Redesign of the www.rockbox.org front page

[yapper]

Do we really want SVN commits hidden by default on the new site?  I like the idea of showing how active our project is on the front page.

I agree - to me this is more important than wiki or mailing list activity.

Note: all three links in the top right of the work-in-progress page currently have 'subscribe' misspelled in the mouse-over text.

[psycho_maniac]

yes i love LOVE the svn progress. thats the first thing i look at before i do anything on the site. although i dont mind the drop down menu i can just click that click it again to hide it and go along my way

How do I create photos for missing targets?
Is there a procedure?

hope this helps

I send all layout files to Zagor and he will start slowly implementing it.
Creating flexible layout is *really* hard and I don't have any good experience with it. But if someone want to do it contact me or better Zagor.

My idea about missing players images.
How about another "art request" topic to create them?
Here is a background and here you can check missing players. Put player on background and post image inside topic. Remember to add small glow to player. And write inside topic with player image you want create (in case someone also want do it).
And Toshiba X is now S model so it is *missing*

PS: Like GodEater wrote:

A web page design is not going to be 100% perfect for everyone

[robin0800]

Perhaps to avoid problems the text for the players should qualify version 1 only where no difference can be seen in the picture.
Alternatively perhaps a splash on top of the picture of versions supported.

[pixelma]

In the spirit of showing you can't please all the people all the time - I prefer macku's layouts to pixelma's modified versions. Sorry!

Actually, I did not do these mockups just to hear they look better, or they don't. The reason for doing them was getting my point across and to have something to work with (and to show that I'm willing to spend time and thought too). As in e.g.: wouldn't it be better to not have such a white "band"? In my eyes it makes the page fall apart (and if I remember correctly, Llorean stated a similar concern earlier). While I agree that it's better if the site looks pleasent it's as important (in my eyes) to get information to the viewer. If the occasional visitor thinks "ah, this page looks nice but is there a wiki or an IRC channel?" (*) then I don't think it's a good page, especially for a project like this. *) Which he or she will only find when hovering over the menu bar (compared to just look at the left side menu now) - or manages to read to the bottom without getting distracted too much. Another one: is there a reason why the font is smaller in the three column and recent wiki and ml activity part - other than it wouldn't fit otherwise or needed to be even wider? Or is this a bug?

wrong screens for the ondio fm are used as in this section of the manual then.

Yes, the manual is wrong there too, for two reasons: not differentiate between the Recorders and Ondios needs less screenshot pictures in the manual source (only a few have to be doubled which show RTC or radio for e.g. the OndioSP or RecorderV1) - and until semi-recently the screenshots taken in the sim looked the same. That's not a reason to use the wrong one there, especially as you need different pictures anyways.

Creating flexible layout is *really* hard and I don't have any good experience with it. But if someone want to do it contact me or better Zagor.

Yes, unfortunately it is a dying art, because everyone uses the same display resolution and uses the browser in the same window size and forgot why HTML was invented... /me gets carried away
Maybe I'll have a try myself.

I'm trying to talk about specific things which I think could be improved and provide suggestions and reasons why I think this way. Unfortunately some of my previous questions remained unanswered...

Edit: looked at an older version first, so updated a point which became invalid now

[GodEater]

Actually, I did not do these mockups just to hear they look better, or they don't. The reason for doing them was getting my point across and to have something to work with (and to show that I'm willing to spend time and thought too). As in e.g.: wouldn't it be better to not have such a white "band"?  In my eyes it makes the page fall apart (and if I remember correctly, Llorean stated a similar concern earlier).

And I *like* the white band. It does break the page up, deliberately, and in a useful way. It provides a nice visual cue for arranging information in catergories without actually having to have some generic title slapped in the middle of the page.

While I agree that it's better if the site looks pleasent it's as important (in my eyes) to get information to the viewer. If the occasional visitor thinks "ah, this page looks nice but is there a wiki or an IRC channel?" (*) then I don't think it's a good page, especially for a project like this. *)

To be honest we're ALWAYS going to get users coming to the site who can't find these things. We do now. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen posts in the forums from our seasoned members having to point out the side menu to other people. Macku's redesign is likely to prove no better and no worse in that regard, and therefore I don't think this point is worth arguing over.

or manages to read to the bottom without getting distracted too much.

I don't find it distracting. Again I just think this is a case of not being able to please everyone. I personally feel that the current front page is distracting for the average new user, as it contains too much information. Our opinions differ. Sorry.

Another one: is there a reason why the font is smaller in the three column and recent wiki and ml activity part - other than it wouldn't fit otherwise or needed to be even wider? Or is this a bug?

