Re: [fw-general] And a big thanks to Varien for the new site design!
I'm going to have to disagree here. The front page is an atrocity. The download header dominates, the logo is out of control, and it is incredibly hard to scan the page for information. Also, the project is on version 1.5.1 now. You need to update the .jpg because that is where this pivotal and dynamic information is displayed. Amr Mostafa wrote: Thanks for making us look like rock stars, Varien! ;-) On Mon, Mar 17, 2008 at 9:28 PM, Wil Sinclair [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: . . .and that's what I wish I would have remembered to say in the 1.5 announcement. :/ Seriously, they did an excellent job on the design; we asked them to take the ZF site to a completely new level, and I think most people would agree they did just that. This is one BIG way that they give back to the ZF project. Thanks SO much, guys. ,Wil -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/And-a-big-thanks-to-Varien-for-the-new-site-design%21-tp16105849p16535205.html Sent from the Zend Framework mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
RE: [fw-general] And a big thanks to Varien for the new site design!
I gotta say- it's awesome that we have a forum where we can agree, disagree, and generally figure out every way we can make the project better. OK, here's my take on the front page: '1.5' will represent all the 1.5 releases; in my experience this is common for less detailed pages. It really is meant to call out that we've moved on from the 1.0 branch. Keep in mind, this page may simply not be for you. It is dominated by formatting and is meant to put the best face on ZF to new decision makers, developers, and contributors. We've tried to make the other pages more content driven, but it is safe to assume most of the content on the main site PHP site will be more or less introductory. The tools (wiki, IT, etc.) we have and will continue to keep as effective as possible for our active users/contributors. Ultimately, you haven't yet convinced me that the front page is not effective at what it sets out to do. For example, having a prominent download button makes it easy for everyone to download the project and get started, which is exactly what we want new users to do. Do you have more feedback on the site that might help us improve it? We will be adding more improvements over the next few weeks as we get it to a state we can be happy with until the next big update. Thanks! ,Wil -Original Message- From: thurting [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, April 07, 2008 12:39 AM To: fw-general@lists.zend.com Subject: Re: [fw-general] And a big thanks to Varien for the new site design! I'm going to have to disagree here. The front page is an atrocity. The download header dominates, the logo is out of control, and it is incredibly hard to scan the page for information. Also, the project is on version 1.5.1 now. You need to update the .jpg because that is where this pivotal and dynamic information is displayed. Amr Mostafa wrote: Thanks for making us look like rock stars, Varien! ;-) On Mon, Mar 17, 2008 at 9:28 PM, Wil Sinclair [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: . . .and that's what I wish I would have remembered to say in the 1.5 announcement. :/ Seriously, they did an excellent job on the design; we asked them to take the ZF site to a completely new level, and I think most people would agree they did just that. This is one BIG way that they give back to the ZF project. Thanks SO much, guys. ,Wil -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/And-a-big-thanks- to-Varien-for-the-new-site-design%21-tp16105849p16535205.html Sent from the Zend Framework mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
Re: [fw-general] And a big thanks to Varien for the new site design!
