-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 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) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE6Hg61/dIi4WVxTXMRAkNBAJ0aYSzdyHrIR0q8lzx5KL4u1zMHgACdERGA r7E8u1FT0kyavNAeUmAEYwc= =6xte -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
