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Time to Vote? (as Re: Official Thread: Mythtv.org Redesign)

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mythtv at colin

May 24, 2007, 6:12 AM

Post #1 of 27 (1157 views)
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Time to Vote? (as Re: Official Thread: Mythtv.org Redesign)

Maryau Jeune wrote:
> Justin Hornsby wrote:
>> All of this consulting with the dev list isn't actually getting the
>> site redesigned, is it?
>>
>> And FWIW, there haven't been any mockups yet I'd like to see replace
>> the current .org site - no - not even mine.
>>
>> Just get on with it - stop consulting all & sundry & get the job done
>> - this is out of hand now.
>>
> I'm sorry, I was simply going on Chris Petersen's advice to come and
> participate in the discussion here, which did provide me with lots of
> useful comments and suggestions. But you do have a point, and I am not
> sure where the actual site redesign stands at this point.

I don't think Justin was referencing directly to you, but to the
situation in general.

I think we are now at the point where design entries are finalised and a
Poll taken.

In the end it's up to Chris and Isaac to make the final choice, but
peoples opinions will no doubt help them come to their conclusions.

I know which ones I like best so a vote would be good (and no I do not
mean a vote on the Mailing list as that's just not going to work!!)

What say ye Sir Xris? Time to start things moving towards an implementation?

Col.

--

+------------------------+
| Colin Guthrie |
+------------------------+
| myth(at)colin.guthr.ie |
| http://colin.guthr.ie/ |
+------------------------+
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lists at forevermore

Jun 4, 2007, 5:01 PM

Post #2 of 27 (1065 views)
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Re: Time to Vote? (as Re: Official Thread: Mythtv.org Redesign) [In reply to]

Sorry for being silent for so long. I've apparently been quite busy and
let things pile up.

So... The general consensus among devs in impromptu IRC discussion is:

Jean-Philippe's colors/layout are the favorites, with Herman's coming in
at a close second (but too bloggish). We do we need to come up with
some other kind of images for the header for Jean-Philippe's, since the
ones he used in the mockup have an unknown copyright status. I
personally like Ghost's play on the sproingy, but Isaac says he is still
partial to the current "bubble" form of the sproingy.

I also liked Miguel's design (again, too bloggish), but the consensus is
that the logo should stay what it is, and no one really liked the orange
color, so it looks like we should stick with the current use of blues
and greys for future designs.

I've also been playing around with left-nav ideas at

http://newmyth.forevermore.net/

And am not sure if it's worth keeping the stuff at the top, since
leaving that space empty could be used for subsite-specific info
(trac/wiki login, etc. like Pidgin.im does).

I did also get a recommendation from the graphic designer at work, which
is that studies seem to show that (as much as I personally prefer it)
light-on-dark web pages tend to cause people to browse away faster than
normal dark-on-light ones.

At this point, I have a couple of requests to you artists.. Aim for
something similar in layout to Jean-Phillippe's (i.e. get away from
bloggish layouts), but see what things would look like in a color set
more inclined to keeping people looking at the page (I'll try to
rearrange the colors in my "newmyth" page to give some approximate ideas
of what to aim for). For the logo, please stick with either the plain
silver MythTV (like Jean-Philippe and Ghost did) or the current
bubble+sproingy like Herman's.

At this point, we should also start thinking about what information goes
on the front page. I like the direction that Jean-Philippe is headed,
so I'm going to say that we at least need an overview (preferably with a
small screenshot or two) and a couple of "news" entries (but not have
them be the main focus). That might still leave space for other
information, so I'll let you guys offer ideas for what should go there.
Again, *really* rough layout mockup at:

http://newmyth.forevermore.net/

-Chris

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caskater47 at gmail

Jun 4, 2007, 11:46 PM

Post #3 of 27 (1061 views)
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Re: Time to Vote? (as Re: Official Thread: Mythtv.org Redesign) [In reply to]

>
> We do we need to come up with
> some other kind of images for the header for Jean-Philippe's, since the
> ones he used in the mockup have an unknown copyright status. I
> personally like Ghost's play on the sproingy, but Isaac says he is still
> partial to the current "bubble" form of the sproingy.

