Debian web site design
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Hello Debianers
I heard Debian needed a site facelift and I can understand why since it's had
basically the same look for the 2 years that I know of ;>
Anyway, I've thrown together a quick page just as an example to get some idea
of what you guys think of my redesign thoughts. It's available at
http://www.student.uwa.edu.au/~rmarlow/debian/
The new design involves more eye-candy - I asked a few friends to go to the
current debian site to comment on it and every one of them summed the page up
with the term "boring". At the moment all I've got is a bit of javascript to
handle image swapping on mouseovers and stuff for the buttons. This hasn't
had checks for incompatable browsers added yet since it's just an example
site for the time being. Also I've changed the colours a bit... I went for
a light blue since it has a nice calm kind of feel. I think in terms of eye
candy the site needs a lot more work though, the changes I made are just
a small example of how I think it should be improved.
Another change I'm thinking is the site layout. At the moment it seems every
page on the site has been crammed into the nav bar. I think it would be a bit
more organised to have some kind of index page which contains all the links
regarding a particular subject. For example, Debian packages would be available
by following the "Getting Debian" link which would display another friendly
index page with more information about getting debian and all the related links
that are currently under the "distribution" heading at the current site. Each
index page would have the same bunch of buttons to access each other index page
as on the example web page and links that are specific to the subject the
index page covers would be available in the section underneathe (where the
mirrors currently are in the example).
I've made a couple of subtle changes to the naming of things on the page. The
original site advertises the site as being for Debian GNU/Linux whereas I
shortened it to just Debian since Debian is not an operating system confined
to just using GNU or Linux (eg hurd). I've made some other changes which I
believe removes some ambiguity surrounding some of the terms used. For example
the "distribution" link has been replaced with a "Getting Debian" link as has
the "getting started" header.
I've added a section for recent news as well which is intended to contain all
recent important news updates as well as security fixes. I propose that a
brief overview of the news item is included here as well as a link to more info
rather than just a link. I think there should be much more detail on the recent
happenings in the debian community advertised on the page since it energises
visitors to the site by showing just how busy Debian really is.
That's about all the ideas I have for now... the debian site's structure is
already quite efficient IMO so I only have a few subtle suggestions on what
to change there. The appearance of the site definitely needs to be improved
though... and in many more ways than just the brief example I have provided
at my site.
I look forward to hearing any further suggestions
- --
from
da Bobstopper
(Public Key available at http://www.student.uwa.edu.au/~rmarlow/bobstopper.gpg)
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