
weblint, because it is based on a real SGML parser (weblint seems to be a basic
HTML syntax checker).
Denis
Josip Rodin
Sorry for the delay, this got lost in my enormous TODO list...
On Thu, Jan 03, 2002 at 04:36:49PM -0800, Tor Slettnes wrote:
> Tor> with a "Debian" block diagram showing the Linux and HURD
> Tor> kernels at the bottom or in the core, with libraries on top,
> Tor> then utilties, GUIs, etc?
>
> Josip> Sounds interesting. If you provide such a diagram (in PNG
> Josip> or something)...
>
> Well, not being a graphic artist, I think this one is somewhat crude -
> but should give a basic idea:
>
> http://www.debian.org/~tor/debiancomponents.png
>
> The original GIMP file (editable) can be had from the same place:
>
> http://www.debian.org/~tor/debiancomponents.xcf.gz
>
> If there is some interest in this concept, I could spend some time
> trying to improve on the image. Or if someone has graphical skills,
> all the better. :)
Interesting! I think this would be useful... but then, I can guarantee that
there will be oodles of people who would bitch because their favorite part
of Debian isn't mentioned...