On 1/3/06, Richard (koorb) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > [1] is a slightly different approach with the following provisos; > > - Three steps are just filler ideas, so both text and images should be > improved. > - Download Now grey box should have relevant information about the > current release. > - Order and position of elements are initial suggestions only, all > comments welcome > > I think however that popular opinion is to a merge of the best from > layouts 1, 2 and 3 [2]. > If I get any positive feedback from this design I will work with that > too obviously. I am going to start developing some XHTML layouts soon > to better get an idea of how different pages will work so please > contribute any ideas and comments, positive or otherwise, now. > > [1] http://koorb.co.uk/static/images/tglogos/layouts/blue-light.png > [2] http://koorb.co.uk/static/images/tglogos/layouts/
I love the "blue light" layout. Here's my feedback on what's good and what could be improved (very small improvements needed, it's excellent overall): The titlebar is perfect. I'm very impressed by the swirly light-blue background with "Python", "SQL", "Lightweight", etc. in it. It gives a feeling of movement, flow, and speed. And it doesn't grab the eye and force it to linger on the spot, yet if the eye does linger for a while, then the words register. Excellent. The fact that the golden G-gear is the exact same shape as the G in "TURBOGEARS" from the titlebar is also great. Consistency is good. There's a "Download" link just under the titlebar. Good. Say I'm a new user, and I'm scanning the page for the first time. I'm going to register the title, the slogan, and then "Home", "About", "Application Vault", "Download", "Dashboard". I probably won't click on "Download" right away, but it'll register in my mind, "Ah, there's a Download link. Good, when I'm done reading the rest of the page I can come back and click it." No strong opinion yet on the "1. Quickstart 2. Run 3. Visit" yet. It's good, but it doesn't make me jump up in enthusiasm. Perhaps it could be improved, or perhaps I'll grow to like it more as I think about it. The "Download Now" link stands out nicely by virtue of its green color. Perhaps the "highlight" color for text inside the "Download Now" box should also be green, to stand out from the blue of the rest of the front page. Having just three items -- one from each of three categories (blog post, mailing list post, and ticket) -- in the "Help evolve" section is really growing on me. Repeat visitors are going to want to see more tickets/commits/whatever at once, but that's what the dashboard is for. Now for the things I might tweak: The titlebar is 1024 pixels wide, but the page body is 800 pixels wide (well, about 750 since you're allowing for a vertical scrollbar). Is there a reason for this? It puzzles me a little, because it seems like a mismatch: if the user visits with a 1024-pixel browser, there's going to be a lot of whitespace in the design; but if the user visits with an 800-pixel browser, the titlebar will cause an otherwise-unnecessary horizontal scrollbar to appear. I'd suggest making the titlebar and the page body the same width, unless there's a good reason for the difference. (Actually, I see you've already planned for this eventuality: the right-hand side of the titlebar can drop off very neatly, as there's about 200 pixels of undifferentiated blue there). The green "Download Now" link stands out nicely. It is, though, the *only* element on the front page that uses a green color. If green doesn't appear in the rest of the entire site, it becomes a bit of an odd man out. That's not a huge problem, but it does nag at my sense of clean design a little bit. To avoid making the "Download Now" link too much of an odd man out, that green color should probably be used (sparingly) on other pages to highlight the item-of-most-importance on those pages. I'd think about different categories than blogpost/mailing list/ticket. I'd like to see "latest changeset" in there, dropping one of the first two. I'd probably drop the blogpost category, since it updates less often, and with the mailing list in there, there's a "Join the mailing list" link right on the front page. This should probably be further discussed. On the whole, though, this is excellent. There's very little here that I'd change. Nice job! -- Robin Munn [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG key 0xD6497014