Wil, I'm not a big fan of the new site's homepage either. Let me try and explain why, from both a design perspective and a usability perspective. On the front page, everything is cartoony and oversized. The icons are big, the fonts are far too big, the ZF logo (which is normally rather slick) is big and embossed, the MAKE THE CHOICE is the biggest and first thing you see. Those are challenge words, not welcoming words. The color scheme clashes and calls your attention to too many things at once. There are far too many choices on the front page for anyone to find where they should get started. The subheadings under Make the choice / get started / give back are dorky and un-necessary. How do you know what feels good to me? ;) Compare this to CodeIgniter's site: http://codeigniter.com/ ... the color scheme is bright in areas where it wants to call your attention. The first thing you read is a description of what CodeIgniter is, the second is a welcome message. The icons are understated and are small enough to not clash. You can scan the site easily and figure out where you need to go. On top of all the other sins we have unoriginality; the Make the choice, get started, and give back tricolor scheme seems to have been stolen directly from OpenSuse.org, which does it far better... they only give you three choices until you've decided if you're there to download, there for information, or there to contribute to the software factory. (I realize they're not the same exact colors, but that's the first thing I thought when I saw the blue top with the orange and green.) On the other hand, the inside pages are nice. I like the use of a block serif font. I like the tabbed menu. I like the organized layout. The font size is readable. We take the good with the bad, but I have a feeling that Code Igniter's website and websites like phpdoctrine.org should be used as examples. Those sites are well-organized and appeal to both decision makers and developers. Then again, it's not like the competition's stiff -- CakePHP's site has many of the same sins we do, and Symfony's site looks like garbage. -K On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 12:17 PM, Wil Sinclair [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I gotta say- it's awesome that we have a forum where we can agree, disagree, and generally figure out every way we can make the project better. OK, here's my take on the front page: '1.5' will represent all the 1.5 releases; in my experience this is common for less detailed pages. It really is meant to call out that we've moved on from the 1.0 branch. Keep in mind, this page may simply not be for you. It is dominated by formatting and is meant to put the best face on ZF to new decision makers, developers, and contributors. We've tried to make the other pages more content driven, but it is safe to assume most of the content on the main site PHP site will be more or less introductory. The tools (wiki, IT, etc.) we have and will continue to keep as effective as possible for our active users/contributors. Ultimately, you haven't yet convinced me that the front page is not effective at what it sets out to do. For example, having a prominent download button makes it easy for everyone to download the project and get started, which is exactly what we want new users to do. Do you have more feedback on the site that might help us improve it? We will be adding more improvements over the next few weeks as we get it to a state we can be happy with until the next big update. Thanks! ,Wil -Original Message- From: thurting [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, April 07, 2008 12:39 AM To: fw-general@lists.zend.com Subject: Re: [fw-general] And a big thanks to Varien for the new site design! I'm going to have to disagree here. The front page is an atrocity. The download header dominates, the logo is out of control, and it is incredibly hard to scan the page for information. Also, the project is on version 1.5.1 now. You need to update the .jpg because that is where this pivotal and dynamic information is displayed. Amr Mostafa wrote: Thanks for making us look like rock stars, Varien! ;-) On Mon, Mar 17, 2008 at 9:28 PM, Wil Sinclair [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: . . .and that's what I wish I would have remembered to say in the 1.5 announcement. :/ Seriously, they did an excellent job on the design; we asked them to take the ZF site to a completely new level, and I think most people would agree they did just that. This is one BIG way that they give back to the ZF project. Thanks SO much, guys. ,Wil -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/And-a-big-thanks- to-Varien-for-the-new-site-design%21-tp16105849p16535205.html Sent from the Zend Framework mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
RE: [fw-general] And a big thanks to Varien for the new site design!
