Site Redesign

[torial]

I'm liking these changes... nice to see you've brought the forums along...

Do you think you'll be able to work a miracle w/ Trac/Wiki and make it look more like the rest of the site?

[Charles]

My answer is "Hell, yes."

Todd A did the forums and will probably do Trac. I've been working on the static pages and have more refinements to make, like having the Downloads page link to the wiki pages for Editor Support and IDE Support, get the How To's for threading posted, etc.

[Benjamin]

Ben, when you say the brown color are you referring to the strip underneath the menu at the top? Or something else?

Yes I am referring to the brown strip, but also the big plane at the home page. I am not so good with colors but I have been trying some, I figured this one might deserve a try: #7DBFF1
So just for the strip (#pre-content). Many lines of html output btw

[todd.a]

Yes I am referring to the brown strip, but also the big plane at the home page. I am not so good with colors but I have been trying some, I figured this one might deserve a try: #7DBFF1
So just for the strip (#pre-content). Many lines of html output btw

Out of curiosity did you come up with that color using a color algorithm (like Compound on kuler.adobe.com)? Algorithmically it's a good color but it doesn't go well with our base color in this context. You can have a preview of it by changing that value using a developer tool like Firebug in your browser.

There is also the brown in the discussion form panels like at viewforum.php?f=4
I can't say I'm in love with it and I wonder if it should be the same color as the "page bar" (css pre-content area).

That color is a gradient from a lighter shade of the pre-content color to the pre-content color. It can probably be flattened. This will help make monthly color changes easier. Same goes for the tab panels.

[Benjamin]

Out of curiosity did you come up with that color using a color algorithm (like Compound on kuler.adobe.com)? Algorithmically it's a good color but it doesn't go well with our base color in this context. You can have a preview of it by changing that value using a developer tool like Firebug in your browser.

No, I just got it with a color picker. I previewed it, and it looked alright to me... but as I said I am not good with colors, just don't have the feeling

[pchapin]

I just wanted to say that I really like the new look. I think it's very professional.

The site also seems faster to me... but maybe that's because I recently switched to Opera.

[Charles]

Thanks. Todd and I continue to work on it. Trac updates are coming next. There are also many small refinements on my TO DO list, some of them completed and some of them upcoming.

It feels snappier to me too. Some reasons could be:
-- The HTML (and CSS) may be simpler than the previous forums theme.
-- I commented out a JavaScript link for the forums that wasn't needed
-- I disabled some modules in Apache we weren't using.

[todd.a]

No, I just got it with a color picker. I previewed it, and it looked alright to me... but as I said I am not good with colors, just don't have the feeling

Hmm, the color theory gods might come after you .

Yep, the site is definitely faster.

[hopscc]

FWIW,
Generally I think the site redesign is an improvement, cleaner looking and better button layout
BUT
Strong negative on the brown (poo, mud ) color theme - I also dont think randomly changing the color scheme periodically is an improvement
boring though it may be statically - use color to indicate update/change (and interactivity ability - see below) if you must play with colors

Slight negative on the font - its a nice font but theres not a strong differentiation between monospace ( code,quotes) and the normal variable font ( text,discussion,description)

Double strong negative on the loss of color highlighting urls - - UNLIKE ANY NORMAL WEB PAGE -
and of wiki links and especially unmade/dangling wiki links
The only way to find out for sure now if anything in a page is linkable clickable is by skimming the cursor over (all) the text lines which is not a normal, desirable or intuitive web page reading action.

Cannot easily tell wiki page links are set as placeholders/what needs adding without navigating over and to it..

[todd.a]

Double strong negative on the loss of color highlighting urls - - UNLIKE ANY NORMAL WEB PAGE -
and of wiki links and especially unmade/dangling wiki links
The only way to find out for sure now if anything in a page is linkable clickable is by skimming the cursor over (all) the text lines which is not a normal, desirable or intuitive web page reading action.

The pages that are not linkable have their links faded, they look disabled. We can improve this if people are having difficulty with it.

Cannot easily tell wiki page links are set as placeholders/what needs adding without navigating over and to it..

Care to elaborate on this? I'm not sure what you mean.