Re: new front page, take 1

[Jeff Albro <jeff@antistatic.com>]

Thanks for putting up a prototype! I like the layout of the new page.  It
seems to me to be easier to scan.

Here are my comments:

About the "too many colors" issue.  If you make the top nav bar in a
similar style as the rest of the page it will all look fine, and avoid the
"clown pants" effect.

I believe one of the original goals of the redesign RFC was to "clean up"
the About Debian section.  It would appear that the new design breaks up
those menu items into "What is Debian" and "Help Debian".  I LOVE this as
it breaks up the menu items by the users "intentions" ala, LEARN about
Debian, or HELP Debian.  If it turns out that a decision is made against
the new graphical layout, this idea could be used with the current layout.

While I think the new page will be better for new users to scan, I find it
breaks some things I've come to rely on, like a quick link to the mailing
list archives and a quick link to package search.  I think the new page
will be less useful to long time debian web-site users.  I'm not sure how
I feel about this.  I suspect more long term users would want to use the
site map to move around.  If so, the site map should be improved.
Currently it's quite hard to scan (or vgrep as Josip says).

Move the developers corner link into the helping debian box.  It looks
lonely out there.

Some suggestions that would apply to either this page or the current one:

Add a search entry box next to the search button on the top nav bar.  You
have room for it unless you go below 640x480.  Users who are looking to
search look for an entry box.

Add the current DWN to the news area, and show less "other" news.  The
logs showed (IIRC) that the DWN was far more popular.

-Jeff

PS: I hope everyone is having happy holidays!

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Jeff Albro                                      jeff@antistatic.com

Customer Interaction Consultant                          Boston, MA