Personally I feel the logo as simple text is the most powerful. While the
spriongy thing is cool it's just not as visually effective. I've removed the
images from the banner. It looks very clean and solid but I still like
having some imagery in there.

I did also get a recommendation from the graphic designer at work, which
> is that studies seem to show that (as much as I personally prefer it)
> light-on-dark web pages tend to cause people to browse away faster than
> normal dark-on-light ones.

That's an excellent point and my own experience with studies have shown the
same thing. Although that doesn't mean this can't be broken from time to
time. This is especially true in cinema where most text is light-on-dark.
This is due to the low lighting situation. I originally did it this way to
portray the same low lighting feeling of watching tv.

At this point, I have a couple of requests to you artists.. Aim for
> something similar in layout to Jean-Phillippe's (i.e. get away from
> bloggish layouts), but see what things would look like in a color set
> more inclined to keeping people looking at the page (I'll try to
> rearrange the colors in my "newmyth" page to give some approximate ideas
> of what to aim for). For the logo, please stick with either the plain
> silver MythTV (like Jean-Philippe and Ghost did) or the current
> bubble+sproingy like Herman's.

So with that i've done some rethinking of my design and re-tooled the color
scheme. Unfortunately keeping the main menu as dark toned and the rest of
the page with lighter tones just doesn't fit well with the existing design.
Instead i've opted to lighten up the entire thing and have come up with
this...

http://caskater4.khram.com/MythTV.org_D1_TopLevel_light.png

It keeps the style reasonably well while bringing it into the dark-on-light
color space.

Jean-Philippe

mythtv-dev2 at dwilga-linux1

Jun 5, 2007, 8:38 AM

Post #4 of 27 (1043 views)
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Re: Time to Vote? (as Re: Official Thread: Mythtv.org Redesign) [In reply to]

At 5:01 PM -0700 6/4/07, Chris Petersen wrote:
>I did also get a recommendation from the graphic designer at work, which
>is that studies seem to show that (as much as I personally prefer it)
>light-on-dark web pages tend to cause people to browse away faster than
>normal dark-on-light ones.

I'm one of those people who dislikes light-on-dark web pages. Let me
explain why, as it may be the reason others feel the same way.

You know when you've been outside on a bright, sunny day just after
it has snowed and you come inside, only to notice everything has a
green tint to it? That's due to a negative afterimage of the snow.
There is also such a thing as a positive afterimage (appearing in the
same color as the original light source) which results from
high-contrast, bright light:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afterimage

Well, I (and, I expect, others) experience something quite similar
when reading pages that use bright text on a dark background: the
positive afterimage of one part of the text starts to overlap the
rest, making it harder to read. I suspect that people who like this
color scheme either don't have the same degree of afterimage, or
their brains more easily filter it out when reading.

Here's an interesting blog article on the subject, with lots of comments:

http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200608/light_text_on_dark_background_vs_readability/

--
Dan Wilga "Ook."
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danielk at cuymedia

Jun 5, 2007, 9:08 AM

Post #5 of 27 (1050 views)
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Re: Time to Vote? (as Re: Official Thread: Mythtv.org Redesign) [In reply to]

On Tue, 2007-06-05 at 11:38 -0400, Dan Wilga wrote:
> I'm one of those people who dislikes light-on-dark web pages.

> I suspect that people who like this color scheme either don't
> have the same degree of afterimage, or their brains more
> easily filter it out when reading.

Or.. they get migraines when viewing dark text on a light
background for any length of time. I'm annoyed by afterimages,
but the thought of eight to twelve hours of debilitating pain
or even a couple hours of pain followed by a lost zombie day
due to medication out-gun the annoyance.

This doesn't mean I have any problem with a dark on light
design, firefox will dutifully show me white text on a dark
blue background with a 17 point font no matter what the
website designers chose. As long as the design allows for
text that is larger than the default and doesn't put stupid
images behind text, the web page should be readable to me.
And since all web pages look like this to me, I'm not going
to knock any points off on the design.

