Kalle Söderman <kalle.soderman@gmail.com> writes: > I might be wrong and apologies if im stepping on anyones toes, but I > always assumed that the elements of the logo combined as seen on the > current www.debian.org as well as the image above [1] is just someone > combining two elements without adjusting them to actually work together. > The relative weight of the swirl to the text is very uneasy it looks > like they were never designed to be placed together like that. Valessios > proposal is a bit better that w.d.o though. The logo as found under > /logos [2] is in my view a _lot_ better. Ah, my comment was only about the big logo on the entry page, not about the logo found on every page. >> (2) The navigation bar in the vertical center of the index page (or at >> the bottom of some of the other pages) seems weird. My flatmate >> commented this with "Woah, it looks like one of those ad boxes on >> domain squatter pages" - and I have to admit that I can understand >> this. >> Is there a reason not to put the (redesigned, as it is now) boxes >> as a nav bar on the left side? It may be old-school, but it doesn't >> look bad and it is easy to find. >> Also, the nav bar at the bottom makes the footer cover half a screen >> page on my monitor, and I don't think that 24" qualifies as a small >> screen. > In my view the use of left column navigation places you under the > obligation to consistently repeat that element throughout the site. This > has very far reaching implications for the structure and maintenance of > the site. The centralised horizontal list of links reads more like a one > off thing, see [3], [4]. Your friends comment is quite strange > considering how common this practice is. Perhaps I should clarify this. On www.deb.at, the nav bar is currently in the horizontal center of the page. Actual content is above as well as below it - this just feels wrong. Navigation elements and content shouldn't be randomly mixed. > Lists of links in the footer is a fairly recent but very useful feature, > particularly for a site such as w.d.o that does not offer full > contextual links, but is more document based. see [4], [5], [6] A list of links in the footer is OK, the problem with the www.deb.at footer is its size. Perhaps we should discuss if all of this information is actually needed: Do we need a flat list (!) of languages, a drop-down menu of mirrors, and contact information? Could we, perhaps, move the list of languages to a drop-down list and put it in the same row as the server selector? Could the "How to set the default document language" be moved to a mouse over-text of a "?"-symbol with the old link, right next to a drop-down selector? This would save horizontal space. The ubiquitous "Back to the Debian project homepage" link could be integrated into the nav bar, which should probably be the top-most element of the footer. >> (3) deb.at/devel/ is very hard to read. Definitely work needed, the old >> pages had boxes there, making it a lot easier to read. >> Coloring the borders in light grey might even do the job - no >> prominent change, but helps to keep the focus in one place. > The columns are probably to close together. Boxing stuff in very rarely > aids in readability, unless there is a lot of content to cram in. Try > resting your eyes on the text on www.deb.at/devel and then > www.debian.org/devel I think you will find that the black frames impose > themselves into your field of view and disturb the text. You are right that the current frames disturb the text, but I don't think that the current proposal is actually better: I tried a few times now, and after reading a line in the right box, I usually switched back to the left side. >> (4) deb.at/doc/user-manuals is also hard to read, and might need some >> optimization - not only for the layout, but I can't see why a page >> with user docs should have a links to and checkout instructions for > the doc sources. > Perhaps you are suffering from the relatively large font which limits > the overview somewhat. I was suggested to me that the website should > respect the users font settings, and I agreed that this was the correct > approach. Yeah, but the problem is not the font size, but the relative size of the text elements. The "availability" blurb is usually the largest part of the information. This is not a problem of your layout, it's a general problem of presenting the content. I know I will get a few flames for that, but using a script language to hide some of the uninteresting (aka != current language/english) languages might help a lot. We have seen this approach on bugs.debian.org, and it doesn't seem like people are very unhappy about it. Marc -- BOFH #311: transient bus protocol violation
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