Thanks a lot for your opinion Chris. As maintainers, you and Corinna are really the linchpins between the existing community and the world. You've got the knowledge that is required to improve the design without severing the existing bonds. At the same time, please let me illustrate my point of view before you decide that you don't want it.
> So far, I have not really cared for either of the proposed redesigns. I > don't think a mascot is necessary on the web site and I think that, as > messy as the current cygwin web site may be, there will be only a very > minor benefit to any redesign which just changes the layout. When I > look at most of the popular free software projects out there they seem > to be getting by on pretty simple layouts. I have not proposed any design changes yet, and for good reason: I am very keen on doing design by the book, controlling the output and the message. I think we agree there is nothing more stupid designwise than random decorations. Design is meant to facilitate what is ultimately the purpose of the website (to learn about the benefits of Cygwin, about using it and finally downloading it). I'm neither drawn to hippos nor random design alterations, with apologies to the respective contributors. That being said, I am certain that a redesign with these constraints in mind will accommodate a host of new or struggling users, enable them to find the required information faster and with less help and attract software designers that have been shying away from cygwin for some reason or another. And I'd very much like to help make this happen. > I sincerely hate these discussions about what's "best" about something > visual because it always devolves to self-proclaimed experts voicing > their opinions and when it comes to subjective things like web-site > layout everyone can be an expert. The bottom line for me is that I want > something that I can maintain and I don't want to spend any of my time > tweaking and discussing with someone else about it. I have to strongly disagree with your here Chris. Graphic and Web design is by no means a subjective issue, quite the contrary. Much like in software design, there are hard, highly complex rules to be followed that lead to desired results. I'm not suggesting a layman's round table design, but a professional design project with predetermined stages and distinct milestones toward a visual identity that reinforces Cygwin as a serious software product and enables new and interested users to determine without help what they can do with it and why they should use it. Frankly, I could have started already, just doing a mock-up of what I think Cygwin represents. Except much like you, I need precise information to go to work. I need to know the scope and purpose I'm setting out to capture. I need to be briefed, and the single best person to brief me are you. You know the software inside and out, know who uses it and why and what people struggle with in terms of comprehension. I need you to inform the design process before anything can happen. I hope you can find the time. > I appreciate that people want to contribute. I really do. > Unfortunately, this is not something that I'm really comfortable > accepting contributions for. If you think there is no objective reason to grow the Cygwin user base, inform new users better and create a professional representation of the work done by you and the contributors through a visual identity, then so be it. I've failed to get someone to migrate 20-odd cobbled-together Excel tables into a proper database, too. I have no reason to impose this on you and the Cygwin community. As you stated above, there is software that is fairly successful in the open source world despite an incoherent visual design. But I'm betting each and every one of those applications could do considerably better if it were better represented visually and more approachable. If you're willing to do this, you have my email address, and I can have a questionnaire ready for you within a week that will cut down considerably on the time we will need for the discovery process. I'm looking forward to it. Cheers, Berthold PS: If you're still on the fence about this, you may want to check out my website at www.berthold-barth.de - the site itself and the first two articles are fairly good examples of what I'm talking about. -- 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