-- Daniel

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ghostfreeman at gmail

Jun 5, 2007, 9:25 AM

Post #6 of 27 (1049 views)
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Re: Time to Vote? (as Re: Official Thread: Mythtv.org Redesign) [In reply to]

I also have problems with headaches (mostly migranes) but i've been
using light-on-dark themed websites now for quite some time and
haven't noticed any difference (or I never bothered to notice). Any
how, given the circumstances, I'd go for a dark-on-light themed site,
and the one Jean-Paul posted is a step in the right direction.

If anyone wants the source PSD for my modified MythTV logo, i'm
willing to post it. I haven't had much luck turning it into an SVG.

On 6/5/07, Daniel Kristjansson <danielk[at]cuymedia.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-06-05 at 11:38 -0400, Dan Wilga wrote:
> > I'm one of those people who dislikes light-on-dark web pages.
>
> > I suspect that people who like this color scheme either don't
> > have the same degree of afterimage, or their brains more
> > easily filter it out when reading.
>
> Or.. they get migraines when viewing dark text on a light
> background for any length of time. I'm annoyed by afterimages,
> but the thought of eight to twelve hours of debilitating pain
> or even a couple hours of pain followed by a lost zombie day
> due to medication out-gun the annoyance.
>
> This doesn't mean I have any problem with a dark on light
> design, firefox will dutifully show me white text on a dark
> blue background with a 17 point font no matter what the
> website designers chose. As long as the design allows for
> text that is larger than the default and doesn't put stupid
> images behind text, the web page should be readable to me.
> And since all web pages look like this to me, I'm not going
> to knock any points off on the design.
>
> -- Daniel
>
> _______________________________________________
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> mythtv-dev[at]mythtv.org
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev
>
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caskater47 at gmail

Jun 5, 2007, 10:34 AM

Post #7 of 27 (1052 views)
Permalink

Re: Time to Vote? (as Re: Official Thread: Mythtv.org Redesign) [In reply to]

>
> I don't read many blogs and the ones I do read differ quite a bit, so
> could
> you elaborate a bit on "bloggish", so I know what to tweak?

For me, the term "bloggish" refers to a layout design which puts all its
emphasis on a main portion of text, like an article, blog, news history,
etc. This is in contrast to breaking the material evenly across the page so
as to not give too much focus to any one part.

Finally, a question for Jean-Philippe: what happens when the users resizes
> the window, or requests a larger font?

While certain sites that use fluid layouts look great many of them break
down when you resize them to a very large monitor (such as my 24"
widescreen) and what happens is the layout completely breaks down. So unless
all the pages of a particular site contain so much information that they
could scale to the large screens without breaking down the layout (which is
incredibly rare) I do not allow for fluid layouts. The width of the design
would be fixed to best fill a screen of 1024x768 resolution (or some other
resolution, all the artwork is currently in vector form and easy to resize).
When a larger font size is requested, the boxes will not stretch
horizontally but will stretch vertically.

Do the boxes resize, where do
> scrollbars appear

The boxes do resize. The boxes resize according to the content in them. The
difference is that the width of the boxes will be fixed just as the overall
layout will be. The boxes themselves would not contain scrollbars. I
generally disagree with sites that use that kind of concept (frames went out
of style in the 90s). The scrollbars would appear for the entire page.

(and how would these look on your gradient background?)
>
> Herman
>

I don't believe CSS supports gradient backgrounds (yet) so this will have to
be an image. As such I see that the gradient will exist only at the top of
the box until the image runs out and then will repeat the last color for the
rest of the box. So what you will see is a gradient at the top of the box
with the bottom color moving through the rest of the box. With this approach
I imagined there would be two gradient images, one for boxes that should
take up only half the screen size, and one that takes up the entire screen
size (note screen size is not equivalent to the length of a page).

Jean-Philippe

caskater47 at gmail

Jun 5, 2007, 10:51 AM

Post #8 of 27 (1045 views)
Permalink

Re: Time to Vote? (as Re: Official Thread: Mythtv.org Redesign) [In reply to]

On 6/5/07, Cameron Kilgore <ghostfreeman[at]gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I also have problems with headaches (mostly migranes) but i've been
> using light-on-dark themed websites now for quite some time and
> haven't noticed any difference (or I never bothered to notice). Any
> how, given the circumstances, I'd go for a dark-on-light themed site,
> and the one Jean-Paul posted is a step in the right direction.

