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SEUL: Website design



NB. Before everybody complains about an HTML message, it is deliberate. This promises to be quite long, and HTML means I can improve the clarity with headings, etc. If you can't read HTML, then it's in plain text at the top as well - I'm sure you can survive downloading an extra few kb just this once. But please, if commenting, don't quote the whole thing! And don't start a public flame war about HTML - if you really can't live with it then complain to me personally, not to the list.


Hi everybody. In this message I'd like to outline my (partly incomplete) ideas for the website design, and invite comments.

I am *not* aiming to discuss the technical methods by which this is achieved. Most things are possible.

Obviously this stuff will not make it into tomorrow's release of the site - that will look mostly like the old one but with (some) extra content. This is medium term stuff.

Many of my ideas have come from www.annihilated.com and www.gimp.org, so I suggest looking at at least the latter before reading further.
 

Public site vs. Developers' site

As I have stated in the past, I propose having two separate sites. This already exists in the version which luka has informed us will be going live v. soon. There is a link on each pointing to the other.
 

Content

The idea is that the public site is for potential users of SEUL, *not* for potential developers. It is somewhere to explain what the project (and the product) is, and once the first release is out will be the first port of call for somebody needing help with SEUL, with links to howtos, and any support documentation produced by the project which is not included with the distro.

The developers site is intended as a resource for developers. It will contain 'getting started' FAQs for new recruits, as well as any other general resources, and will have a section for each of the dev- groups to put whatever is relevant to them in. I hope these will serve a number of functions:

It has also been proposed that each group should submit a list of links to relevant WWW pages, which will be listed on the site, probably on a central links page. This is, i think, a good idea.

Navigation

The screen should be divided into a navbar on the left, and content on the right. This navbar can automatically expand when a section is clicked on. This is practical down two, and perhaps three levels. So for instance we might have
 
Groups
---dev-help
-----some area of the dev-help site
Possibly for the third level, and certainly for any deeper, it will be necessary to go to another navbar. This will have the effect of, for instance, giving dev-help a 'sub-site', with it's own navbar and content, and possibly an individual look, while still maintaining a coherent image across the whole of the SEUL site.
My thoughts on how to do this are fairly vague. A possibility at present is maintaining the same 'look and feel' but changing the colour scheme. I'd be interested in comments and suggestions on this.
A mandatory item on the navbars of the subsites is a link to their parent site.
 

Looks

 I want to give a graphical look to the site, and to this end am currently struggling with the batch scripting mode of GIMP (no GUI). if anybody knows about this, please contact me!
It should be possible to automatically generate graphical headings, etc.

One thing that would be nice is a logo for SEUL. If anybody has any ideas, let me know - or better, let the group know and get them looked at. It would be kinda nice to incorporate a penguin somewhere, but this is not mandatory!!! What's needed is something versatile, that can be big or small, and look good either bold or subtle. (ie big and small ;-))

The design of the content of the site (ie not the navbar) I propose keeping roughly similar to what it is at present. The only change I envisage is having graphical text for the headings. Also subheadings would be useful, graphical or otherwise. But if anyone has ideas on what should be changed then, again, discussion is what the mailing list is for.
 

So, ideas and comments please!
-Simon

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Simon Waldman            email:  swaldman@bigfoot.com
Surrey, England.                 swaldman@seul.org
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SEUL : Simple End-User Linux     http://www.seul.org
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How did I know the B1 was an airplane? I thought it was 
vitamins for the troops.       -Ronald Reagan