[Friendsofdebian-discuss] First layout preview...

[Ean Schuessler]

On Monday 24 October 2005 10:36 am, Agnieszka "pixelgirl" Czajkowska wrote:
> here we go: http://www.creative-geeks.org/temp/fod_prev1.jpg

Nice workmanship!

> Don't mind the pic, I've just picked one I could find. ;) I created a
> layout, which is quite flexible to use for content and navigation
> structure. The logo is just a first brainstorming idea, it can be
> changed if needed.

Andreas asked me to get involved with this idea since I've built a lot of 
websites.

I would like to see something that both picks up on the existing Debian 
webpages and significantly modernizes them. It would also be good if we 
picked up on some of the visual cues from Free Software projects so that the 
site has a distinct Free Software "look". To me, the most distinguishable 
look and feel is the work done by Everaldo (aka KDE Crystal). While it may 
make some GNOME fans scream that this shows some favoritism to KDE I would 
counter that Everaldo has simply provided a more cohesive and consistent 
visual theme to the KDE application suite and KDE programmers have seized on 
that opportunity.

Some great examples of his work are at:

http://www.everaldo.com and http://www.yellowicon.com

Ideally we should get him to collaborate with us.

Mimicing and extending that look, and giving it a specific Debian flair 
through the use of more distinct red and blue elements would be a nice 
strategy in my mind. I would also like to see if we can't use some W3C 
compliant DHTML to give the site a more cutting edge feel. Of course things 
should work without a DHTML browser (for our users with impaired vision or 
serious console-mode jockeys) but that doesn't mean that we couldn't put some 
icing on the cake.

I would also like to focus the interface on a more entry-level audience. That 
doesn't mean we have to close up its guts and make it useless to programmers 
it just means that advanced things aren't indeterminately mixed in with basic 
controls. I really like the way that Netflix (http://www.netflix.com) 
presents itself.

Here are some things that we completed recently here at the shop:

http://www.parago.com
http://checkmark.heart.org
http://www.classifiedsforless.com

(Sorry about the Flash but the corporate types love it. Everything on the 
back-end is Free Software)

For some extra-heavy Flash tricks:

http://hello2.cellularone.com

Thats a few quick notes to start discussion.

-- 
Ean Schuessler, CTO
ean at brainfood.com
214-720-0700 x 315
Brainfood, Inc.
http://www.brainfood.com
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 307 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/friendsofdebian-discuss/attachments/20051026/942edd74/attachment.pgp