[Haskell-cafe] Haskellers design

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Michael Snoyman

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Oct 21, 2010, 1:54:48 PM10/21/10
to Haskell Cafe
I've gotten two offers for designs for Haskellers. The one uses the
Haskell color theme choices we seem to be standardizing on as a
community, the other uses a more custom theme. There is a screenshot
of the former[1] and a demo page for the latter[2]. So the questions
are:

* How important is adhering to a "standard" look?
* Which theme is overall more visually appealing?
* Which theme gives a more professional feel?

Please note that questions 1 and 2 may have different answers. Keep in
mind when evaluating these themes, especially the first, that it is
*not* in finalized form, just an basic idea of what could be. A third
option that I have not pursued yet due to time constraints would be to
leave the layout as-is currently but replace it with the Haskell color
scheme. Yet another option would be to take the second theme mentioned
above and try to force the Haskell color theme on it; I don't find
that a good idea. Options 5 and 6 are leaving the site as it is (both
layout and design), or proposing a totally different layout.

Michael

[1] http://imgur.com/lnkE7.png
[2] http://previasports.com/haskellers_website/
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Christopher Done

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Oct 21, 2010, 2:32:02 PM10/21/10
to Michael Snoyman, Haskell Cafe
On 21 October 2010 19:54, Michael Snoyman <mic...@snoyman.com> wrote:
> Please note that questions 1 and 2 may have different answers. Keep in
> mind when evaluating these themes, especially the first, that it is
> *not* in finalized form, just an basic idea of what could be. A third
> option that I have not pursued yet due to time constraints would be to
> leave the layout as-is currently but replace it with the Haskell color
> scheme. Yet another option would be to take the second theme mentioned
> above and try to force the Haskell color theme on it; I don't find
> that a good idea. Options 5 and 6 are leaving the site as it is (both
> layout and design), or proposing a totally different layout.
>
> Michael
>
> [1] http://imgur.com/lnkE7.png
> [2] http://previasports.com/haskellers_website/

I like the colour theme of the former and the layout of the latter.
The colour theme of the first is more professional, I think. I vote
that styles should be consistent. When Haskell.org's theme finally
gets updated, Haskell will feel a lot more modern on the web, and
making that feeling go with you across the Haskell sites is important
to me. I would've provided a design myself, expanding upon this,[1] I
suppose, but time constraints are against me. I think layout of the
latter is very good, very obvious. Colours are just a bit fruit salad.

[1]: http://img840.imageshack.us/img840/3577/ideasv.png

David Virebayre

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Oct 21, 2010, 2:40:34 PM10/21/10
to Michael Snoyman, Haskell Cafe


2010/10/21 Michael Snoyman <mic...@snoyman.com>



* How important is adhering to a "standard" look?

Important yet it should not feel like it's impossible to try new things
 
* Which theme is overall more visually appealing?

2nd
 
* Which theme gives a more professional feel?

2nd 

 David.

Gregory Collins

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Oct 21, 2010, 2:41:58 PM10/21/10
to chri...@googlemail.com, Haskell Cafe
Christopher Done <chri...@googlemail.com> writes:

> I like the colour theme of the former and the layout of the latter.

Precisely what I was going to say.

G
--
Gregory Collins <gr...@gregorycollins.net>

Nubis

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Oct 21, 2010, 3:05:12 PM10/21/10
to Gregory Collins, Haskell Cafe
Hi guys,
I'm the author of that second design, although I'm not really a designer.
I'll try a variation using colors that resemble the 'official' ones so you can choose which one you like better.
The thing is the current proposal uses 4 indicative colors and a greyscale for the rest.
Green for general highlighting: Used in the overview section and all the non-work related sections of the site.
Blue for haskellers, information mostly reelevant to people looking for haskellers is in that color, so the 'find a haskeller' section and usernames are in that color for example.
Orange for jobs, if you're looking for a job everything that's in orange may be interesting to you.
Red is for site alerts or messages that prompt you to do something, like registering or notifying you should add your screen name to your profile.

