Jonathan says:
> - The menu panel is completely disfigured.
> - The font size is HUGE.
> - I am beginning to believe that we might
>not be able to do this layout without using tables.
Allan says:
> - i now have found a way to get rid of the tables we currently use
> - i really dont like the dark background-image
> - the font size is too small
> - why do we in fact show the books
And similar opinions from everyone else, both directions.
Too many cooks in the kitchen, so I'll try an keep my suggestions limited
from now on.
Here's my offer: I'd be willing to put in a two or three hundred dollars
for professional design help.
I know that's a crazy idea, so before anyone yells at me, read on, please.
I think all the designs are fine (ignoring the rendering problems for a
moment). Any of the designs could be frozen at this point and they would
be just fine.
The question is: can it be much better, and is that important?
I get almost 1/2 my income from mod_perl jobs. As a contractor I would
like to have a very professional looking mod_perl site -- it might just
bring in one extra job. Anything to keep me writing perl and paying the
bills is good. So I have more reasons to want a nice professional site
besides a nice functional mod_perl site for the open source community.
I asked my friends for design help with my old sailing club's web site a
few days ago. Yesterday they sent me a suggestion, and last night I
installed it. It's all template-toolkit driven.
http://www.cal-sailing.org
http://neptune.he.net/~csc/test/
I didn't have time to convert fonts and margins to CSS yet, but the tables
will stay, of course.
What does that have to do with the mod_perl site? Not much. It's nothing
that fancy. But it shows what a designer can do in a day. (It was also
interesting how easy it was to implement it in HTML once I had a completed
design -- not hours and hours of tweaking HTML to get a new design, just a
couple hours of tweaking HTML to make it look like the design.
If we really wanted to go professional I think we could get good value from
a web design firm at a good price these days. I've got my friends, but
they are busy and have pointed me to someone like
http://plumbline.com/see/index.html who they have worked with before.
$2500 might buy us two or three designs to pick from. That's a top-notch
design firm, at probably 1/3 the price of a year ago.
There's no doubt that a well designed web site can add value to the product.
Ok, it would never work. I doubt we could get that kind of money together.
And I doubt we could decide on the best design once presented to us. Plus
we would all have our own designers to suggest. And a design firm would
need a clear mission and a definition of what mod_perl (or the mod_perl
site) is, and a single point of contact to make final decisions. That
might be tough.
Anyway, I can see from Stas's last message that he's a bit frustrated.
Designing a web site with HTML and CSS is probably the hard way to go, as
that results in a lot of talk about things that are not really part of the
design. Web sites are not about tables or style sheets, they are about
communication.
Plus, too many cooks in the kitchen, as I said.
Ok, so much for crazy ideas. But I got to tell you, after screwing with
that sailing site a few weeks ago trying to come up with a design of my
own, it sure was nice (and time saving) having a design professional solve
my problem. Think how happy your boss or clients have been when you, as a
professional, have come to the reduce with mod_perl/perl.
--
Bill Moseley
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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