Re: [libreoffice-website] Website status

Hi David, all, :-)

David Nelson schrieb:
> Hi Klaus, Bernhard, Florian, all, :-)
>
> On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 05:38, Bernhard Dippold
> [...]
> > PPS: I still believe, that the visible part of the main page should not
> > contain more than a few lines of text, a download button (can lead to the
> > download page) and links to the most interesting areas. Twitter and blog in
> > the "scrolling area" are ok, but I think a "news" area is more important
> > than those tow.
>
> I will put at least a download button above the home page text, but
> did not get around to it yet. You will notice that I *have* been
> listening to people's comments, and complying with most of them.

Sorry if my posting had any negative taste - I didn't mean this at all.
> The problem is that the current theme is very narrow, and limits what
> you can place on the page quite a lot. That applies to the top menu
> bar, the side menu and the actual content area.

That's not a bug - it's a feature. ;-)

The main page shouldn't contain more than the most important information 
for every visitor (or at least for the majority of them).

It must be readable in a few seconds - and then lead the visitor to the 
area of interest.

I'll try to write something to show what I mean - don't know if this 
will be possible today.
> [...]
>
> I would propose a theme based on the theme at
> libreofficeaustralia.org. Take a look at screenshots [1] and [2]. The
> design perfectly fits the current marketing color scheme and graphic
> charter. It's simple but very Web 2.0. It's based on the Fusion theme
> for Drupal. It gives a lot more space and scope for nicely laying out
> the content, with lots of nice big screenshots, etc.

I didn't comment on the Drupal page by now, because I didn't have the 
time to have a closer look than just the first screenshots. This will 
become one of my tasks after the LibO 3.3 release.

For the moment just a few remarks to your idea of using this theme for 
the present website:

I can't see the screenshots without horizontal scrolling - something I 
really would like to avoid.

I don't know the minimal window size necessary for the Drupal site to 
look good, but here (with 1080px window width) the screenshot doesn't.

Colors look too dark for representing a libre and open office suite and 
a contributor friendly community.

The entire text area is crowded - borders are too narrow, not enough 
space over headings.

And I don't like drop-down menus on websites, because they modify the 
visual impression very much.

But all of these point are manageable before the Drupal site will become 
active - I just wanted to tell you, that I don't support using this 
theme for the SilverStripe site.

> [...]
>
> What do you think, guys?
>
> a) We'd get a lot more flexibility with the content.

Please keep the minimum page width (without scrolling) of 990 px (some 
netbooks only have 1024x768 displays - and these are the system 
requirements for LibreOffice too).

At the moment the page content is about 100px less in width, and the 
text area is just 700px - this could be broadened IMHO.

With 990px width the screenshot shuffler would cover not more than half 
of the text area - this might be enough to correct the impression that 
it would be the main content on the page.

I don't think that any text area broader than 800 px would allow us to 
have a consistent look and feel on different screens.

This would mean to reduce the width of the content in a two-parted main 
area to about 390 px, three part with 260 px are nearly that what we 
have on the homepage besides the screenshot shuffler.

I don't think that we should divide the homepage in such small parts, 
but for buttons / links / RSS feeds it might be a possible alternative.

Best regards

Bernhard

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