On Wednesday 17 June 2009 00:32:05 Matthew Toseland wrote: > On Tuesday 16 June 2009 22:38:26 Ian Clarke wrote: > > Some notes on the website from a friend of mine who does usability work: > > > > i'd remove the cup image from the store because it becomes the most > > prominent element on the page next to the logo itself. > > Agreed, current plan is to make the menu horizontal, in which case there > would be nowhere to put it and it would just become a menu item (as > text)... imho the current design with the logo and the vertical menu wastes > a lot of space. > > > I'd make the what is freenet bolder and at the top. > > maybe even pull it out as a quote > > FREENET -- share, publish and browse files anonymously > > Maybe lose the "files" ? "Freenet: Share, chat and browse anonymously" ? > > Would replace the current "What is Freenet?", be the top thing below the > title / menu bar.. > > To avoid confusion: "Share, chat and browse anonymously on the Free > Network" ?? > > That's what I've put up at the moment, and made it a <h2> for more > emphasis. > > > that's all I need to know to know if I am on the right page or not. > > then you can have the expanded "what is freenet" section. > > i think the quote is great but needs to go on an about page or something > > because it's the reason "behind" the software not the software itself. > > Done. > > > the other thing i'd do is make a very prominent download button with a > > version or something. > > let me find a good example of what i mean > > http://jquery.com/ > > it's easy to find the download and i know without downloading if I am > > already current > > Okay, I've put up the button the students made, but we really need a better > one, preferably with the version number and in an easy to edit form so we > can update the version as needed (give us the original gimp files). Anyone > able to improve on the current button? The drop-shadow is excessive, Ian > would prefer something more firefoxy. > I asked my girlfriend to do it. She's playing with gimp since about 2 months, and she made some cute things. Dunno if it will fit our needs, but worth the try. Btw, we didn't ship the button in the version we gave to our prof, I just made it with inkscape in 10 minutes, and its only purpose was to present where the button should be (a link looked quite bad...). > Or should we have the version separately, as on his page below? > > > the last thing i'd mention is that you should fix the maximum width of > > the text on the page. when you expand it too far then it becomes > > unreadable > > Not sure I understand this one. It seems to scale fine on Firefox for me. > It scales fine, but we should have a max size : when a paragraph is too large, it doesn't help the readability (?). Well, that's how I understand it. > > i still very much like your logo, i wish that it played a more > > prominent roll somehow. > > Thanks Clement/Dieppe and the students for that one. IMHO there should be > something next to it, the obvious thing is a horizontal menu. > > > the site does look more "clean" than it did which is great i just > > think that at this point you need to start adding content back in and > > starting to organize whats most important to the user. > > IMHO we haven't lost any content. > > > take this for example > > http://skitch.com/heavysixer/bwcxd/firefox > > this is for the bank ally i think they have a similar structure to > > freenet in terms of getting people to understand the product and move > > to the next step. > > i've overlaid what i'd do if I were designing the site for you on top > > of what they have now. > > it seems more expressive and clear to me but not sure if that's what you > > think ignore my horrible grammar too > > it's a sketch! > > Interesting... > > You would keep the vertical menu - doesn't a horizontal one save space and > fit better with the logo positioning? > > Then replace the News section with screenshots ... anyone have any opinions > about this? Clearly we would need to mention the version on or near the Get > Freenet button ... Screenshots might help in terms of selling Freenet, > although it has to look good in that case ... and we'd need the News page > to maybe be more prominent, ideally with an RSS feed...
I still think we should have news on the homepage : when I go on a site and I don't see any news, it give me the feelings that the project is almost dead. Maybe we could do like many sites : just put the title of the news linking to the body of the news, maybe in a list in the right ?
