Re: Website proposal for usability

[Martyn Russell <martyn lanedo com>]

On Mon, 2010-08-09 at 14:54 -0700, Devin Samarin wrote:
> 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.

Hello Devin,

> 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.

I like some of the proposed changes here. There are some other things
that I think need changing (which were there before) such as the NEWS on
the main page. It just doesn't get updated enough.

If no one else here has any problems with the link you provided, we can
just go ahead and make the changes after I have done a more thorough
review.

Thanks again for doing this work!

-- 
Regards,
Martyn