OK, I'm the one to blame for the 3 color-coded sections. J And most of those dorky taglines. Of course, I make absolutely no claims of non-dorkiness. :D I don't see 'Make the Choice' as challenging, but do you have a suggestion? BTW, this box is supposed to be for decision makers. The center one is for developers, and the right one is targeted at contributors. CodeIgniter's site is definitely good. But I wouldn't green-light something like this for ZF because I think there is far too much text for a front page and is extremely developer centric. Site conception and color-differentiated boxes were originally proposed by me. I can assure you that I haven't seen the current opensuse.org site. BTW, that horizontal, 3-box format is very popular right now. I have seen the current version of the RoR site: http://www.rubyonrails.org/. It's 4 items, but you get the idea. J Sometimes designs become popular because they work well; I believe that's the case here, but it's pretty subjective. I'm glad you like the inside pages. We tried to keep them strictly content-driven. We may add the occasional icon to liven up the text a bit. I really don't like the phpdoctrine.org site for several reasons, but I don't want to make this discussion to turn in to a list of criticisms of other people's sites. ;) CakePHP's site isn't my favorite, but it seems relatively effective to me. Please keep in mind that we are also addressing decision makers with technical skills all across the board. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the Zend Framework project is great for large corporate sites and enterprise applications. In fact, among PHP frameworks, I think these are some of our sweet spots. Decision makers want to see our case studies and what services we offer. We have been careful to wear the commercial side of the project on our sleeves- even on the old site from long before I joined the project. Ultimately, we hope ZF works as well for enterprise customers as it does for one developer's personal or hobby site. Could it be that some of this criticism might be directed at the fact that our site isn't designed for just developers? Maybe we took on too much by trying to address 3 stakeholders with the same design. Please don't take my answers as deflections of your comments- I'm taking this all as feedback. The fact is that we'll never have a site that everyone likes. J ,Wil From: Karl Katzke [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, April 07, 2008 10:32 AM To: Wil Sinclair Cc: fw-general@lists.zend.com Subject: Re: [fw-general] And a big thanks to Varien for the new site design! Wil, I'm not a big fan of the new site's homepage either. Let me try and explain why, from both a design perspective and a usability perspective. On the front page, everything is cartoony and oversized. The icons are big, the fonts are far too big, the ZF logo (which is normally rather slick) is big and embossed, the MAKE THE CHOICE is the biggest and first thing you see. Those are challenge words, not welcoming words. The color scheme clashes and calls your attention to too many things at once. There are far too many choices on the front page for anyone to find where they should get started. The subheadings under Make the choice / get started / give back are dorky and un-necessary. How do you know what feels good to me? ;) Compare this to CodeIgniter's site: http://codeigniter.com/ ... the color scheme is bright in areas where it wants to call your attention. The first thing you read is a description of what CodeIgniter is, the second is a welcome message. The icons are understated and are small enough to not clash. You can scan the site easily and figure out where you need to go. On top of all the other sins we have unoriginality; the Make the choice, get started, and give back tricolor scheme seems to have been stolen directly from OpenSuse.org, which does it far better... they only give you three choices until you've decided if you're there to download, there for information, or there to contribute to the software factory. (I realize they're not the same exact colors, but that's the first thing I thought when I saw the blue top with the orange and green.) On the other hand, the inside pages are nice. I like the use of a block serif font. I like the tabbed menu. I like the organized layout. The font size is readable. We take the good with the bad, but I have a feeling that Code Igniter's website and websites like phpdoctrine.org should be used as examples. Those sites are well-organized and appeal to both decision makers and developers. Then again, it's not like the competition's stiff -- CakePHP's site has many of the same sins we do, and Symfony's site looks like garbage. -K On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 12:17 PM, Wil Sinclair [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I gotta say- it's awesome that we have a forum where we can agree, disagree, and generally figure out every way we can make the project better. OK, here's my take on the
Re: [fw-general] And a big thanks to Varien for the new site design!
On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 8:58 PM, Wil Sinclair [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: OK, I'm the one to blame for the 3 color-coded sections. J And most of those dorky taglines. Of course, I make absolutely no claims of non-dorkiness. :D I think colorcodes are a very useful tool. They are pretty subtle and people tend to grow used to them very quickly. What I really don't like (and I had not seen this before this thread made me look) is the bevel and glow effects on the header. An absolutely no go. Also reminds me of websites eight years ago. I also second that the header is too large and takes up space - even in my 1280x1024, the header is 1/3 of the screen. Good thing is - websites are never set in stone. :-) Till
Re: [fw-general] And a big thanks to Varien for the new site design!
