Gentlemen, We are about to embark on an exciting journey into the unknown. Well, semi-unknown, as I'll try to minimize the chaos and initial anxiety, but essentially, we're doing something new and long overdue, a big UI cleanup.
A big part of this is changing how we work together for a concentrated period of time. I want us to be chatting by default, asking questions, etc. as much as possible. I want everyone looking at everyone else's work. When you finish something, send a screenshot. I need the Western Hemisphere guys awake in the morning while Lithuania are still online, and Justas doing daily merges from Douglas and Alan to have fresh builds ready for morning in America. Primary goals -- to START the following: * From a programming and user action perspective, the biggest change is a moving links around, completely re-doing all the "action links." If they will always appear on the page, in most cases they should simply be moved to the body of the page. Some actions may become tabs. Most externally added actions will be dumped into a sidebar. We will also have more control over the ordering of links in various viewlets for a more consistent user experience. * From a design perspective, we'll be making a major change primarily based on the Ubuntu Web Guidelines. Aside from the use of orange (we'll probably use red), we will follow these by default. Of course, we won't follow them slavishly, since a web application is different than a website, but these guidelines will always be the starting point. Please familiarize yourself. Make sure and look at the buttons. * As part of the above, we'll probably need a big CSS rationalization. In particular because we'll want to make it easier to adjust colors entirely across the application in both the near and far future. This includes things like making the gradebook and journal use the same palette. * Also, next Wednesday I'll have my first meeting with the local design firm to plan out work which hopefully will encompass a new page design for SchoolTool.org, a color palette for SchoolTool (which is why good CSS is important), probably a grid design for gradebook and journal (that is, the line weight, color, etc.,), and maybe some advice about the graphic design of the new SchoolTool ui. * We're going to add jquery-ui widgets where appropriate to improve the user experience. * I want SchoolTool to use the Ubuntu font whenever possible, so we need to do what ever needs to be done for that. * We'll update pages with inadequate explanatory text and eliminate jargon. Realistically, that's more than two weeks work, but if in two weeks we can establish the processes, expectations, standards, etc. to finish the work in a less intensive way, then we'll be successful. As of yesterday we had 10 weeks until feature freeze, so we're in pretty good shape. My weekend homework at this point is to get the spreadsheet of doom going, which will basically have a row for every view, and columns based on the above so we know we've considered each issue on each page. --Tom _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~schooltool-developers Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~schooltool-developers More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
