Re: Website proposal for usability

[Devin Samarin <eboyjr14 gmail com>]

On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 1:50 AM, Martyn Russell <martyn lanedo com> wrote:
> So my comments:
>
> 1. I don't think the "What is GTK+" on the main page should be a snippet
> on the top right corner. I think it should be _the_ main point of the
> main page. Most people coming to the page aren't visiting it for news,
> they are likely going to download or get more information about GTK+.
> The news there I think can be cropped a bit more or kept below.



> 2. Presumably the box at the bottom right of the page for Source/CSS/etc
> is just there during this review? I quite liked the feedback page and
> wondered if that was useful for people not subscribed to the mailing
> list?

Yeah the box is just there temporarily during the review, and the feedback
page is also temporary so anyone can comment on the design and I would
be able to see them.. I forgot that the mailing list was used for that
heh

> 3. I think the "Features" page is superb. I especially like the images
> in there. However, I would reorder this a bit so the important things
> are more visible first. Like the "foundations" above "mobile" perhaps

Good idea... Done.

> a) the indentation on the icons for Windows/Linux/etc looks too far,
> might just be the icon width there.

Done. I left just a little bit of space.

> b) the "mobile" section should list N900

Done.

> 4. The "Downloads" page feels the wrong way round to me. I always prefer
> more content on the left side where there are multiple columns - must be
> my OCD kicking in ;) can we switch these around?

I had it the other way before I just changed it :P Swapped.
I don't know if it looks good either way, maybe I'll just remove the columns?

> a) the icons again look overly indented.

That's because it used the same class from the features page. Done.

> b) the shadow on the git commands don't look good hear, I would prefer
> it was the way we had it before to be honest. As it currently looks it
> feels like I need new glasses :P

Haha ok. I made it look like it was before, except the text is just a
little bigger.

> 5. The "Screenshots" page has an odd number of images, I would prefer
> this to look like a grid, so we should either remove the Windows image
> at the bottom or find 2 more to go beside it.

Right now it's not layed-out like a grid, so in some browsers you see
four in a row... I'll fix that later so I make sure that it will work
in all browsers.

> 6. The "Development" page table about maintainers should really loose
> the indentation I feel. Some of these sort of indentations seem somewhat
> superfluous when using a second column or the floating text on the right
> with the grey background. I also struggle to identify what should and
> shouldn't be in this grey floating box and what shouldn't. In my mind
> these positions are usually for quick, non-important details, Comments?

Indentation fixed. And yes I think any quick get-to-the-point details
should be listed here. I didn't really go through to identify each one
(I just placed in information that didn't take up a lot of space). The
real reason why I introduced columns and sidebars was so that it was
easier to find what you were looking for. On the current website, the
content is too narrow and it takes a lot of scrolling. If there are
columns, I feel that it's easier to find the information you need.

> 7. The "Success Stories" page has a heading "More Applications" which
> should really be under all the grey boxes. The Maemo and GNOME
> paragraphs should line up too IMO (vertically). Arguably Maemo should be
> changed to MeeGo everywhere.

Okay I made the "More applications" box into a 'bubble', but I've left
the name of it as a header. What do you think?

They aren't lining up because the GNOME logo is taller than the Maemo
logo... Fixed.

> 8. The "OverView" page has the same indentation issue with the icons.
> And the columns look a lot closer than say the Downloads page, this
> again triggers my OCD :)

Well they are actually exactly the same :P... It probably looks like
that because the text is crammed together... I added space to the list
of libraries, but I don't know if it really helped. Maybe I can put
that into a sidebar bubble?

> 9. General comments about the design:
>
> a) I think the space before the top heading box should be reduced, it
> wastes space but I think we should have something there, a few pixels
> perhaps.

I agree. Done.

> b) I don't really prefer the new logo/text to the old one. The icon is
> too small and the text looks better as a raised+shadow text IMO. I see
> what you're doing there with the height to make the space more useful,
> but I think the icon would look better the height of the text and
> left/right of it. Or perhaps even behind the text as some sort of
> transparent image? Not sure. It just feels left wanting.

Okay, I was trying to be a little creative with that but I'll try
other ways like the way you mentioned. I agree with Alberto that the
name of the toolkit is not obvious enough. I'll change it.

> c) The border widths around the page were chunky, which I liked, not
> sure yet if I like the new thinner look. More content is visible sure,
> but I just wonder if it looks right.

I just don't think GTK+ is very chunky..

> d) I prefer the title in Red rather than Blue, it looks more colourful,
> cheerful, etc.

I kinda disagree here too because the color red makes people more
tense as opposed to a calming blue... I also think the blue goes very
well with the grey, and when I think of GTK+ I think of clearlooks for
some reason and clearlooks doesn't have any red in it :P

> I agree. I think at the time, the question was if PHP was available on
> the web server. I don't think this is a problem now. Should check this
> though.

PHP is already used to get the feeds from blogs.gnome.org/gtk/ and
display them in the recent site. If it didn't support PHP, I wouldn't
have started to make a new design, since it would make it much more
difficult to make it look a certain way across all pages. (template)

> So a couple of other things.
>
> - I would like Andreas to at least comment here, I have CC'd him.
> - Are the pages XHTML validated? The current side is and I would like to
> try and keep it that way. Same goes for the CSS.

I don't think you can have valid XHTML when using Conditional Comments
for IE... but I know the home page on the current site is not valid
since the feed that it gets the news from has some errors in it. It's
possible to have PHP tidy it up with DOM support and cache it for
speed, but the PHP on the server might not support it. I'll check the
pages for validity.

On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 2:40 AM, Alberto Ruiz <aruiz gnome org> wrote:
> Vinicius and myself have been working on a design for the website for
> the Gtk+ 3.0 release.
> I don't have his stuff around unfortunately (it's on the dropbox
> folder from the design team).

> That beign said, I don't want to stop any improvements, however, I
> have a few things to note about this design:
>
> The chosen font, Charcoal, comes from apple and as far as I know it
> does not come with any Linux distro that I'm aware of. An open font
> would be better. We tend to use Bitstream Vera Sans within the GNOME
> brand.

I just have Charcoal there so that if the machine supports it, it will
show it, otherwise it will show the next in-line. I actually don't
have Bitstream Vera Sans on my Ubuntu computer. I can change it if you
would like.

> Replacing the + sign with the Gtk+ logo is cute but not a very good
> idea IMHO, the logo loses it's relevance compared to gtk.org as it is
> now, and the name of the toolkit becomes not obvious.

I certainly agree :)

> I don't like the fact that the news are more relevant than the
> explanation of what Gtk+ is, and the fact that ther
> e are no screenshots or anything to get an idea really quickly of what
> Gtk+ is all about _and_ how to use it.

What do you suggest? I wanted to use a sidebar, but maybe I should
just have the Recent News listed under WhatIsGtk like how it is now?

> Vinicius, can you post somewhere the template you've been work at so
> that we can coordinate our efforts with the awesome work Devin has
> been doing?

I would also like to see :)

Devin