Actually, I would claim that the problem is not one of whitespace, but
rather one of usability.
Readability (in regards to typography) and clarity (in terms of knowing
where you are on the site
and what your text context is) are difficult tasks to master in general -
but I think that the Fluido
skin has done wonders to increase both for maven sites. Readability
properties, such as font size,
leading, kerning, text flow and spacing are notoriously difficult to
control properly in a browser.
The problem is that Maven-generated sites lack some mechanics, I feel, in
dealing with big volumes
of content - such as the volume on the Maven main site. In particular,
consider the case where we need
a big menu system - Fluido and maven site works well in this regard for
smaller sites, but lack proper
mechanics for creating and visualizing navigation structures for big sites
(such as maven.apache.org).
The Gradle site uses a main navigation bar on top of the pages, and a
detailed site structure closer
to the bottom. This works well if we can distill fewer than - say - 9 main
menu items. The maven site
currently sports 9 (the structure of which could perhaps be improved
somewhat) , but also shows all
2nd level menu items. Good for experienced users - and
confusing/overwhelming for newer users.
Fluido is an improvement - but perhaps we should organise the site after
scenarios ("what I am trying to do")
instead of data structures. How do you feel about reducing the top-level
menu structure to the following :
Overview
Downloads
Tutorial
Documentation
Community
2013/12/17 Robert Scholte <[email protected]>
> Even though the fluido skin looks great, it also has a lot of whitespace.
> The current mainpage is already quite long, with fluido it'll only get
> longer.
> We might need to restructure the whole page. For instance, complements for
> the page design of Gradle[1], I have my doubts about buildr[2]
>
> Robert
>
> [1] http://www.gradle.org/
> [2] http://buildr.apache.org/
>
>
> Op Tue, 17 Dec 2013 01:17:11 +0100 schreef Stephen Connolly <
> [email protected]>:
>
>
> https://www.dropbox.com/s/w5eblhl4q0fzc6p/Screen%20Shot%
>> 202013-12-16%20at%2022.32.03.png
>>
>>
>> On 17 December 2013 00:16, Stephen Connolly <stephen.alan.connolly@gmail.
>> com
>>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>
>> bollix gmail
>>>
>>>
>>> On 17 December 2013 00:11, Olivier Lamy <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>> Maybe only me but I cannot see the image :-)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 17 December 2013 09:35, Stephen Connolly <
>>>> [email protected]
>>>> > wrote:
>>>>
>>>> > I have been playing with reworking our front page...[image: Inline
>>>> images
>>>> > 1]
>>>> >
>>>> > I think the fluido skin is a big improvement, I would like to switch
>>>> to
>>>> > that...
>>>> >
>>>> > Only problem I see is that our current logo(s) are very tied to the
>>>> old
>>>> > look and feel...
>>>> >
>>>> > So do we want to see about launching a logo competition. TomEE had
>>>> good
>>>> > success with theirs.
>>>> >
>>>> > Also I'm looking at going with the top-menu version of fluido skin
>>>> rather
>>>> > than the left menu... I have a solution to the "hidden" nature... but
>>>> > you'll just have to wait until I sync up with Hervé to find a way to
>>>> get it
>>>> > pushed to staging from a branch without blowing up the production site
>>>> to
>>>> > see my trickery!
>>>> >
>>>> > -Stephen
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Olivier Lamy
>>>> Ecetera: http://ecetera.com.au
>>>> http://twitter.com/olamy | http://linkedin.com/in/olamy
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
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