Main site makeover

[Chris Zumbrunn]

On May 29, 2005, at 12:55 AM, Giorgos Keramidas wrote:

> On 2005-05-28 11:51, Fafa Hafiz Krantz <fteg at london.com> wrote:
>>>> What happened to this?
>>>> http://www.monkey.org/freebsd/archive/freebsd-advocacy/200412/ 
>>>> msg00080.html
>>>>
>>>> I don't know if these were generated from real HTML/CSS or just
>>>> created in a graphics editor.
>>>
>>> Actually, I've seen a front page that Chris did (I think) that's got
>>> the nice menu across the top and a really well designed front page.
>>
>> I just wanted to point out;
>>
>> There's *nothing* new about that design.
>> It still follows the old principles.
>
> It's ok.  Small incremental changes are easier to test and accept than 
> a
> full "throw it all away and use mine" style of update.
>
> The site now uses CSS a lot more than before, AFAIK.  I'm not a web
> design guru, but if someone came up with a style that looks like, say,
> Wikipedia it would be interesting.
>
> Any takers who want to try revamping the front page by using *only* CSS
> style changes?

Yes, that was exactly the idea. There is a version committed in 
Perforce that took that approach and looks like this:

http://czv.com/zones/beastie/freebsd/freebsdweb1h.html
http://czv.com/zones/beastie/freebsd/freebsdweb2h.html

For now, the logo competition has put a wrench in going live with a 
small redesign like this.

Specially for all the content pages besides the frontpage, it is 
crucial to implement a redesign in a way that is compatible with the 
current way these pages are built. A redesign that requires changes 
beyond that will take forever to implement. What many don't seem to 
understand is that the technical implementation of the design and the 
design itself are two different things. They can't both happen at the 
same time.

Changing the technical implementation will be a slow process that 
requires a long term transition without changing the design at the same 
time. The redesign itself is something that is implemented within the 
existing technical framework and can be switched live at once.

I still argue that we need to first switch a small redesign live within 
the current technical framework, then change the technical framework 
(which will require updates to the markup of all the pages in the www 
cvs tree for all the languages) and only after that we can undertake a 
major redesign entirely based on CSS definitions.

Going a bit farther with just the frontpage is possible as long as it 
is in line with the initially simple changes that can be made to the 
content pages. For example Devon's div-based markup with the dynamic 
menues that is currently in Perforce:

http://czv.com/zones/beastie/freebsd/freebsdweb1j.gif

Cheers, Chris

chris at czv.com  +41 329 41 41 41
Chris Zumbrunn Ventures - http://www.czv.com/
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