Greetings! I became interested in this Website project for one simple reason: The Openoffice.org website really needs help. I myself am a beginning web deginer but I've been messing around with website design for many many years. Although I don't yet have a lot of experience on real web design posts (only one big project so far), it has been a learning process of some sort, so I guess can say I'm experienced.
Now that open source projects everywhere are switching to standards compliant design, I think OpenOffice.org should do that too. The current website doesn't look as professional as it could and isn't very accessible. In my opinion, it doesn't comply with some basic guidelines that modern websites should follow, or at least those haven't been taken into account very well. Correct me if I'm wrong. The most important flaw and a place for improvement is that the structure isn't separated from content. The OpenOffice.org websites are huge, and the only way to make updating the website reasonable would be to use HTML (or as I'd prefer, XHTML) for structure and content, and CSS for styles, colors, fonts, layout, background images etc. The first thing to do is to lose the table layout. I'm not sure if you have already planned this, but probably you have. I know the Website project has planned a lot and it's a mature project. Looking at website.openoffice.org I didn't actually find at which state the project currently is, so I'm talking very generally. The main thing, after all, is that the website needs redesign. So if you ever come to the point where you need anything from a web designer who has knowledge on standards for valid coding, accessible web design for users with disabilities, making a website usable for the general public, some basic browser compatibility and working with XHTML and CSS, you can drop me a mail or two. I hope I can help you in this major redesign process in any way, if time and energy permits. The number 1 resource I use in my work is of course http://www.w3.org/. Regards, Miikka Leskinen (login name: miles_fin) --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
