Re: [www-redesign] a couple of comments

[Chris Case <macguyvok@gmail.com>]

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Might I make a suggestion of limiting the news items on the front page to
two or three? It would help to clean up the front page a bit. Other than
that, it's quite a nice site.

On 12/11/05, Aaron Shi <aaron@aaronshi.com> wrote:
>
> Wow, took a quick peek and everything looks much nicer.
>
> A couple of things (here it goes):
>
> --1--
> > When I saw the e-mail icon next to the print icon, my first
> > thought was that it was a "send-a-link" button, since that's
> > pretty common on news sites.  Having it represent a mailto:
> > link instead might be potentially confusing.  Anybody else think that?
>
> It is misleading and counter intuitive.  The original reference was for
> "send-a-link," but to do that it requires javascript and hence that's
> probably why it was changed to a static mailto: link.
>
> --2--
> > There are a few other minor changes as well. Link colors have
> > been made more consistant: purple on white for content areas
> > and white on purple in the menu bar. All links turn green on
> > :hover. These color combinations pass the color-blind test,
> > look really good and are consistant.
>
> The green was intended for on the dark purple background on the top bar or
> bolded text headings.  It is not intended for unbold non-heading text on
> white background or on light purple background (especially hard to see,
> e.g.
> hover ad links on the ad bar).  Also, the ad images have dotted underlines
> under them, they shouldn't.
>
> --3--
> > The top level menu (main, planet, forums, etc...) had an
> > issue. The green arrow designates which site you are on. If
> > you are on planet.gentoo.org then PLANET would be first in
> > line with the green arrow. I spaced the first word out more
> > to make it more obvious. The link colors were changed to
> > white with green hover to be consistant with the site-wide
> > color scheme and also to pass the color blind test.
>
> Hmm...we shouldn't changed the menu order on the users.  It creates
> confusion and slows down the workflow because they'd have to double-check
> the position of the links before clicking due to them changing.  How
> about,
> current site = white link, other sites = dimmer (i.e. light purple).  Also
> the green arrow doesn't vertically align with the text as in the
> reference,
> not sure why merely changing colors would also change the
> positioning.  The
> font looks a tad different, maybe that's why.
>
> --4--
> > I like this version much better. It's all coming together, and
> > I give my thumbs up for a release of this as soon as the minor
> > bugs are worked out. (Not like it matters, but as an average gentoo
> > user, I applaud you, and everyone else!)
>
> > Yes, let's see this before X-Mas 2005! It would be a nice X-mas
> > present to the community!
>
> I'd strong advise against releasing an unpolished product and patching up
> known-bugs later (i.e. pull a Microsoft).  Since this is a major event,
> there will undoubtly be additional coverage and it would not look good if
> we
> launched it at sub par quality (Gentoo critics would totally capitalize on
> it).
>
> --5--
> > Chapters are the green and a larger font size and sections
> > are dark purple and a little smaller. It looks good at the
> > moment and (more or
> > less) matches the reference design.
>
> Looks good, my only concern with this and the other color changes is where
> the colors came from.  Are they part of the color scheme?  The dark purple
> sub headings, while the text is of higher contrast (is it necessary?), it
> over shadows the green heading (even though the green heading is larger),
> this is because the apparent brightness is inconsistent.  The purple in
> the
> reference looks more balanced.  The headings (green, purple, and doc
> heading
> at top in the light purple box) could be a little bigger as our default
> text
> is bigger.
>
> --6--
> On the front page, there's a light purple space below between the content
> area and the footer bar.  To the right of the line where it says "#103610
> -
> yaboot-static claims incorrectly that /proc/device-tree broken is in the
> 2.6.12 kernel series", the ad bar is shifted by 1 pixel to the right (this
> is barely noticeable but very odd).
>
> --7--
> The front page looks over crowded, I think this is mostly a spacing issue
> (or lack of).  Giving the purple bar headings a padding and putting more
> space between each news item may help a little temporarily.  The "More
> News"
> link needs to be more prominent, right now it just looks like part of the
> last news item.
>
> --etc.--
> The table borders might look better in a purple (right now it appears
> black
> or very dark gray).
>
> The XML buttons have dotted underlines, within a sentence it looks okay,
> but
> on its own it looks strange (the underline sticks right to the bottom of
> it,
> essentially same problem as ad images).  This is probably a line height
> issue.
>
> The ad column's purple doesn't quite match the light gray portion on the
> footer which connects to it.  The purple looks nice too, I can probably
> change the footer graphic later to match the purple.
>
>
>
> Overall good work Curtis, this is coming together nicely! The progress has
> been huge in the last couple of weeks.
>
>
> Aaron
>
> --
> www-redesign@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>


--
Christopher S. Case
SUNY Fredonia
Computer Science / Computer Engineering
macguyvok@gmail.com
(716) 785 - 5553(Cellphone)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"To err is human. To forgive, divine.
To fix mistakes, now that's an Engineer."
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