Since we are on the subject of the new site (which I love by the way) and the 3 blocks, I have a problem that I've been meaning to mention for a while now. When the page is loading, the Make the Choice, Get Started and Give Back headers appear fine: http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j49/citalan/zf-site/loading.png But once the page is loaded, the text grows and overlaps: http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j49/citalan/zf-site/complete.png Haven't noticed it anywhere else on the site, just on the homepage there. Running IE7 on Vista with a 1280 x 800 resolution. Alan On 07/04/2008, Wil Sinclair [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: OK, I'm the one to blame for the 3 color-coded sections. J And most of those dorky taglines. Of course, I make absolutely no claims of non-dorkiness. :D I don't see 'Make the Choice' as challenging, but do you have a suggestion? BTW, this box is supposed to be for decision makers. The center one is for developers, and the right one is targeted at contributors. CodeIgniter's site is definitely good. But I wouldn't green-light something like this for ZF because I think there is far too much text for a front page and is extremely developer centric. Site conception and color-differentiated boxes were originally proposed by me. I can assure you that I haven't seen the current opensuse.org site. BTW, that horizontal, 3-box format is very popular right now. I have seen the current version of the RoR site: http://www.rubyonrails.org/. It's 4 items, but you get the idea. J Sometimes designs become popular because they work well; I believe that's the case here, but it's pretty subjective. I'm glad you like the inside pages. We tried to keep them strictly content-driven. We may add the occasional icon to liven up the text a bit. I really don't like the phpdoctrine.org site for several reasons, but I don't want to make this discussion to turn in to a list of criticisms of other people's sites. ;) CakePHP's site isn't my favorite, but it seems relatively effective to me. Please keep in mind that we are also addressing decision makers with technical skills all across the board. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the Zend Framework project is great for large corporate sites and enterprise applications. In fact, among PHP frameworks, I think these are some of our sweet spots. Decision makers want to see our case studies and what services we offer. We have been careful to wear the commercial side of the project on our sleeves- even on the old site from long before I joined the project. Ultimately, we hope ZF works as well for enterprise customers as it does for one developer's personal or hobby site. Could it be that some of this criticism might be directed at the fact that our site isn't designed for just developers? Maybe we took on too much by trying to address 3 stakeholders with the same design. Please don't take my answers as deflections of your comments- I'm taking this all as feedback. The fact is that we'll never have a site that everyone likes. J ,Wil *From:* Karl Katzke [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *Sent:* Monday, April 07, 2008 10:32 AM *To:* Wil Sinclair *Cc:* fw-general@lists.zend.com *Subject:* Re: [fw-general] And a big thanks to Varien for the new site design! Wil, I'm not a big fan of the new site's homepage either. Let me try and explain why, from both a design perspective and a usability perspective. On the front page, everything is cartoony and oversized. The icons are big, the fonts are far too big, the ZF logo (which is normally rather slick) is big and embossed, the MAKE THE CHOICE is the biggest and first thing you see. Those are challenge words, not welcoming words. The color scheme clashes and calls your attention to too many things at once. There are far too many choices on the front page for anyone to find where they should get started. The subheadings under Make the choice / get started / give back are dorky and un-necessary. How do you know what feels good to me? ;) Compare this to CodeIgniter's site: http://codeigniter.com/ ... the color scheme is bright in areas where it wants to call your attention. The first thing you read is a description of what CodeIgniter is, the second is a welcome message. The icons are understated and are small enough to not clash. You can scan the site easily and figure out where you need to go. On top of all the other sins we have unoriginality; the Make the choice, get started, and give back tricolor scheme seems to have been stolen directly from OpenSuse.org, which does it far better... they only give you three choices until you've decided if you're there to download, there for information, or there to contribute to the software factory. (I realize they're not the same exact colors, but that's the first thing I thought when I saw the blue top with the orange and green.) On the other hand, the inside pages are nice. I like the use of a block
RE: [fw-general] And a big thanks to Varien for the new site design!