I think maybe I can use some shade of grey to replace green and red, and use the 'official' maroon (red?) and blueish instead of red and blue.

Not that I want to start a debate, but below are my views on having an official look, as I shared in a private conversation a few days back:

I'm not sold on the benefits of having the same palette across all sites.
I think the point mark Lentczner Makes about using different layouts also applies to colors.
Colors also carry a message, they let you know for example if a website is informal, technical, institutional, etc.
Visual consistency helps usability a lot, I probably wouldn't have different layouts and colors for different parts of the same site. To me, everything that's inside the same domain name should look consistent.
The other benefit of consistency is for brand recognition, ACME would make their paper towels and soap look related, so if you like ACME's soap you're more inclined towards buying also their paper towels instead of their competitor's. Even then, some companies make some products look totally unrelated so if the new product fails it doesn't hurt their other products perception.
I don't think we need brand consistency since we don't have a central authority to respond to, the only thing we have in common is haskell, we even have several implementations, and we may as well have several projects doing the same thing in different ways in our quest for the best.
Some people may even look for consistency with different things, someone may try to mimic the design on linked.in for a strictly job-board like website, or google's for a haskell search engine ( hehe :)
In some other places, consistency may be downright harmful and get you confused about the site you're on. It's like those projects who keep their documentation in 'trac's default theme and you don't know right away what you're looking at or where you saw that snippet you need to use again. Local user group's sites are another example, every local user group has their own personality, and if consistent, we'll end up with a lot of sites that look confusing and boringly similar.
I think we should rather err on the side of accepting much needed contributions, and leaving it up to each developer to evaluate their project's affinity with other projects in the community to mimic their color scheme and even their layout as they see fit. Access to graphics sources would be of great help for this.
All in all, I think design inconsistency makes it look friendlier for people to contribute and shows the diversity we have in the haskell community. Both are among the main reasons communities like ruby's and python's became so widespread.


Cheers!
----nubis :)

wren ng thornton

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Oct 22, 2010, 3:52:41 AM10/22/10
to Haskell Cafe
On 10/21/10 2:32 PM, Christopher Done wrote:
>> [1] http://imgur.com/lnkE7.png
>> [2] http://previasports.com/haskellers_website/
>
> I like the colour theme of the former and the layout of the latter.
> The colour theme of the first is more professional, I think. I vote
> that styles should be consistent.

+1.

I'd vote for the second layout (though the map looks glitched up) but
changing the red/dayglow/teal/orange scheme to match the first color
scheme better. The orange and teal of #2 are fairly close to the orange
and navy of #1, so it shouldn't alter things too badly. Though because
of the dark background, we may want #2' to have slightly lighter colors
than #1. It's the dayglow and red which strike me as out of place.

--
Live well,
~wren

Nubis

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Oct 22, 2010, 9:31:13 PM10/22/10
to wren ng thornton, Haskell Cafe
Hi guys,
It's me again, I made a new proposal for the website with the standard colors.
I've put my pretentions of content being grouped by color, and just used what I thought looked better for each part of the site.
Here's the link:
http://previasports.com/haskellers_website_standard/

Let me know what you think

cheers!
----nubis :)

Michael Snoyman

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Oct 23, 2010, 2:09:25 PM10/23/10
to Nubis, Haskell Cafe
It looks good to me. Are there any objections to using this for Haskellers?

Paul Brauner

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Oct 23, 2010, 9:56:37 PM10/23/10
to haskel...@haskell.org
Looks perfect to me. Go for it!

PS: I'm reading your book, I have never tried web dev before but Yesod
feels very right

Michael Snoyman

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Oct 23, 2010, 11:48:33 PM10/23/10
to Paul Brauner, haskel...@haskell.org
Cool, I'm glad you like it. Just as an FYI, I'm going to be moving
some of the information around soon (I finally wrote a proper outline
for the book), so it may be a bit confusing one day ;).

Michael

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