Re: Cygwin visual brand
To reiterate, I am not interested in collaborating with anyone on web site redesign and, as I said, I don't think a mascot is called for. Well that's that, case closed :) Thanks for taking the time to respond, Christopher. And while I'm at it, thank you and the other contributors for all the effort you've invested in Cygwin. If circumstances change in the future where you welcome outside assistance, be that for a total website overhaul, minor touch-ups or on-going maintenance/webmastering, please feel free to get in touch [1]. I'll leave my proposal [2] online for the time being. I'm still open to requests from other projects that would like assistance with their website [3]. Cheers, Brent [1] via email or I can be found on Freenode as HappyPelican [2] http://cygwin.codecamel.com [3] for details regarding 'why' - http://codecamel.com/donate -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Re: Cygwin visual brand
Mike, thank you for your comments. I haven't looked at this but what is a style changer tool ( would it be obvious if I looked? Just change style sheets or something). Yes, it would be obvious if you looked. It simply has a drop down box that lets you choose the header color, font type or page width (please look before making assumptions). I could have provided a list of links with each slight variation or I could have quickly coded this tool to let the user play with the combinations - I think this makes it easier and it only took me a few minutes. My point here is not to ask random questions about tangential topics but this highlights an important area of command line tools for graphical desgin needs. Could you build all the artwork and generate all the html from command line scripts and give these scripts various parameters so that variations could beconsistently generated using general rules? I don't see why not, but then I also don't see the point of that. There are very few images used in my sample, and those that are used are only there for aesthetics - they convey nothing important. Even the title is text driven, unlike the current site. One objective beyond making cool pictures may be to see how well you can automate and design without a GUI program. I'm confused here. Design what exactly? My proposed website was coded entirely using a text editor. No serious web developer uses GUI programs. This isn't just academic or banter or whining about saving a few bytes when everyone knows the speed of light is increasing each day, but lets say you wanted to generate web pages for wireless, unusual locales, or other devics that have some fixed relation to your main pages and don't want to redesign them etc. No images were used to convey information. The website can be translated into other languages very easily while retaining the look and feel. As with all websites I build, presentation is separate from content. This means we can simply apply a different style sheet to change the way the site renders (if we chose to), but that wouldn't be necessary for this Website. It is such a simple site that it can be viewed on any device you like as it is - feel free to try it out in lynx via Cygwin. As an example of the site's versatility, you will enjoy a convenient skip to content link that magically doesn't appear on the site when viewed in a graphical web browser such as Firefox. I have no doubt improvements could be made to the text-only version, and I'd be more than happy to make those. Using cygwin to design and generate the site would be a good result in itself :) As I said, only a text editor has been used to build the site. Cheers, Brent -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Re: Cygwin visual brand
Could Christopher and/or Corinna please weigh in on this? There seem to be a lot of ideas and energy behind this project, but I don't think the discussion can go much further until we hear from them. Is either of you interested in having a redesign of cygwin.com? What would be your criteria for an acceptable redesign? I agree, it's important to hear from the decision makers on all this, and not just regarding website design, but also requirements/concerns relating to ease of implementation, updating and so on - this all affects the proposal. Meanwhile, I read back through the mailing list and spotted a comment by Corinna asking for a little more green [1], so I've added a style-changer tool (for color and font) to my proposal at http://cygwin.codecamel.com. It's not a permanent feature, just a dinky tool to compare themes. Feel free to suggest colors/fonts. Cheers, Brent [1] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.cygwin/114495 -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Re: Cygwin visual brand
Hi, Klaus, thanks for your feedback on my sample site (http://cygwin.codecamel.com). Further information about why/what/how can be found in my message on the original thread (http://sourceware.org/ml/cygwin/2010-03/msg00744.html), so I won't go into it again on this one. A few months ago somebody on this list offered an appealing redesign of the Cygwin.com website. [1][2] That, unfortunately, seems to have gone nowhere (unless something is happening behind the scenes). Nothing is happening behind the scenes (that involves me). I'm a HTML/CSS standards accessibility developer so my design ability is relatively limited, but I'm happy to incorporate any ideas or work with a graphic designer if I'm asked to. However, I feel that a site such as cygwin.com doesn't need anything fancy. It should simply be clear, easy to update and standards compliant. Also, I agree the name setup.exe could be improved so perhaps a new thread should be made for that. Cheers, Brent -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Re: cygwin.com website
Thank you for your feedback. Firstly, I'd just like to say that my proposal was inspired almost entirely by the current site. I'm happy to adapt any ideas/comments/feedback or even consider a different approach. There was another proposal and discussion about redesign in December and the idea to spend effort on this wasn't too well-received... :-\ Apart from feedback, the effort required would be almost entirely donated by me. This includes development, installation of content and packaging so it can be quickly uploaded and installed. I will also be available to provide maintenance and updates post-launch if necessary. Yet I dare to add my comments: * I would refrain from using dull MS default fonts, please! The MingW site referred to doesn't use the omnipresent non-font, either. I can't imagine Arial not being considered omnipresent, but if you prefer system default fonts, that would simply be a matter of editing a single line in the CSS file (which I have done on the demo site to show you how it will look - reminder: clear cache). The logo is simply text generated by the browser (ie: no images have been used). I tried to match the graphic on the current site. * I would rather not include obscure JavaScript snipplets pointing to google-analytics or doing some other page tracking. This has only been added for my own tracking purposes and wouldn't be included in the production site. * To keep maintenance easy, layout should be strictly separated from existing contents (as I tried to demonstrate myself in the December dicsussion). This seems to be the case with the current proposal. Yes, the layout (form) has been separated from the content. Other features you may or may not have noticed: * An HTML5 doctype * Almost no graphics, fast loading * Modular - PHP includes used for easy editing. Header/Navigation/Right Column/Footer all in separate files. (PHP doesn't have to be used of course, it was just a personal preference) * An (optional) .htaccess file included to remove the extension (.php) from the URIs, eg: cygwin.com/community instead of cygwin.com/community.php * Some CSS3 properties have been used to generate rounded corners and text shadow effects in the header (Firefox/Safari/Chrome browsers only) * All sizing in ems - The layout will be maintained if the user changes the font size. The MinGW-W64 website also displays a live feed from the SourceForge project page. This can be included if you like. Looking forward to further feedback. Cheers, Brent -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
cygwin.com website
Hey, I've whipped up a web template for cygwin.com if you'd like to use it - http://cygwin.codecamel.com/ - (it's what I do). Only the homepage and community page are up there at the moment, but let me know if you want the rest and I'll put it together. Cheers, Brent -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
