Hi Clayton, all, On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 10:00 PM, Clayton <[email protected]> wrote: > We could probably group people into two areas.. Developers (people who > contribute directly to specific projects) and Users (people who come > looking just for some information on a specific topic or project).
Sounds a lot like the OOo website :) > [...] >> * Add new-user-friendly links at the top of the page - these would be >> targeted for those visitors to the wiki who don't have a clear idea of >> where they're going / where they need to go > > Also, not everything needs to be on one page. It would be helpful to > have a key topic on th main page, and then use a secondary page to > provide detailed links and grouping on that specific topic. +1 - maybe we could go with a 'portal' approach, and have a developers portal (a basic link farm specifically targeted at developers - new and experienced), a users portal, etc like Wikipedia has for broader topics [1]....? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Free_software/categories >> * Move Search into the header like the OOo website does. This makes >> better use of the header's vertical space, and makes the left hand >> menu smaller >> * Move the "In Other Languages" portlet on the left hand menu further >> up the list on the main page (where "Toolbox" currently is) to promote >> other languages in the wiki > > This requires some reworking of the skin... more than just CSS tweaks. > This should be documented somewhere so we know what we did. I have > documented some on a page titled Wiki maintenance... I will be adding a > lot to this page in the near future I hope - I am hoping to plug into > the rolling updates and they come from MediaWiki so we can keep on top > of the security fixes etc. The main page should promote other languages, which was my motivation in moving the languages up in the left hand menu (for the homepage only) since they don't have as much prominence as they did when they appeared under the calendar [2]. Ideally, we would not be making any changes to the wiki skin itself (to make maintenance easier if the skin gets overwritten with successive upgrades) so we could find other ways to add emphasis to the languages menu - e.g., a background image [3] [2] please see an older revision of the Main Page, e.g. http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&oldid=71810 [3] e.g. http://www.patentpending.co.nz/images/openoffice/siteconcept-wiki-languages.png > I definitely like the moved Search box, and bringing the languages to > the top is also interesting. Thanks to the great HTML structure of monobook, a bit of clever CSS can get it looking like the OOo search box without any changes to the underlying HTML. Please take a look at http://www.patentpending.co.nz/openoffice/wiki/Main_Page_New.htm again to see what I mean (previously, the search box was just a static image - now it is functional). >> * Use Galaxy icons on the homepage to give visual meaning to sections > > Also a big thumbs up. I am hoping to use similar Galaxy icons on the > Documentation page. You can get the Galaxy icons from basis/share/config/images.zip (in your OOo directory) on Windows - it's probably something similar for other operating systems - or let me know the kind of icons you'd like and I can have a look for you. >> To get/keep the discussion going, I've made a quick proposal at: >> http://www.patentpending.co.nz/openoffice/wiki/Main_Page_New.htm >> which incorporates the suggestions made above. Feel free to comment / >> tear it apart / make suggestions, etc. > > It looks good. Simple, clear etc. That is what we should go for. > > Do we need the date box thing? Is it adding any value? It is a left > over from the old language navigation attempts - code which I removed > when the In other languages feature (Interwiki links) was implemented. In the mockup, I got rid of the date box that appears at the bottom of the page ("You loaded this page at..." - does this have any use?), but as for the calendar, I personally like it (gives me an idea of what the time is on the other side of the world, fills up the large whitespace, makes the main page look less static... etc) but others might have different opinions. > Anything that is "missing" probably could go on a sub-page... or even a > landing page for that specific topic. +1. Regards, Ivan. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
