Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 10:24:32 -0500 (EST) From: John Fieber <jfieber@indiana.edu> To: Sean Kelly <kelly@fsl.noaa.gov> Cc: mpcd@freebsd.org, jkh@time.cdrom.com, chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Snazzier FreeBSD home page Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.3.93.960608094644.303C-100000@Fieber-John.campusview.indiana.edu> In-Reply-To: <199606071554.PAA25347@gatekeeper.fsl.noaa.gov>
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On Fri, 7 Jun 1996, Sean Kelly wrote: > Regarding: http://www.freebsd.org/~mpcd/ The subtle makeover of the second level pages is great. What I would add (if I had graphical talent) would be a a new footer containing Home and Index links that are graphically compatible with the new header. I'd also like to duplicate the top level categories from the home page for quick access, but I think there may be too many to easily fit. However, I think the new homepage is a visual disaster. First off, its much too wide. Pages should be somewhat tolerant of the *user's* preferred browser window size, the new design is not. Second its visual mishmash of text and graphics. On the left you have a graphical menu, which contains the "main" entry points, on the right you have a graphical "masthead" with a textual menu of "supplemental" links. My immediate impression is that the graphics on the left is sort of the "quick access" bar, while the text under the big FreeBSD.org graphic is the main menu which is exactly opposite of reality. If that weren't enough, some of the links are redundant, but with different names. (Developer Resources and Support Info.) Then, because the right hand side is smooshed horizontally, the copyright statement gets mangled. All the footer info should span the full width, or be re-designed. The graphical menu on the left? I'm not too enthused by the design, particularly the treatment of three word links. The "Masthead" looks good in general, but the "What's New" and "Quick Index" buttons are not visually compatible with the other graphical links on the left of the page. I think the space just under "FreeBSD.org" would be better used with the "Turning PCs into Worstations" or some such. If nothing else, the buttons at least need some hint of a top edge. The daemons need a little touch up. The daemon on the existing pages turns blue and washed out if you adjust the gamma. I spent some time with GIMP and got a much better image, but it still needs some tweaks before it could be used. The Javascript stuff is blatant netscapism and the button is visually incompatible with everythig else on the page. Do we have to hawe *two* VIP graphis in the footer? > sure it's always up to date. The update counter also shouldn't need > to say from when you're counting. I agree that including that kind of I STRONGLY DISAGREE. A page counter is utterly and completely meaningless without a reference to the time span. Just because everyone else puts stupid and meaningless junk on their pages is no reason for us to. If the date goes, the whole counter goes. I'm not terribly attached to it personally, since the logfiles provide a much better picture anyway. > (Actually, I don't like those popular page access counters since they > usually don't give me any useful information---they're a lot more And why is that? Because they don't give you a DATE! 8-) -john == jfieber@indiana.edu =========================================== == http://fallout.campusview.indiana.edu/~jfieber ================
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