Website proposal for usability

[Devin Samarin <eboyjr14 gmail com>]

I posted this on Bugzilla (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=626380)
and I was recommended by Martyn to post the details here.

I was browsing around gtk.org and I thought that it could use some adjustments.
So I downloaded the web files with git and made some changes. I attached
some screenshots and example file on Bugzilla (the design changed a little
since then), but if my computer is up, you can see it at
http://eboyjr.homelinux.org:8080/gtk/ .

I made the width of the content area wider and added either columns or a
sidebar for pages that needed it. Having columns makes it easier to read by
making it so that you don't have to scroll for everything. For styling, I added
some rounded corners with CSS for some of the elements. For all of the pages, I
made the HTML more semantic by removing replacing some of the <tables> with
<ul>'s. I changed the color of the headers to the shade of blue. For the
features page, I separated each section into blocks and added some pictures to
spice it up. For the commerce (success stories) page, I did the same thing so
that it is easier to read, and looks nicer.

I made a template.php file which has the outer content of the HTML pages, so as
a consequence, the pages' extension is changed from .html to .php. I think it's
better so that for some changes, you wont need to edit every single page of the
site. So with this design, some external links might need to be updated unless
PHP can be run with the .html extension.

Since it uses PHP, I made it easy to update changes to the tables. Specifically
the language bindings page. There is a PHP array that stores all the
information about the bindings and then formats it into a table automatically.
I attached that file so you can see it.

I have tested it so far in:

* Internet Explorer 6, 7, & 8
Everything works except the rounded corners, except for the header which is a
single image so that works. Personally I don't think rounded corners are
necessary, but if you think I should hack them in I'll do it

* Firefox 2
Everything is messed up. This is because I am using HTML5 elements... I made
the CSS not specific to tag names, so changing <article> to <div
class="whatever"> would make it work fine. This also means that in IE,
JavaScript must be enabled. I thought I'd try something new but HTML5 just
causes pains. So I'll change them to <div>s.

* Firefox 2 and 3 on Windows and Firefox 3 on Linux
* Safari 3 and 4 on Mac
* Google Chrome 3 and 5(beta) on Windows

The design is not complete and still requires changes to be compatible with all
browsers, but once it's done I really think it would make gtk.org much more
usable. I am open to any suggestions.

Devin Samarin <eboyjr14 gmail com>