[Freedombox-discuss] [FBox-Visual] New FBx Foundation Website Theme

[Fifty Four]

Hi

> Links to the two (slightly different) themes so far:
> http://mray.de/fbxfoundation_robert/theme.html
> http://seandiggity.com/fbxfoundation/theme.html

I prefer Robert's theme most of the two themes, but I would like to see some
things from Sean's theme in Roberts theme;

I would like the top nav links to be coloured like Sean's. that green is too
much in Roberts theme. I like that it's left aligned, but could the title be
on one line to fill the huge space to its right? 

I still think the News link should be the Home link.

Roberts content titles are too thin. Seriously, I can barely read them.
Seans titles seem too thick. I don't know the technical terms.

I love Sean's footer nav links.

> Here's a list of the current issues, and my thoughts on them:
> 
> * Width of the main content: Is there a reason to shrink the design?
> This is a very wordy website, likely to fill in with even more text.
> We're already using a big font size and a lot of padding around the
> content, so I think it's a bad idea.  For mobile views, we can start
> the zoom at 100% and let users zoom in/out as desired.  Or we take a
> look at the Bootstrap javascript/css and try to better integrate the
> "responsive" stuff they've done so that the mobile view is different
> and more compact horizontally, without having two separate themes (the
> view wouldn't change based upon user-agent string, but the pixel size
> of the viewport).
Good to know it's a responsive design. Cool.

> 
> * Footer: Maybe I'm just partial but I think the one I came up with
> looks nice, separates the footer from the main content well, and isn't
> distracting.  The gray tones should go well with the "concrete"
> background pattern too.
I love the footer. So much better.
> 
> * Bottom nav links: If we're going to be doing a left-aligned grid for
> most content, these should be left-aligned too, and probably moved
> closer to the footer than the main content.  Using the green here is
> better than the blue in my design, but I'm not sold on the green
> diagonal line.  Maybe just use the gray line.png from above?
I prefer your blue.

> 
> * News links: We should be able to pull the date from ikiwiki and print
> that out without any trouble.  We'd have to make sure the links were
> sorted by date anyway.
Excellent. if not too much work.

> 
> * RSS and Atom links: Why not have them floating on the right of the
> news links?  Makes that area of the screen look very busy if they're
> floating left (i.e. in the center of the design).
I agree.

> 
> * Language menu: Making a dropdown menu in the top-right isn't a big
> deal, but I'd also say it's wise to keep the footer how it is
> (especially because it shows the current state of the translations).
If it's not too much trouble I think it would be great to have a drop down
box in the top right. When I see translation % I think geeks live, dry
content, here run for the hills.

> 
> * Intro quote: Shortening it is fine, but making it too prominent on
> every page is a bad idea.  I've written a short script before that goes
> through a text file or a DB of quotes, stores them in a session array
> and shuffles the array, then grabs one line of the array to print until
> the array is empty.  If we do go with random short quotes, it's a good
> approach because the user doesn't see the same quote twice until she
> has seen them all during a browser session.
I was thinking more of a tag line, but there seems to be a concensus that
it's too much. If I were you, I wouldn't bother.
> 
> * Video: Clipping the video and hosting it on our site seems like the
> best approach.  I'd be happy to clip a video, although working from a
> low-quality version is probably not best.  We should also have a page
> linking out to youtube, vimeo, etc. for the videos there (or perhaps
> our own hosted versions).  If we're looking for a newer vid, can we get
> a video of Bdale's keynote at FOSDEM?
The purpose of the video on the home page needs to be defined. If it's a
News item then it shouldn't appear on the home page as it's old news. If the
purpose of the video is to explain what is a FBX, then the video title
should be renamed What is a FreedomBox?

I think it should be the video that Eben's quote is taken from.
Alternatively, take a quote from James in his video. Either way the quote
should link to the video. I think it's confusing having a video of James and
a quote from Eben. It's confusing and makes me wonder who is Eben? Is Eben
the guy that said Gadiffa was shot? 
> 
> 
> The next step is just pasting the markup etc. into ikiwiki's templates
> and making sure it works.  I can test locally, but pushing to the git
> repo would change the actual site.  So, let's make any final changes to
> these demos (the commentary above is probably my last contribution to
> that), get it into ikiwiki, and do some testing.


Good work Robert and Sean!!
> 
> 
> James -
> 
> After Robert and I reach a consensus with the new theme, who should I
> ask for the okay from before I push it?
> 
> 
> Best,
> ~ Sean
> 
> 
> On 04/02/2012 07:54 AM, Robert Martinez wrote:
> > Since it is Monday now I post my actual progress.
> > I'm not finished either so there are a couple of things (especially
> > the
> > footer) not working.
> > All in all I kept close to my mockup:
> >
> > http://mray.de/fbxfoundation_robert/robert_mockup01.jpg
> > http://mray.de/fbxfoundation_robert/theme.html
> >
> > http://mray.de/fbxfoundation_robert.tar.bz2
> >
> > most drastic changes are:
> > - the narrower page (but wider than the mockup)
> > - old background (I just prefer the strong concrete to the light
> > pattern
> > now)
> > - left-aligned menu.
> >
> > I'll try to get the footer stuff fixed today, so how should we
> proceed
> > after that?
> >
> >
> > Robert