That's a known ie7 issue that we hope to have solved later this week. Thanks for reporting it, tho! ,Wil From: Alan Wagstaff [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, April 07, 2008 12:20 PM To: fw-general@lists.zend.com Subject: Re: [fw-general] And a big thanks to Varien for the new site design! Since we are on the subject of the new site (which I love by the way) and the 3 blocks, I have a problem that I've been meaning to mention for a while now. When the page is loading, the Make the Choice, Get Started and Give Back headers appear fine: http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j49/citalan/zf-site/loading.png But once the page is loaded, the text grows and overlaps: http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j49/citalan/zf-site/complete.png Haven't noticed it anywhere else on the site, just on the homepage there. Running IE7 on Vista with a 1280 x 800 resolution. Alan On 07/04/2008, Wil Sinclair [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: OK, I'm the one to blame for the 3 color-coded sections. J And most of those dorky taglines. Of course, I make absolutely no claims of non-dorkiness. :D I don't see 'Make the Choice' as challenging, but do you have a suggestion? BTW, this box is supposed to be for decision makers. The center one is for developers, and the right one is targeted at contributors. CodeIgniter's site is definitely good. But I wouldn't green-light something like this for ZF because I think there is far too much text for a front page and is extremely developer centric. Site conception and color-differentiated boxes were originally proposed by me. I can assure you that I haven't seen the current opensuse.org http://opensuse.org/ site. BTW, that horizontal, 3-box format is very popular right now. I have seen the current version of the RoR site: http://www.rubyonrails.org/. It's 4 items, but you get the idea. J Sometimes designs become popular because they work well; I believe that's the case here, but it's pretty subjective. I'm glad you like the inside pages. We tried to keep them strictly content-driven. We may add the occasional icon to liven up the text a bit. I really don't like the phpdoctrine.org http://phpdoctrine.org/ site for several reasons, but I don't want to make this discussion to turn in to a list of criticisms of other people's sites. ;) CakePHP's site isn't my favorite, but it seems relatively effective to me. Please keep in mind that we are also addressing decision makers with technical skills all across the board. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the Zend Framework project is great for large corporate sites and enterprise applications. In fact, among PHP frameworks, I think these are some of our sweet spots. Decision makers want to see our case studies and what services we offer. We have been careful to wear the commercial side of the project on our sleeves- even on the old site from long before I joined the project. Ultimately, we hope ZF works as well for enterprise customers as it does for one developer's personal or hobby site. Could it be that some of this criticism might be directed at the fact that our site isn't designed for just developers? Maybe we took on too much by trying to address 3 stakeholders with the same design. Please don't take my answers as deflections of your comments- I'm taking this all as feedback. The fact is that we'll never have a site that everyone likes. J ,Wil From: Karl Katzke [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, April 07, 2008 10:32 AM To: Wil Sinclair Cc: fw-general@lists.zend.com Subject: Re: [fw-general] And a big thanks to Varien for the new site design! Wil, I'm not a big fan of the new site's homepage either. Let me try and explain why, from both a design perspective and a usability perspective. On the front page, everything is cartoony and oversized. The icons are big, the fonts are far too big, the ZF logo (which is normally rather slick) is big and embossed, the MAKE THE CHOICE is the biggest and first thing you see. Those are challenge words, not welcoming words. The color scheme clashes and calls your attention to too many things at once. There are far too many choices on the front page for anyone to find where they should get started. The subheadings under Make the choice / get started / give back are dorky and un-necessary. How do you know what feels good to me? ;) Compare this to CodeIgniter's site: http://codeigniter.com/ ... the color scheme is bright in areas where it wants to call your attention. The first thing you read is a description of what CodeIgniter is, the second is a welcome message. The icons are understated and are small enough to not clash. You can scan the site easily and figure out where you need to go. On top of all the other sins we have unoriginality; the Make the choice, get started, and give back tricolor scheme seems to have been stolen directly from OpenSuse.org, which does it far better... they only give you three choices until you've decided
Re: [fw-general] And a big thanks to Varien for the new site design!
