On Sun, Jul 3, 2011 at 7:03 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu < seewebsiteforem...@erdani.org> wrote:
> On 7/3/11 12:35 PM, James Fisher wrote: > >> On Sun, Jul 3, 2011 at 3:52 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu >> <seewebsiteforem...@erdani.org >> <mailto:SeeWebsiteForEmail@**erdani.org<seewebsiteforem...@erdani.org> >> >> >> >> wrote: >> >> One thing that's going somewhat unnoticed in this discussion is that >> the site is at the end of a major redesign cycle during which people >> in this group gave extensive input on the logo, the color scheme, >> the fonts, the page design - pretty much all aspects of the website. >> I find it surprising that all that is now as if it never existed. >> >> >> I don't want to give the impression that I want to discard everything. >> What I and the others in this thread are currently doing definitely >> builds on that work -- which is clear in the potential refinements of >> the logo, the palette, and the font choice. I imagine the contents of >> the site will remain 95% the same, too. My proposed page layout is >> perhaps an overhaul, though. >> >> If you feel the proposals are a step back rather than forwards then I'm >> happy to discuss that. >> > > I'm not qualified to discuss aesthetic matters. Sure you are; we all have eyes. > I think once we're past fixing flaws, a lot of stuff is simply different > without being either obviously better or worse. (All other things being > equal, novelty and artistic je-ne-sais-quoi are definite assets.) > > On my agenda for the website there are several important things: (a) make > the homepage more dynamic, e.g. with the latest posts etc; (b) propagate the > look and feel of std.algorithm to the other modules; (c) integrate Adam > Ruppe's "try now" button everywhere; (d) make a pass through the content to > improve it, fix examples, add articles and links and so on. Fiddling once > more with color scheme and layout minutiae is, well, not on that list. > That's fine, and those things are important too. Content and presentation are (theoretically) independent, so our working on separate things independently shouldn't matter. I didn't create either the current layout or the mockup at > http://eegg.github.com/d-**brand/mockup.png<http://eegg.github.com/d-brand/mockup.png>so > I can candidly compare the two. I like the current layout better. > > * The existing logo looks professional and well rounded. The proposed logo, > with non-circular bubbles, the bare letter, and the color choice looks > inferior to me. > I think I agree with you here, and I'm not convinced by it either. It can be swapped out. Most people seem to agree with me that there are a couple of problems with the current one, however: (1) the background looks like someone's attacked it with a gradient gun, and (2) a border around the D seems to be preferred. If nothing else I'd like these fixed. * The proposed menu at the top is disproportionately tall compared to the > font size. It looks like someone chose the wrong font/menu height > combination in a windowing system. > This seems to be source of divided opinion. * I like the color palette of the current site with the nuances of gray and > the surrounding border. To each their own I suppose. To my eye there the only colors in that palette that matter are the deep red and the dark blue; the rest just look like they've been chosen on the fly whenever a color was needed. > * The mockup text is ragged right, whereas the current site has beautifully > justified and hyphenated text. > > * I prefer the blockquote indentation and color. In the proposed layout > the blockquote is only distinguished with a crappy double quote sign to its > left. > The above is pretty much just placeholder; It's not really part of any proposed design. Though FWIW I like ragged right, and hyphenation only really adds to readability with columns of text a lot narrower than on the current site (but I'm not saying remove it).