Presumably this is because the current use for those sections in macku's design are going to contain more text. We can alter that if we decide those sections are inappropriate.

[macku]

wouldn't it be better to not have such a white "band"? In my eyes it makes the page fall apart

I think it is opposite. White part makes visitor focus on it. While blue separates other information. And this is good if the white box causes user to easily aim to the most important things. Not exactly be those stuff I have proposed, but like I said: it's text - can be changed.

And in fact, this is front page. In my opinion it should say "where to go next", not to show all kind of information. Most of you are developers crew and I understand that is good to have "dev stuff" on front page. I'm just another Rockbox user. That is why I decided to hide table of subversion changes, and even consider to do the same with last mails and wiki updates. But if this is really important I can place table under the wiki and mailing.
Main thought about your mockups: to blue.

Yes, unfortunately it is a dying art, because everyone uses the same display resolution and uses the browser in the same window size and forgot why HTML was invented...

If I can say short story. Nearly year ago I changed my monitor from 19" (5:4 proportions, 1280x1024) to 22" (16:10, 1680x1050px). I was *really* surprised about how web page looks like. Some of them was (are?) even designed for 800x600px. Those pages fills only 1/3 space of my monitor.
What I'm trying to say is that web pages aren't designed for every type of display resolutions but for the most popular. That's way I decided to create it with static width. Here you can check how proposed page look on my monitor with fixed and flexible width. The lesser evil, I rather prefer "tight" version.

PS: @piexma: If you want to see how html and web evolve check some of this pages: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

[Llorean]

I think if we're going to go any further, we need to really decide what belongs in each box. If we're going to "focus" attention somewhere, we need to figure out what exactly is to be focused on, and display it there, so we can see how big it is, and what visual effects this actually results in.

The temporary text there could be much larger (or smaller) than what we would realistically put there otherwise.

Basically, there's no sense in defining the layout first, then the text, if the text has the power to redefine aspects of the layout. It all needs to be done at once.

[gevaerts]

What I'm trying to say is that web pages aren't designed for every type of display resolutions but for the most popular.

This is where you're wrong. Web pages shouldn't be designed for a specific resolution *at all*

[macku]

This is where you're wrong. Web pages shouldn't be designed for a specific resolution *at all*

I agree. What I wrote wasn't my opinion how pages should be designed, but an observation how they are. We can convincing each other, if page should have static or flexible width, but that is not a point. I just wanted to explain why I used fixed width.

[kugel.]

Actually, I did not do these mockups just to hear they look better, or they don't. The reason for doing them was getting my point across and to have something to work with (and to show that I'm willing to spend time and thought too). As in e.g.: wouldn't it be better to not have such a white "band"?  In my eyes it makes the page fall apart (and if I remember correctly, Llorean stated a similar concern earlier).

And I *like* the white band. It does break the page up, deliberately, and in a useful way. It provides a nice visual cue for arranging information in catergories without actually having to have some generic title slapped in the middle of the page.

I agree that the white band does anything bad. For me it neither creates a huge gap, nor it takes grand focus (the only thing that gets my focus is the big question mark sign). And once there's pictures for all targets, these pictures will get the most focus and making user ask himself "How can I do that". Then he finds the manual and installation links directly to the left.
I just prefered pixelma's colors, not the fact that it got rid of the white band for a reason.

I agree too that the activity table shouldn't be disappear entirely, but it should be hugely cropped or just show a summary (to show our activeness). More infos will always be on the site dedicated to devs (if there's going to be one.

People only being interested in the changes already don't browse our current main page, but recent.shtml.

[JdGordon]

hugely late to the party but anyway:
* I dont like that the first thing you see is the target picture... it should have the rocbox logo instead of the a target image
* under downloads, themes should be above extras
* I dont think tracker should be where it is... maybe under a development item...
* where is the svn log?

[Hillshum]

@JdGordon

Has everyone else clicked the "subversion" link at the top? It's beautiful.

[JdGordon]

haha, holy crap!
it shouldnt be using the rss logo then...

[AlexP]

it shouldnt be using the rss logo then...

It isn't, the RSS logo is for the RSS feed, the text link is different.  I agree it is confusing though.

[saratoga]

Do we really want SVN commits hidden by default on the new site?  I like the idea of showing how active our project is on the front page.

I agree - to me this is more important than wiki or mailing list activity.

Note: all three links in the top right of the work-in-progress page currently have 'subscribe' misspelled in the mouse-over text.

I'd also rather have the mailing list and wiki activity on a drop down and SVN always on top.