By the way. Shouldn't it be Simplicity, Meets power? Rather than Simplicity, Meet power. I'm not an english geek but I don't really understand that.. On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 7:36 AM, Wil Sinclair [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: That's a known ie7 issue that we hope to have solved later this week. Thanks for reporting it, tho! ,Wil *From:* Alan Wagstaff [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *Sent:* Monday, April 07, 2008 12:20 PM *To:* fw-general@lists.zend.com *Subject:* Re: [fw-general] And a big thanks to Varien for the new site design! Since we are on the subject of the new site (which I love by the way) and the 3 blocks, I have a problem that I've been meaning to mention for a while now. When the page is loading, the Make the Choice, Get Started and Give Back headers appear fine: http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j49/citalan/zf-site/loading.png But once the page is loaded, the text grows and overlaps: http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j49/citalan/zf-site/complete.png Haven't noticed it anywhere else on the site, just on the homepage there. Running IE7 on Vista with a 1280 x 800 resolution. Alan On 07/04/2008, *Wil Sinclair* [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: OK, I'm the one to blame for the 3 color-coded sections. J And most of those dorky taglines. Of course, I make absolutely no claims of non-dorkiness. :D I don't see 'Make the Choice' as challenging, but do you have a suggestion? BTW, this box is supposed to be for decision makers. The center one is for developers, and the right one is targeted at contributors. CodeIgniter's site is definitely good. But I wouldn't green-light something like this for ZF because I think there is far too much text for a front page and is extremely developer centric. Site conception and color-differentiated boxes were originally proposed by me. I can assure you that I haven't seen the current opensuse.org site. BTW, that horizontal, 3-box format is very popular right now. I have seen the current version of the RoR site: http://www.rubyonrails.org/. It's 4 items, but you get the idea. J Sometimes designs become popular because they work well; I believe that's the case here, but it's pretty subjective. I'm glad you like the inside pages. We tried to keep them strictly content-driven. We may add the occasional icon to liven up the text a bit. I really don't like the phpdoctrine.org site for several reasons, but I don't want to make this discussion to turn in to a list of criticisms of other people's sites. ;) CakePHP's site isn't my favorite, but it seems relatively effective to me. Please keep in mind that we are also addressing decision makers with technical skills all across the board. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the Zend Framework project is great for large corporate sites and enterprise applications. In fact, among PHP frameworks, I think these are some of our sweet spots. Decision makers want to see our case studies and what services we offer. We have been careful to wear the commercial side of the project on our sleeves- even on the old site from long before I joined the project. Ultimately, we hope ZF works as well for enterprise customers as it does for one developer's personal or hobby site. Could it be that some of this criticism might be directed at the fact that our site isn't designed for just developers? Maybe we took on too much by trying to address 3 stakeholders with the same design. Please don't take my answers as deflections of your comments- I'm taking this all as feedback. The fact is that we'll never have a site that everyone likes. J ,Wil *From:* Karl Katzke [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *Sent:* Monday, April 07, 2008 10:32 AM *To:* Wil Sinclair *Cc:* fw-general@lists.zend.com *Subject:* Re: [fw-general] And a big thanks to Varien for the new site design! Wil, I'm not a big fan of the new site's homepage either. Let me try and explain why, from both a design perspective and a usability perspective. On the front page, everything is cartoony and oversized. The icons are big, the fonts are far too big, the ZF logo (which is normally rather slick) is big and embossed, the MAKE THE CHOICE is the biggest and first thing you see. Those are challenge words, not welcoming words. The color scheme clashes and calls your attention to too many things at once. There are far too many choices on the front page for anyone to find where they should get started. The subheadings under Make the choice / get started / give back are dorky and un-necessary. How do you know what feels good to me? ;) Compare this to CodeIgniter's site: http://codeigniter.com/ ... the color scheme is bright in areas where it wants to call your attention. The first thing you read is a description of what CodeIgniter is, the second is a welcome message. The icons are understated and are small enough to not clash. You can scan the site easily and figure out where you need to
RE: [fw-general] And a big thanks to Varien for the new site design!