I too don't really have problems visiting either types of websites. I think
the eye strain phenomena most people experience is not because dark-on-light
is actually better but because most computer use is set in a dark-on-light
world and so when that is changed you get the afterimage sensation. I think
it all mainly comes down to the overall lighting in whatever setting you're
in. If you're in a very bright-lit setting (i.e. it's afternoon and you've
got all the windows open in your home/office) your eyes won't like
light-on-dark, but if you're in a low-lit setting your eyes prefer
light-on-dark. I've noticed an interesting trend in television actually that
changes its advertisements according to the time of day. During the day most
advertisements use color schemes with dark-on-light, but once evening comes
around and you're watching tv on your couch in the low-lit living room all
the sudden ads become dark-on-light when they're a lot of text. The eyes
adjust the best this way. About eight years ago I actually came up with a
website concept that would change its color theme based on the time of day
the user was experiencing. That would be neat.

If anyone wants the source PSD for my modified MythTV logo, i'm
> willing to post it. I haven't had much luck turning it into an SVG.

I wouldn't mind having a copy of the PSD actually. I'd like to convert it
to vector form (Illustrator) and can output to SVG from there. It's good
practice to have all artwork in vector-form anyway.

Jean-Philippe

ghostfreeman at gmail

Jun 5, 2007, 11:11 AM

Post #9 of 27 (1052 views)
Permalink

Re: Time to Vote? (as Re: Official Thread: Mythtv.org Redesign) [In reply to]

Huh. I never noticed that with tv ads. I have noticed that people will
tend to prefer dark-on-light sites in different kinds of lighting
(although the number of people who tend to have no preference probably
outnumber each group). I have no preference for how typography and
color matter as long as its readable.

I think a dynamically-shifting MythTV layout would be detracting to
users. Users (especially in other time zones) might mistake the change
in color as if a new site materialized out of nowhere, making it more
of a vanity feature with no other purpose.

Anyways, you can grab the PSD from here:
http://loliserv.org/~ghostfreeman/etc/MythTV_Logo.psd

On 6/5/07, Jean-Philippe Steinmetz <caskater47[at]gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/5/07, Cameron Kilgore <ghostfreeman[at]gmail.com> wrote:
> > I also have problems with headaches (mostly migranes) but i've been
> > using light-on-dark themed websites now for quite some time and
> > haven't noticed any difference (or I never bothered to notice). Any
> > how, given the circumstances, I'd go for a dark-on-light themed site,
> > and the one Jean-Paul posted is a step in the right direction.
>
> I too don't really have problems visiting either types of websites. I think
> the eye strain phenomena most people experience is not because dark-on-light
> is actually better but because most computer use is set in a dark-on-light
> world and so when that is changed you get the afterimage sensation. I think
> it all mainly comes down to the overall lighting in whatever setting you're
> in. If you're in a very bright-lit setting ( i.e. it's afternoon and you've
> got all the windows open in your home/office) your eyes won't like
> light-on-dark, but if you're in a low-lit setting your eyes prefer
> light-on-dark. I've noticed an interesting trend in television actually that
> changes its advertisements according to the time of day. During the day most
> advertisements use color schemes with dark-on-light, but once evening comes
> around and you're watching tv on your couch in the low-lit living room all
> the sudden ads become dark-on-light when they're a lot of text. The eyes
> adjust the best this way. About eight years ago I actually came up with a
> website concept that would change its color theme based on the time of day
> the user was experiencing. That would be neat.
>
> > If anyone wants the source PSD for my modified MythTV logo, i'm
> > willing to post it. I haven't had much luck turning it into an SVG.
>
> I wouldn't mind having a copy of the PSD actually. I'd like to convert it
> to vector form (Illustrator) and can output to SVG from there. It's good
> practice to have all artwork in vector-form anyway.
>
> Jean-Philippe
>
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-dev mailing list
> mythtv-dev[at]mythtv.org
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev
>
>
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caskater47 at gmail

