On Tue, 1 Nov 2005, AJ Ashton wrote:
Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 22:21:57 -0500 From: AJ Ashton <aj.ashton@...400...> To: Inkscape Devel List inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Inkscape website re-design contest closed
Joshua A. Andler wrote:
Hey guys,
Voting time! After the extension of the contest, we now have 5 submissions for the re-design and all entrants know that we may ask them to rework things a bit. Heads up, two of the entries (the ones hosted on deviantart) are not live previews, but just mock-ups currently.
(Disclaimer: I made #5)
days before and it was convenient.) That entire image block is
Unless you are really clever with your sytylesheets (put the image near the end of the page but use stylesheets to position it later) I suspect that image block could slow down the loading of the text on the page for users on horribly slow dialup connections who just want to quickly read the text and get to the downloads. (On the rare occassions I view the site using dialup the screenshots already slow things down significantly.) Which reminds me, it is great the way how you have placed the download link clearly and prominently near the top of the page. Functionally your design is excellent and it isn't bad looking either.
I do like how the layout is scalable (unlike #2) and how the logo and title are prominently on the top left and a search box is prominently on the top right.
As for green-vs-blue, if you think blue is more appropriate it's not hard to change. I just like the colour green, so I used that :D.
I think we had a bit of a blue theme going for Inkscape but perhaps people want to change that? I'd prefer to keep some shade of blue but more importantly I think it is very important for links to be blue (and preferably underlined too, for usability).
Glad you guys like it anyways :) (I like #2, BTW)
#1 Is artistically interesting but I don't like the use of frames (even though it isn't actually using the frames tag it looks like an iframe). If we were doing print work I'd want to talk to this guy as the page is simple but very striking. A little more variation in the sidebar might make it easier to distinguish the categories (not links) from the subcategories (which are links).
#2 The fixed size layout of #2 puts me off so much I am probably not giving the design and colour scheme a fair evaluation.
#3 If as I suspect this one was created using Inkscape for all those gradients and decorations I will be well impressed. I happen to like Red a lot and think this site looks excellent but it is quite a radical departure from what we currently have and the layout isn't great.
#4 Busy as a bee. Good design but the three column layout feels a bit more complicated and cramped even on a large screen (so it wont look great on a smaller screen).
#5 may not be revolutionary but it is evolutionary and it takes the current design and improves it in various ways. Green or blue (so long as we have blue links) I'd go with this design too.
- Alan