On Mar 11, 2012, at 7:02 PM, Scott R. Looney wrote:
> yes i have to admit i'm starting to judge the relevancy
of a website at least in part with design modernity. was
just looking at various open source 3D gaming engines and i
could instantly tell the 2003-2007 era from the 2008-2012
era. i still investigated what each site had to offer, but
graphic presentation added to the friendliness/accessibility
factor. sites like the current Processing site and
Openframeworks.cc seem cleaner and easier to both attract
users and navigate.
>
> my thoughts on the design:
>
> overall an excellent beginning to a new look! it
started me thinking about possible further improvements. so
consider this a design brainstorm thingy with NO obligation
that anyone has to do what i'm suggesting (especially Marco
who started the ball rolling). i don't have any time to do
it at the moment (i'm avoiding grading right now) but it
certainly gives me ideas, so here we go:
>
> Navigation
>
> i'm not pushing this but it seems like side based
navigation is sort of less common on modern websites? the
look is pretty modern and clean however. Processing (2
columns) and Ofx (2 or 3 - not sure) both use top navigation
which i think draws the eye better. i resisted top nav for a
while but i think it relates better to subject matter.
bigger more graphic pictures on the front page of various
projects i think will attract more attention to the artistic
aspects. a better top banner is a MUST.
>
> Exhibition page
>
> should definitely be overhauled with a much more
graphic look whenever possible. Marco's Xth-Sense, Billy's
Helmholtz ship animation any other graphic demonstrations of
PD in action in realtime either audio wise or using video
manipulation ala Gem or whatever should be there in plain
view, not just a link to someone's website. No idea if Plone
can do graphic grid placement of thumbnails for videos but
that's what comes to mind. i'm not against a carousel video
thing, but i think it's a consideration for future design.
>
> if it's just a patch processing audio, i don't know,
maybe some audio examples of the patch via a jquery-type
player onscreen? the idea is to get folks interested equally
in what PD can do as well as finding out more information
about the artist if they are so inclined.
Sounds like good ideas. If you think those projects should be
on the exhibition page, you should just add them:
http://puredata.info/docs/sitedocs/AddingToTheExhibition
The only rule is that you can't put projects in the exhibition
that you had something to do with (no self-promotion).
> Downloads and Distributions - separate categories
>
> at the moment if i wanted to find out what PD-vanilla
or PD-extended was, i'd have to go to the Downloads page.
i'm not sure if that's intuitive enough. if i wanted to find
out what a distribution was about versus downloading it, i'm
not sure if i'd go to Downloads.
>
> so maybe something labeled Distributions? then put
PD-vanilla, PD-extended, and something like l2ork there? i
see a huge amount of talk on the list from Ivo about his
version and some of it's benefits. i think it should be
listed there. there should be Download links of course as
well.
>
> Such a page might also be called 'About PD', give a
brief history/description of how PD itself works and then
the other variants listed below with download links?
One of the download sections is labels "distros". Not good
enough?
.hc