Re: Proposed website design

On Sat, 7 Feb 2004, Charles Goodwin wrote:

> Date: Sat, 07 Feb 2004 14:34:13 +0000
> From: Charles Goodwin <[email protected]>
> To: Oliver Burnett-Hall <[email protected]>
> Cc: Gnome Office <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: Proposed website design
>
> On Sat, 2004-02-07 at 14:04, Oliver Burnett-Hall wrote:
> > URL is http://www.burnett-hall.co.uk/~ojbh/testing/gnome-office/.  This
> > is the main page for the suite, I've also done an (even rougher) page
> > for Gnumeric - the links should take you there.
> >
> > I've tested the layout on Firebird, Opera and IE6 and it seems to work
> > on all of them.
>
> Cool.  I did like the layout although I have a few reservations
> (explained later) about it.


> > My idea is to have basically the same layout for both the page for the
> > suite and for the applications.
>
> I honestly believe that's a bit constraining.  The front page needs to

And a whole lot of hassle but maybe if the site continues to be well
maintained, uses tools like XSLT (and possibly Conglomerate) and provide
an easily reusable stylesheets that will happen anyway.

> shout out "this is what we are!" and not really be flooded with
> navigational links or detailed news - gnomedesktop.org is for news and
> GO / GO-applications updates are infrequent enough not to require a
> substantial news column (just headlines).   I think we only ever need
> one column for the news and navigational links, freeing up lots of space
> in which to advertise the features of the GO projects.

I think the Three column layout as used by GnomeDesktop.org is cluttered
on all but the most obscenely large desktops (in which case I'll actually
narrow my browser window) and hideously cramped on smaller ones.
The three column layout also results in large amounts of dead space either
said when the web page maintainers inevitably give in to the temptation to
have a page with more than a window or two high worth of content.

I would encourage you to go with a two column layout.


I also think that the 'GO' Gnome Office marketing strategy - if used with
some little restraint - will be fantastic.  (You will probably also have
to be a little careful not to tread on the toes of other groups who have
probably had the nerve to trademark and copyright reasonably obvious 'GO'
releated phrases).

Great work!

Sincerely

Alan Horkan
http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/