On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 6:48 AM, Dmitriy Sintsov <[email protected]> wrote: > * Roan Kattouw <[email protected]> [Fri, 5 Mar 2010 12:15:46 > +0100]: >> 2010/3/5 Chris Lewis <[email protected]>: >> >>They were not back in 2005 =) >> > In case you haven't heard, it's 2010 lol. A lot has changed since >> then. >> > >> We have heard. It's just that no one has cared since 2005 apart from >> the aforementioned Stanton-funded usability team, which developed the >> Vector skin. Like I said before, if WMF can't or won't dedicate one of >> their few developers' time to something and no one in the volunteer >> community cares, it doesn't happen. >> >> Roan Kattouw (Catrope) >> > When one looks for educational / academic content, rich and colorful > interface only distracts the reader. > The following site is not mediawiki / monobook based, yet the visual > design is simple: > http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html > There is nothing wrong with it. Actually, there is real beauty in > simpicity. > Dmitriy > > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l >
Agree wholeheartedly. Sleek graphics and spinny Ajax loaders do not inherently make a good design. It's about pleasing the eye and being as intuitive as possible. We've got a general bug open[1] for cleaning up the UI and drafting some standards for future UI work. I really like where [[Manual:Coding conventions]] has gone in terms of defining what we expect from our programmers. Something similar (Manual:UI Conventions?) would help in setting a standard to expect when creating our user interfaces. On a semi-related note: I'm going to plug The Smashing Book[2] as a good read for MediaWiki developers. It's got a lot of really good information on Usability, UI, optimization techniques, color usages, etc and makes for a well-rounded read for people working on web apps. I know Andrew and Guillaume both have copies as well and (as far as I know) have enjoyed it. -Chad [1] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/13747 [2] http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/12/03/smashing-book-its-out-now/ _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