Actually, it's the imperative form of the verb 'meet'. Something like 'Hey you Simplicity, meet my friend Power'. If you dropped the comma you could use the regular present tense of 'meet'- 'meets'- and the tagline would also make sense. But that's not what we settled on. J ,Wil From: Dylan Arnold [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, April 07, 2008 2:53 PM To: Wil Sinclair Cc: Alan Wagstaff; fw-general@lists.zend.com Subject: Re: [fw-general] And a big thanks to Varien for the new site design! By the way. Shouldn't it be Simplicity, Meets power? Rather than Simplicity, Meet power. I'm not an english geek but I don't really understand that.. On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 7:36 AM, Wil Sinclair [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: That's a known ie7 issue that we hope to have solved later this week. Thanks for reporting it, tho! ,Wil From: Alan Wagstaff [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, April 07, 2008 12:20 PM To: fw-general@lists.zend.com Subject: Re: [fw-general] And a big thanks to Varien for the new site design! Since we are on the subject of the new site (which I love by the way) and the 3 blocks, I have a problem that I've been meaning to mention for a while now. When the page is loading, the Make the Choice, Get Started and Give Back headers appear fine: http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j49/citalan/zf-site/loading.png But once the page is loaded, the text grows and overlaps: http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j49/citalan/zf-site/complete.png Haven't noticed it anywhere else on the site, just on the homepage there. Running IE7 on Vista with a 1280 x 800 resolution. Alan On 07/04/2008, Wil Sinclair [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: OK, I'm the one to blame for the 3 color-coded sections. J And most of those dorky taglines. Of course, I make absolutely no claims of non-dorkiness. :D I don't see 'Make the Choice' as challenging, but do you have a suggestion? BTW, this box is supposed to be for decision makers. The center one is for developers, and the right one is targeted at contributors. CodeIgniter's site is definitely good. But I wouldn't green-light something like this for ZF because I think there is far too much text for a front page and is extremely developer centric. Site conception and color-differentiated boxes were originally proposed by me. I can assure you that I haven't seen the current opensuse.org http://opensuse.org/ site. BTW, that horizontal, 3-box format is very popular right now. I have seen the current version of the RoR site: http://www.rubyonrails.org/. It's 4 items, but you get the idea. J Sometimes designs become popular because they work well; I believe that's the case here, but it's pretty subjective. I'm glad you like the inside pages. We tried to keep them strictly content-driven. We may add the occasional icon to liven up the text a bit. I really don't like the phpdoctrine.org http://phpdoctrine.org/ site for several reasons, but I don't want to make this discussion to turn in to a list of criticisms of other people's sites. ;) CakePHP's site isn't my favorite, but it seems relatively effective to me. Please keep in mind that we are also addressing decision makers with technical skills all across the board. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the Zend Framework project is great for large corporate sites and enterprise applications. In fact, among PHP frameworks, I think these are some of our sweet spots. Decision makers want to see our case studies and what services we offer. We have been careful to wear the commercial side of the project on our sleeves- even on the old site from long before I joined the project. Ultimately, we hope ZF works as well for enterprise customers as it does for one developer's personal or hobby site. Could it be that some of this criticism might be directed at the fact that our site isn't designed for just developers? Maybe we took on too much by trying to address 3 stakeholders with the same design. Please don't take my answers as deflections of your comments- I'm taking this all as feedback. The fact is that we'll never have a site that everyone likes. J ,Wil From: Karl Katzke [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, April 07, 2008 10:32 AM To: Wil Sinclair Cc: fw-general@lists.zend.com Subject: Re: [fw-general] And a big thanks to Varien for the new site design! Wil, I'm not a big fan of the new site's homepage either. Let me try and explain why, from both a design perspective and a usability perspective. On the front page, everything is cartoony and oversized. The icons are big, the fonts are far too big, the ZF logo (which is normally rather slick) is big and embossed, the MAKE THE CHOICE is the biggest and first thing you see. Those are challenge words, not welcoming words. The color scheme clashes and calls your attention to too many things at once. There are far too many choices on the front page for anyone to find where they should get started. The
Re: [fw-general] And a big thanks to Varien for the new site design!
One of the things that interest me most is the header image generation script for the new design accessible at http://framework.zend.com/header-image... Any change we can have the privilege to look at the the source of that little gem? :) Good Job, Varien Wil Sinclair wrote: . . .and that's what I wish I would have remembered to say in the 1.5 announcement. :/ Seriously, they did an excellent job on the design; we asked them to take the ZF site to a completely new level, and I think most people would agree they did just that. This is one BIG way that they give back to the ZF project. Thanks SO much, guys. ,Wil
Re: [fw-general] And a big thanks to Varien for the new site design!
