Hello Maarten!
>Hi, > >My name is Maarten Brouwers, I've been reading messages on this >mailinglist for already some time now, but never thought I could >really contribute. But now there is this topic about a new website. :-) By "website" do you mean the entire domain? or the www directory? or just the homepage? if the entire domain... well, that obviously is out of the question. But the www directory is more feasible to manage and the homepage quite feasible. > >Let's first introduce myself. I live in the Netherlands (Utrecht), >I've graduated in Interaction Design (MA), Multimedia Design & >Technology (B) (I got both diploma's finishing more or less the same >study) and will start Human-Technology Interaction (MSc) in Eindhoven >in February. Furthermore I've decent CSS and (X)HTML knowledge and a >fair amount of JavaScript. Great! > >I'm interested in interaction design in the first place, and >furthermore I have a great interest for information architecture (not >that these are independent). Visual design is not my strongest point, >however, I believe this really contributes to the user experience, >which also tends to add to greater usability. Oh good. > >First off all, do not feel offended by anything I say here, it is not >personal. What I've seen till now are merely duplicates of the old >site, just removing only small bits and spicing up other bits. Is >there a reason for this? I can see what you mean. Actually, for the homepage, there is pretty much tabula rasa. We do have to have some components there, such as the tabs, login, footer, banner; the left navbar is totally manipulable. But the banner can be changed, though not sure we would want to alter the logo (we don't), and the tabs can be altered as well, ie, the could be vertical. Still, the changes that we have seen are encouraging, and I'm glad that people are taking those wanting to download and use the software seriously. To be sure, these are just proposals. >I know that there will be many users who will >be really upset when great changes will confront them, but I believe >this is the right moment to make such big changes. When I look at the >latest builds for OOo 2.0 I believe OOo may be what firefox 1.0 was >for the Mozilla.org project (in effect that is). It integrates much >better in the operating system (well, at least it does for my WinXP >install (ugh)), and it looks more attractive and more user friendly. A >great product needs a great place to promote this product. No one is objecting to your point! Of course, the website is more than just a big banner for the product; it is also the public face we present to the public of OpenOffice.org. It is meant as well to showcase what we consider important--like new developments, key people, interesting news, events, whatever we think of as our public face. > >With OOo2.0 OOo is ready for the masses, so it needs to be targetted >more on these. I guess programmers also like to see that the product >they are working on is popular. I think this attitude is already here >among some. Yes... > >This also means OOo needs more (house-)style, but for what I've picked >up, these discussions take place somewhere else? At the marketing >group maybe? A new style has been introduced for the OOo builds, which >can be called at least a positive progression. The site should also >share some of this style and not the begin 90ties style (however this >may be in fashion these days, this will not be the >web/interface-design from this period) :-) I daresay you may be right. But can you expand further on this interesting point? I would love to try out things really interesting and new--while still making it easy for users to find the product and the things they need. So, what do you mean? > >So my question is why nobody has tried to start from scratch, trying >to create a site map first (to get sections fixed, and repositioned), >and then try to design for this new site? I still have a few weeks >left for working on this, so I would really like to give it a go, as I >really appreciate working with this great Office suite. We actually did do that a while ago, before this iteration. But we did it long, long before OOo was considered, for lack of a better term, a consumer or user site; we did it when it was purely a developer site. So, the architecture remains pretty much that plus some more user focused areas tossed in. For a regular user, it can be confusing, as there is too much information. I used to argue for a plain user site for users that would have *no* project tabs, etc., but that proved unfeasible. So, we are forced to compromise. It has little to do with SourceCast, as it happens, and a lot to do with the basic legacy architecture of the project. That said, one could (and we seem to be doing a version of this) emulate the solution Mozilla has arrived at, which is to submerge the developer areas and emphasize the user; or do what Apple does, and again submerge the developer areas. They are still there, still visible, but not foregrounded. > >I still have some more practical questions: > >In what way is SourceCast limiting design? Is this piece of software >demanding 3 column output, or is it just those who make the templates >have a preference for 3 column lay-outs? No, it does not demand three columns, though it does demand, I think, a left navbar, tabs, header, footer. We tried out (before this iteration) essentially two columns or one column plus navbar. > >Can anyone just design a few static sites, and is someone entitled to >cut these into SourceCast templates or? I'm not sure what you mean. SourceCast doesn't really have templates like that.... It has the .vm files, Head.vm, Banner.vm, Footer.vm, navbar.vm, but these are easily manipulable. > >My excuses when my questions have been answered already, but threads >were going so deep, going in too much detail, that sometimes I ( :$) >stopped reading. Yes, there has been a lot of activity! > >For so far. > >Kind regards, > > >Maarten Brouwers and thanks for joining us! Cheers Louis --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
