proposal for kdevelop.org new website design

[Sam S.]

I've now uploaded the mockup including various variations to:
http://smls75.sqweebs.com/kdevelop%20website%20design%20proposal/
(it's easier to keep track of them in one single place).

On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 9:59 PM, Alexander Dymo <alexander.dymo at gmail.com> wrote:
> [...]
> I'd be interested to try a few things:
> - place download/support/join boxes to the left (most people scan pages
> starting from the top left and we'd want download to be right there)

Those three boxes are not part of the navigation panels that are
present on every page, but are part of the specific content shown on
the front page. And in my opinion, aligning them left *within* that
page content area doesn't look good at all. Notheless I've uploaded a
mockup variation for this case.

> - less "rude" green color

Do you mean using as less intense green (as also suggested by David
and Milian)? I've done that now. Or do you mean showing less green
backgrounds altogether? In that case, what should I replace them with?

> - get rid of the "news", "credits" and "about" tabs (place about/credits to
> the "community" section as "Developers" link)
> - remove tabs altogether (no need, all links are already present on the page,
> and with new design they are quite easy to find); put search in place of tags)

I've uploaded corresponding mockup variations.
However, I' personally still in favour of the original one. I've
uploaded two explanatory graphics (same URL) that explain why I
arranged the navigation panels the way I did (including those "tabs").

> - put kdevelop 4.x in versions section to the left (again, it's more
> important)

Here I definitely disagree. It's not just about what you see first,
but also about easily making sense of what you see. And that little
two-column box is supposed to make sense *as a whole*. Switching those
two columns around might make my eyes "hit" the KDevelop 4.x column a
few milliseconds earlier while initially scanning the page, but in
turn it will take by brain one or two second longer to actually
process what I'm seeing here, and maybe even leave me with a slight
sense of confusion, because of the unintuitive ordering.

> - get rid of the "links" section (no useful information there anymore IMHO)

I don't have a strong opinion about this one (I just copied that
section from the current website) - I guess Amilcar will just have to
decide whether to still keep that or not.

> - play with the language selector (there're too many flags to my taste), maybe
> have a simple combobox (ok, that's ugly... maybe a styled html'ed combobox)?

Here I somewhat agree, there's so many flags that they can get a
little bit distracting... (and maybe the website will be translated in
even more languages in the future)... I just didn't have any
satisfying idea on how else to do it yet (and also haven't considered
it a priority since it isn't that important to the design as a whole).
A combo-box would not only look weird but also require a website
visitor to understand English in order to switch to another language
than English, which is not really the point of having those
translations in the first place! ;-)

I did upload one mockup variation without the flags, showing instead a
custom combobox/dropdown-menu-like thing which looks less intrusive
than a normal combobox and also shows a picture of the flag
corresponding to the currently used languge - however, to implement
such a menu, one would have to use Java Script, and I don't know how
thrilled Amilcar would be to require Java Script as a dependency for
using that website...