Re: next round: gnustep website proposal

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On Wednesday, October 23, 2002, at 01:46  am, Richard Stonehouse wrote:

> I wonder if the fundamental problem is simply that there's such a lot 
> of
> information on the page? With less, it would be possible to give the
> items a bit more "air" around them, making it more attractive and 
> easier
> to read.

Yes, on both my browsers/systems, (21" monitor, 1280x1024) the page is -

a) too big to fit in a comfortably sized window at all (I like my 
windows
to occupy no more than about 60% of the screen width and 85% of the 
height)
b) text too densely packed be attractive/readable.
c) too small type or too lacking in contrast to read comfortably.

I'm guessing that almost all the text which is not on the existing site
should be removed.  In fact there is some stuff on the existing front
page which might reasonably be moved to another page in order to improve
the layout of the front page!

eg.
On the existing site we have a link:    'developer apps'

On the proposed pages we have:
'developer apps all the apps needed to develop under GNUstep more'
where only 'more' is a link.

There are several problems even with this small example (which is 
representative
of most of the other text on the page) ...

a) eleven words where two worked fine, means that the page gets much 
too large.
It also means that people need to read five times as much without 
gaining any
extra information.

b) lack of separation between 'developer apps' and
'all the apps needed to develop under GNUstep' means that readability 
is poor.

c) The text 'all the apps needed to develop under GNUstep' is too long 
to be a
good heading, but is not a sentence, having no initial capital letter 
and no
full stop.

d) a small target 'more' to click on to follow the link (five characters
rather than forteen in 'developer apps') means that it's significantly
more difficult to navigate to the next page.


So, to me it looks like the new pages -
add large chunks of redundant and visually unattractive text.
add blocky, boxes into which that text is squashed.


If we take the existing site as a starting point, I'd suggest -

1. experimenting with reversing the darkeness/lightness of 
text/background as
perhaps darker text on a lighter background would look better.

2. experiment with removing the olive green heading boxes, and 
replacing them
with something in more of a purple/blue shaded grey, and perhaps either 
thinner
or no black borders.

3. On the left, perhaps remove the 'Developers' section to a separate 
page,
leaving a link to it in the 'Experience' section ... thus making the 
page
shorter so it would entirely fit into most peoples browser windows.

4. At the top, get the top of the lefthand box to line up with the
'Welcome to the GNUstep project' box