Re: Forrest-made James test site - sneak preview

[Nicola Ken Barozzi]

Noel J. Bergman wrote:

 - I prefer the left flush menu area from http://www.apache.org/~danny/

Hmmm, given that it has a 3dish look it doesn't play well with the rest
of the skin... why do you prefer it? Maybe because it's long till the
end of the page, or because it doesn't have a space on its left?

Because the "Maven skin" doesn't have space on the left,

ok

and because I don't
actually find the 3-D look from the beta3 skin all that 3-D, or appealing in
the current incarnation.

Ehm, the 3d-ish look is about the Maven skin. What I meant is that the 3d-ish Maven skin left navigation is not suited for the flat look of the krysalis skin.

;-)  I wanted to keep the skin more visually lightweight; I'll fix up
something with more solid looking table headers.

Sorry ... (a) I like the current headers, (b) I think we should be
relatively consistent with the Apache look.

The Apache look... that's what we are redefining.
The Forrest look will be the Apache look on many projects, and hopefully on all.

Rounded corners are there now http://www.krysalis.org/centipede/beta3/

Not from where I'm sitting (IE 6.0.2800.1106.etc).  Rounded corners on the
other skins are much more prominent, e.g., http://xml.apache.org/forrest/.
I see only one tab (Home) rounded, only a little, and only when it is the
currently selected tab.

With IE6 I see all of them rounded, but yes, it's not much, and yes, there are download problems (on sf) that can have made your browser miss the CSS-defined rounded corners.

Personally, I kind of liked the old menus from xml.apache.org, and I like
the Forrest menu the least.

It's usual that when one gets accustomed to a L&F it seems the best in the world. Personally I hated the Maven-tigris skin till I used it some time.

I'll make tweaks as per your suggestions.
If you make a mockup of the changes you would like to see even with a paint program, it would help, but it's fine anyway.

Thanks for the feedback!

	--- Noel

-----Original Message-----
From: Nicola Ken Barozzi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Monday, December 02, 2002 3:09
To: James Developers List
Subject: Re: Forrest-made James test site - sneak preview



Noel J. Bergman wrote:

Nicola,

Thanks for your changes.  Here are some additional specifics for your
consideration:

good :-)

- I prefer the left flush menu area from http://www.apache.org/~danny/

Hmmm, given that it has a 3dish look it doesn't play well with the rest
of the skin... why do you prefer it? Maybe because it's long till the
end of the page, or because it doesn't have a space on its left?

- I like the indented menu layout from
http://www.krysalis.org/centipede/beta3/

Ok.

- I still prefer the section headings from http://www.apache.org/~danny/

;-)  I wanted to keep the skin more visually lightweight; I'll fix up
something with more solid looking table headers.

- I'm ambivalent about the "tabs", but if they are going to be there, I'd
prefer to see them look more like tabs (overlapped appearance and rounded
corners).

Rounded corners are there now http://www.krysalis.org/centipede/beta3/
As for overlapping, I think it's more a hastle to do than the effect for
now.

- I like a > b > c nav in http://www.krysalis.org/centipede/beta3/

Cool.

We can talk about colors after you look these others over.  :-)

Yup, exactly.

What is the current status of proposing a site-wide look?  The look you

have

in Krysalis is rather different from the basic Apache/Jakarta look, or the
similar look used on the current Avalon site.

Well, the krysalis look is taken from the Forrest look
http://xml.apache.org/forrest/  If you look at the two they are
basically identical except for the font sizes and headings.

The krysalis skin is a tentative to make the forrest skin better, and
most of the changes will reflect to the forrest skin, thus impacting on
incubator.apache.org, xml.apache.org and commons.apache.org.

We are making a CSS-only version of it, and probably that will have a
wider adoption still.

	--- Noel

-----Original Message-----
From: Nicola Ken Barozzi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2002 4:41
To: James Developers List
Subject: Re: Forrest-made James test site - sneak preview

Noel J. Bergman wrote:

Nicola,

What options exist to make it look more visually appealing?  Maybe it is
just me, but when I compare the Forrest-made test site to Danny's

Maven-made

test site at http://jakarta.apache.org/~danny/, I prefer the look of the
latter.

Specifics:

- I prefer the smaller font size
- I prefer the narrower menu, leaving
  a wider main area, and less scrolling
- I prefer having section headings
- The intra-page section anchors are nice,
  but not at the expense of everything else.

YMMV, but those are my immediate visual responses.  And I am assuming that
all of that is tunable.  Please compare the two sites, and let me know

what

you think.  :-)

I think you have good points.

Actually, based on feedback from you guys and others, I've reworked the
forrest skin to match better your visual expectations.

Take a look here http://www.krysalis.org/centipede/beta3/ and see if
it's better. This skin could also be a visual reference for the new
forrest skin we're doing in pure CSS or used as such with color scheme
modifications.

--
Nicola Ken Barozzi                   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
            - verba volant, scripta manent -
   (discussions get forgotten, just code remains)
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