On Mar 11, 2012, at 7:02 PM, Scott R. Looney wrote: > yes i have to admit i'm starting to judge the relevancy of a website at least > in part with design modernity. was just looking at various open source 3D > gaming engines and i could instantly tell the 2003-2007 era from the > 2008-2012 era. i still investigated what each site had to offer, but graphic > presentation added to the friendliness/accessibility factor. sites like the > current Processing site and Openframeworks.cc seem cleaner and easier to both > attract users and navigate. > > my thoughts on the design: > > overall an excellent beginning to a new look! it started me thinking about > possible further improvements. so consider this a design brainstorm thingy > with NO obligation that anyone has to do what i'm suggesting (especially > Marco who started the ball rolling). i don't have any time to do it at the > moment (i'm avoiding grading right now) but it certainly gives me ideas, so > here we go: > > Navigation > > i'm not pushing this but it seems like side based navigation is sort of less > common on modern websites? the look is pretty modern and clean however. > Processing (2 columns) and Ofx (2 or 3 - not sure) both use top navigation > which i think draws the eye better. i resisted top nav for a while but i > think it relates better to subject matter. bigger more graphic pictures on > the front page of various projects i think will attract more attention to the > artistic aspects. a better top banner is a MUST. > > Exhibition page > > should definitely be overhauled with a much more graphic look whenever > possible. Marco's Xth-Sense, Billy's Helmholtz ship animation any other > graphic demonstrations of PD in action in realtime either audio wise or using > video manipulation ala Gem or whatever should be there in plain view, not > just a link to someone's website. No idea if Plone can do graphic grid > placement of thumbnails for videos but that's what comes to mind. i'm not > against a carousel video thing, but i think it's a consideration for future > design. > > if it's just a patch processing audio, i don't know, maybe some audio > examples of the patch via a jquery-type player onscreen? the idea is to get > folks interested equally in what PD can do as well as finding out more > information about the artist if they are so inclined.
Sounds like good ideas. If you think those projects should be on the exhibition page, you should just add them: http://puredata.info/docs/sitedocs/AddingToTheExhibition The only rule is that you can't put projects in the exhibition that you had something to do with (no self-promotion). > Downloads and Distributions - separate categories > > at the moment if i wanted to find out what PD-vanilla or PD-extended was, i'd > have to go to the Downloads page. i'm not sure if that's intuitive enough. if > i wanted to find out what a distribution was about versus downloading it, i'm > not sure if i'd go to Downloads. > > so maybe something labeled Distributions? then put PD-vanilla, PD-extended, > and something like l2ork there? i see a huge amount of talk on the list from > Ivo about his version and some of it's benefits. i think it should be listed > there. there should be Download links of course as well. > > Such a page might also be called 'About PD', give a brief history/description > of how PD itself works and then the other variants listed below with download > links? One of the download sections is labels "distros". Not good enough? .hc > Objects list > > This is probably overly ambitious but existing objects or patches for > vanilla, pd-extended and 'unauthorized' contributed extensions would be great > to see described possibly in a simple table form grouped by category, or even > better, tagged in multiple searchable ways in a database. i ran into a > website listing all of the available objects and contributions from around > 2011 and actually started to pull everything off and reorganize everything > into a database in Filemaker but got too busy to do anything with it. ideally > some indication or form that could be updated by each contributor would be > useful. i would propose a form that at least highlights the following: > > name | object or patch | category tag/s | vanilla or collection name (like > cyclone) | description(short) | distributions (extended, l2ork, whatever) | > documentation/example of patch | dependencies (which, if any) > > this would sort out objects from patches and especially objects/patches that > rely on other libraries to be installed to work. if things were organized > correctly PDDP might be able to pull its info from this centralized database, > which might help cut down on redundant efforts. > > allright i gotta get to work, feel free to discuss/elaborate/tear it > apart/whatever. > > best to all, > > scott > _______________________________________________ > [email protected] mailing list > UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> > http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- "[T]he greatest purveyor of violence in the world today [is] my own government." - Martin Luther King, Jr. _______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
