:murb: [maarten brouwers] wrote:
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.
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.
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.
First off all, do not feel offended by anything I say here, it is not personal.
Of course it is, but so what! ;)
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 think this was exactly the point Louis Suarez-Potts, the other coordinator of this porject, was attempting to make a day or so ago.
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.
Good point!
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.
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)
Yes, this is typically what happens when a product gets a "new" look in any form...I'm talking overt marketing/packaging. Honestly, I haven't kept up with what's going on in that arena for 2.0, but, yes, the web site should follow suit...it just makes identification easier for the end user.
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.
Well we actually DID attempt this with varying degrees of success about a year ago. Trust me...I, for one, feel your frustration with this type of comment. As you can well imagine, a site of the magnitude of OOo is NOT trivial to retool. A LOT of retooling went into the curent site (from Dec./ Jan 2002/2003) mostly because of the differences in the SourceCast verins we swithced to. We did quite a bit of "cleanup" if you will to simplify the navigation but yes, there's definitely more that could be done.
Yes, please, give it a go...I'd LOVE to see what you come up with!
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?
Well yes and no...not 3 column. Standardized elements, to be used or not..are the left-hand navigation, top elements and Sun logo footer if I'm not mistaken.
Can anyone just design a few static sites, and is someone entitled to cut these into SourceCast templates or?
I don't understand this question, sorry.
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.
<G> I can fully sympathize wiht this comment.
For so far.
Kind regards,
Maarten Brouwers
Good to hear from you!
-- ====================================================================== Kay Schenk
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream." -- Mark Twain [Samuel Langhornne Clemens]
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