[IAEP] Design for a.sl.o and sugarlabs branding/theme unity

[Gary C Martin]

On 27 Feb 2009, at 14:54, David Farning wrote:

> On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 6:35 AM, Christian Schmidt
> <schmidt at pentagram.com> wrote:
>> Thanks Sean. We are in the final stages of proofing content on the  
>> betasite,
>> and think we will go live this weekend. Stay tuned!
>
> Christian, I officially withdraw any reservations I had about the  
> new site:)

Sorry to be negative here.

I must admit I still really struggle with this site, I had hoped I'd  
just seen a very early WIP. All those super large font marketing speak  
text clippings surrounded by ellipsis; when you click one you're  
jumped to another large font text /todo/ type list page, covered in  
block highlights. That odd pop-up menu, permanently floating over the  
same fixed place and in the way of the main text flow. Due to the  
large font's, and unusual line spacing, there's a lot of up/down page  
scrolling needed when really much of the content could fit on a single  
pages. I'm also not sure what are navigation links are what are not  
(non-standard, some coloured things are titles, some are links), or  
what pages I've already been to (link colours change from page to  
page, not based on visited or one).

Not that I completely agree with everything he says, but I think Jakob  
Nielsen (http://www.useit.com/) will have a coronary if he ever finds  
this site ;-)

Hopefully it's just a combination of the code not working correctly in  
Safari, and/or me not being the target audience.

--Gary

P.S. In fairness I should also go through the site again and make a  
list of things I did like (i.e. the page with grid layout of  
activities, nice large colourful icons with simple clear descriptions).

> I showed it around my nephew's elementary school yesterday;  The
> teachers, teachers aids, and parents thought it was great!
>
> The most interesting aspect was the change from the dark to light
> background.  They thought the dark, over welming, background
> represented what one 'expects' from computers and the light background
> was what you would 'want' from computers.
>
> david
>
>>
>> Christian
>>
>> ________________________________
>> From: Sean DALY [mailto:sdaly.be at gmail.com]
>> To: ,Josh williams [mailto:joshcwilliams at gmail.com]
>> Cc: David Farning [mailto:dfarning at sugarlabs.org], iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org 
>> ,
>> sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org, Christian Marc Schmidt
>> [mailto:schmidt at pentagram.com]
>> Sent: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 04:05:48 -0500
>> Subject: Re: [IAEP] Design for a.sl.o and sugarlabs branding/theme  
>> unity
>>
>> Greetings Josh!
>>
>> In fact lots of work has been done on this by Christian, see for  
>> example:
>> http://sugarlabs.org/go/MarketingTeam/Logo
>> http://sugarlabs.org/go/MarketingTeam/Website
>>
>> and, in beta:
>> http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com/projects/sugarlabs/betasite/index.php
>>
>>
>> May I suggest you join the Marketing list?
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/marketing
>>
>> We have IRC meetings on Tuesdays at 1600 UTC:
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/marketing/2009-February/ 
>> 000341.html
>>
>>
>> We are gearing up for the imminent Sugar 0.84 release.
>>
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Sean
>> Marketing Coordinator
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 8:08 AM, ,Josh williams <joshcwilliams at gmail.com 
>> >
>> wrote:
>>> Hey David,
>>>
>>> I have had a quick look at the markup and the CSS, but I haven't
>>> actually had a look at the PHP. I laughed when I saw the Mozilla  
>>> guys
>>> had an IE style sheet, but then I figured they were probably just
>>> reusing code. I was actually wondering if I could have a local  
>>> copy of
>>> the remora code or access to a development or testing environment at
>>> some point?
>>>
>>> I also agree that we need a common branding for all of the sites,  
>>> Gnome
>>> is a great example I think Mozilla and Ubuntu are good examples  
>>> to. I
>>> think a splash page for www.sugarlabs.org built on WordPress or  
>>> Drupal
>>> would be a really good idea also. It could explain the what the  
>>> project
>>> is, have a download link to the latest version, link to the wiki,  
>>> press
>>> release, news etc.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> Josh
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> David Farning wrote:
>>>> On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 9:38 AM, Wade Brainerd <wadetb at gmail.com>  
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hey Josh, thanks for the offer of help!
>>>>> I definitely like your simple and kid-friendly theme for addons. I
>>>>> wonder
>>>>> off the top of my head though, if it makes sense to make  
>>>>> addons.sl.o
>>>>> look
>>>>> *more* like the other sl.o sites?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Have you gotten a chance to look at the aslo code?
>>>>
>>>>     Things are kind of confusing right now
>>>>
>>>>> with the different styles of wiki, trac, addons, schools,  
>>>>> gitorious,
>>>>> api,
>>>>> buildbot, etc.  planet is the lone exception, it seems to follow
>>>>> wiki.sugarlabs.org nicely :)
>>>>> It would be great if the Design Team could comment on this  
>>>>> decision.
>>>>> Here are a couple other web infrastructure ideas:
>>>>> + Improve theming consistency among various SL.o sites.
>>>>> + Single sign on cookie among all SL.o sites - perhaps OpenID  
>>>>> based.
>>>>> + Standard nav header atop all SL.o sites rather than the  
>>>>> various nav
>>>>> headers in different places, with different links.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The various gnome sites such as build.gnome.org and www.gnome.org  
>>>> are
>>>> very nice examples of common theming tying sites together.  Some  
>>>> thing
>>>> similar for SL would be great.
>>>>
>>>> david
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> + Better splash page for Gitorious, looking more like GitWeb - a  
>>>>> page
>>>>> with a
>>>>> small search box at the top and the rest being a list of projects,
>>>>> sorted by
>>>>> recent activity, showing owner and last commit details
>>>>> Best regards,
>>>>> Wade
>>>>> On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 11:10 AM, ,Josh williams
>>>>> <joshcwilliams at gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi, I'm working on the design of sugar labs add-ons with Mick  
>>>>>> Weiss.
>>>>>> I've created a mock up at http://sugarlabs.org/go/AddonsPortal/Design
>>>>>> but I've haven't been able to contact anyone on the design team  
>>>>>> as of
>>>>>> yet. I would also like to volunteer some of my time for other  
>>>>>> projects.
>>>>>> I'm primarily a front-end designer with XHTML/CSS JavaScript  
>>>>>> skills,
>>>>>> but
>>>>>> I also know some PHP/MySQL and have a background in Linux. I  
>>>>>> also enjoy
>>>>>> creating icons, so if there are any activities developers that  
>>>>>> need
>>>>>> icons please contact me. My portfolio is over at http://tucsonlabs.com
>>>>>> .
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If you're a member of the design team or have some use for my  
>>>>>> skills,
>>>>>> please let me know.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Josh
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>>>>>> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>>>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>>>>> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>>>> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>>> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep