On 2/28/07, Felix Nawothnig <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Wikis are nice and all, but in our case the main project page you look
as less as a wiki as possible (doesn't mean you can't use it as a
back-end, but you should hide as much of the wiki-related stuff (edit,
history, etc.) as possible unless the user is logged in).
Wikipedia gets away with emphasizing the wiki features because that's
what Wikipedia is all about. We should emphasize the content.
I agree about designing so that the focus is on content and not Wiki
features and widgets. However, I totally disagree with your examples
- yes, Wikipedia's wiki features are visible, but subtle enough not to
get in the way - if our site looked more like Wikipedia, it wouldn't
be optimal, but it would definitely be a step up from what we have
now.
"Category > Foo > Bar" is also bad style. It's either redundant or (more
often) a symptom of a horrible site structure. You should not browse
through a list to get the information you want - that's what hyperlinks
are all about.
I'm not suggesting that we nest things like crazy, I agree with you
here as well. But right now there's no ever present top level
hierarchy for users to use. Instead, we have messy clutter on the
left, an empty column on the right, and Tikiwiki branding on top.
And talking about distinctiveness - the first thing that comes to my
mind when I see Monobook is Wikipedia. You don't want OGP to be
associated with "interesting and all, but let's check a trusted source
before I buy anything".
I would argue that there's nothing wrong with using the same theme as
MediaWiki, users that are technically literate (this likely can be
assumed about our target audience :) ) should be about to recognize
that it's not Wikipedia they're looking at, but regardless, I do think
that the best solution is our own look, the monobook theme is just a
compromise that is more usable than Tikiwiki's default theme.
Looking through the themes on that site I found this one the most appealing:
http://themes.tikiwiki.org/tiki-index.php?page=Kubrick
It does not feel like a wiki. Well. It feels like a blog, but without
the login-box (just a link in the upper right corner in gray-on-white
would be enough), without the comboboxes, without shoutbox (yuck!) and
without the blog-like-content it's just a "normal" website.
Kubrick is the default theme in WordPress, and so it's in a similar
situation as Tikipedia, just in relation to WordPress instead of
MediaWiki. I also don't like any theme that deliberately wastes
space. I was wrong about themes being fixed width though, since
Tikiwiki apparently requires that themes be fluid.
I don't like those drop-down menus as well but that's just me.
Dropdown menus have their purpose, and I prefer them over permanent
usage of screen real estate in some cases.
Now imagine the white content box mostly empty, a big OGD1 in isometric
view (on white) with some computer-generated shadow... Yea, it's not
perfect. Still some blog-like. But you could fix that...
Indeed I can :)
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