Hi, I assume most of you saw that I set up an archive for the doc-dev list. (Stas, we should move those to perl.apache.org instead of search.apache.org/docs-dev/).
I only just subscribed to the list when setting up the archive for testing, so I'm WAY out of the loop. But, I have a friend that's a print-ad designer by trade, but now his firm does web design, too. And actually, web design has been his focus or a few years. I'm not sure, but I think they are reasonably high-end -- I asked him, for example, what it would cost to design a simple site like mod_perl and his response was that between $10,000 - $15,000 usd which sounds like a lot of cash to me. He had some comments that I thought I'd pass on. Most of it you already know, and is probably not that constructive, especially at this point. But sometimes it is interesting to hear from another point of view. I don't agree with everything, but here it is. This is probably obvious, but they never design in html. He says they spend weeks with the clients learning what the client is trying to present (their "brand") to their customers, and that's the toughest part. Then they carefully rank what needs to be presented, keeping in mind who the are designing for (new users?) and stay focused on those. (My view is that the mod_perl site should be designed to attract new users and to make it look professional enough to be accepted by IT managers as a real technology. More jobs! I also assume mod_perl users can find what they are looking for quickly regardless of the site. I don't go to the modperl home page to get to the Guide). Then they design in photoshop, and design to a little smaller than 800x600 (better to fit in a window than extend beyond). They don't worry about html at all. Any text elements that are important visually will be converted to images, as that's the only way to control the look. Then they battle it out with their "producer" that converts the design into html. It's my friends job to make sure the designer and producer keep the elements of the "message" (as he puts it) in the final page. I guess it's the designer's job to make people want to stay at the site, and his job to make sure the message is clear. Is http://www.bullitt.suite.dk/mod_perl_site/var_c/ the current design? He thought it's a nice design. Of course it's a battle between visual design and packing in all the info that you think should be there. And that's where one tries to stay focused on that "message" thing again, and exactly who you are designing for. >From a designer point of view he thinks there's a little confusion in the design -- something most people don't even think about. His comment was that the mod_perl/camel logo and the "welcome to mod_perl" are in competition -- "your eye doesn't know where to start" was his comment. He says there needs to be "air" above the "welcome to mod_perl" box to let your eye flow (more like the about page where the bread crumb is above forcing the title lower) -- specifically he said move it down to the line of the feather or below. By "air" he said blank space is really ok, even if that seems like a loss of valuable "real estate". He also said that "air" can also mean some graphic (something to give that warm mod_perl feeling, I suppose?). Just something to let your eye flow. The other main point was that there's two table of contents -- the left nav bar and the table of contents below. He thought that was somewhat confusing, and maybe just integrated with the sidebar nav (or some title bar nav (site vs. content navigation)). He also said the side bar navigation design in boxes makes you want to click on the box, yet with the style sheet design you have to click on the actual text. I agree that's a bit awkward. Finally, I never saw the argument for not using tables (I suppose I could search the archive ;). I think it's cool when CSS works, but there's a large number of clients where it doesn't work. Netscape 4.0x is still very common, and it doesn't work in that browser. Any idea what percent of browsers visiting modperl.apache.org are browsers that won't render that page? I doubt people will upgrade their browsers just because the modperl.apache.org site doesn't display correctly. Sorry for the ramblings. -- Bill Moseley mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