Ahh that makes sense. Cheers. On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 9:58 AM, Wil Sinclair [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Actually, it's the imperative form of the verb 'meet'. Something like 'Hey you Simplicity, meet my friend Power'. If you dropped the comma you could use the regular present tense of 'meet'- 'meets'- and the tagline would also make sense. But that's not what we settled on. J ,Wil *From:* Dylan Arnold [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *Sent:* Monday, April 07, 2008 2:53 PM *To:* Wil Sinclair *Cc:* Alan Wagstaff; fw-general@lists.zend.com *Subject:* Re: [fw-general] And a big thanks to Varien for the new site design! By the way. Shouldn't it be Simplicity, Meets power? Rather than Simplicity, Meet power. I'm not an english geek but I don't really understand that.. On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 7:36 AM, Wil Sinclair [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: That's a known ie7 issue that we hope to have solved later this week. Thanks for reporting it, tho! ,Wil *From:* Alan Wagstaff [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *Sent:* Monday, April 07, 2008 12:20 PM *To:* fw-general@lists.zend.com *Subject:* Re: [fw-general] And a big thanks to Varien for the new site design! Since we are on the subject of the new site (which I love by the way) and the 3 blocks, I have a problem that I've been meaning to mention for a while now. When the page is loading, the Make the Choice, Get Started and Give Back headers appear fine: http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j49/citalan/zf-site/loading.png But once the page is loaded, the text grows and overlaps: http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j49/citalan/zf-site/complete.png Haven't noticed it anywhere else on the site, just on the homepage there. Running IE7 on Vista with a 1280 x 800 resolution. Alan On 07/04/2008, *Wil Sinclair* [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: OK, I'm the one to blame for the 3 color-coded sections. J And most of those dorky taglines. Of course, I make absolutely no claims of non-dorkiness. :D I don't see 'Make the Choice' as challenging, but do you have a suggestion? BTW, this box is supposed to be for decision makers. The center one is for developers, and the right one is targeted at contributors. CodeIgniter's site is definitely good. But I wouldn't green-light something like this for ZF because I think there is far too much text for a front page and is extremely developer centric. Site conception and color-differentiated boxes were originally proposed by me. I can assure you that I haven't seen the current opensuse.org site. BTW, that horizontal, 3-box format is very popular right now. I have seen the current version of the RoR site: http://www.rubyonrails.org/. It's 4 items, but you get the idea. J Sometimes designs become popular because they work well; I believe that's the case here, but it's pretty subjective. I'm glad you like the inside pages. We tried to keep them strictly content-driven. We may add the occasional icon to liven up the text a bit. I really don't like the phpdoctrine.org site for several reasons, but I don't want to make this discussion to turn in to a list of criticisms of other people's sites. ;) CakePHP's site isn't my favorite, but it seems relatively effective to me. Please keep in mind that we are also addressing decision makers with technical skills all across the board. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the Zend Framework project is great for large corporate sites and enterprise applications. In fact, among PHP frameworks, I think these are some of our sweet spots. Decision makers want to see our case studies and what services we offer. We have been careful to wear the commercial side of the project on our sleeves- even on the old site from long before I joined the project. Ultimately, we hope ZF works as well for enterprise customers as it does for one developer's personal or hobby site. Could it be that some of this criticism might be directed at the fact that our site isn't designed for just developers? Maybe we took on too much by trying to address 3 stakeholders with the same design. Please don't take my answers as deflections of your comments- I'm taking this all as feedback. The fact is that we'll never have a site that everyone likes. J ,Wil *From:* Karl Katzke [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *Sent:* Monday, April 07, 2008 10:32 AM *To:* Wil Sinclair *Cc:* fw-general@lists.zend.com *Subject:* Re: [fw-general] And a big thanks to Varien for the new site design! Wil, I'm not a big fan of the new site's homepage either. Let me try and explain why, from both a design perspective and a usability perspective. On the front page, everything is cartoony and oversized. The icons are big, the fonts are far too big, the ZF logo (which is normally rather slick) is big and embossed, the MAKE THE CHOICE is the biggest and first thing you see. Those are challenge words, not welcoming words. The color scheme clashes and calls your
Re: [fw-general] And a big thanks to Varien for the new site design!
Thanks for making us look like rock stars, Varien! ;-) On Mon, Mar 17, 2008 at 9:28 PM, Wil Sinclair [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: . . .and that's what I wish I would have remembered to say in the 1.5 announcement. :/ Seriously, they did an excellent job on the design; we asked them to take the ZF site to a completely new level, and I think most people would agree they did just that. This is one BIG way that they give back to the ZF project. Thanks SO much, guys. ,Wil