Jun 5, 2007, 12:27 PM

Post #10 of 27 (1039 views)
Permalink

Re: Time to Vote? (as Re: Official Thread: Mythtv.org Redesign) [In reply to]

On 6/5/07, Cameron Kilgore <ghostfreeman[at]gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Huh. I never noticed that with tv ads. I have noticed that people will
> tend to prefer dark-on-light sites in different kinds of lighting
> (although the number of people who tend to have no preference probably
> outnumber each group). I have no preference for how typography and
> color matter as long as its readable.

My reference is mainly things like [adult swim] and other late night blocks
of television that all use the dark-on-light color schemes. It may be an
incorrect observation.

I think a dynamically-shifting MythTV layout would be detracting to
> users. Users (especially in other time zones) might mistake the change
> in color as if a new site materialized out of nowhere, making it more
> of a vanity feature with no other purpose.

The original idea was definitely a vanity feature. I never thought of it as
functional, just something that would be "cool". I'm not necessarily
suggesting it for MythTV.org either. I agree it would likely detract
visitors.

herman at frontier

Jun 6, 2007, 9:01 AM

Post #11 of 27 (1041 views)
Permalink

Re: Time to Vote? (as Re: Official Thread: Mythtv.org Redesign) [In reply to]

> For me, the term "bloggish" refers to a layout design which puts all its
> emphasis on a main portion of text, like an article, blog, news history,
> etc. This is in contrast to breaking the material evenly across the page
> so as to not give too much focus to any one part.

Ok, but given that your "level 2" pages are also mainly text with a menu
next to it, that the "too bloggish" refered to my first page? Hmmm, not
sure what to do with that :-)

> The width of the design would be fixed to best fill a screen of 1024x768
> resolution (or some other resolution, all the artwork is currently in
> vector form and easy to resize). When a larger font size is requested,
> the boxes will not stretch horizontally but will stretch vertically.

Ok, sounds good. The same is my main reason for leaving the right/bottom
clear on mine, so screen can be filled (although given that I usually run
1600x1200, there might be a useable max-width :-)

> The scrollbars would appear for the entire page.

But wouldn't that move your menu out of view?

> I don't believe CSS supports gradient backgrounds (yet) so this will have
> to be an image.

You might get away with stretching the background image vertically, but
then not all boxes would have the same gradient. All depends on the
gradient range I guess.

Herman

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caskater47 at gmail

Jun 6, 2007, 11:28 AM

Post #12 of 27 (1034 views)
Permalink

Re: Time to Vote? (as Re: Official Thread: Mythtv.org Redesign) [In reply to]

>
> Ok, but given that your "level 2" pages are also mainly text with a menu
> next to it, that the "too bloggish" refered to my first page? Hmmm, not
> sure what to do with that :-)

Yes, obviously there will need to be pages that are mainly text but the
design should be able to adapt. I like your design but im not sure how well
it can adapt to a view that doesn't center on a main section of text. I'd
love to see what you can come up with though for battling this design issue.

> The width of the design would be fixed to best fill a screen of 1024x768
> > resolution (or some other resolution, all the artwork is currently in
> > vector form and easy to resize). When a larger font size is requested,
> > the boxes will not stretch horizontally but will stretch vertically.
>
> Ok, sounds good. The same is my main reason for leaving the right/bottom
> clear on mine, so screen can be filled (although given that I usually run
> 1600x1200, there might be a useable max-width :-)

Yes, I usually develop the designs to expand out and fill the rest of the
screen, but not the actual content. The content will always have a fixed max
width. So you don't end up with only white space. Examples of this method
are pidgin.im, k12.usc.edu, metro.net, windowsvista.com, etc.

> The scrollbars would appear for the entire page.
>
> But wouldn't that move your menu out of view?

The design is built to accommodate a screen resolution of 1024x768 including
extra space required by browsers with a bloated UI. So the menu should not
be out of view on this screen and certainly not on anything bigger. On a
very small screen (800x600) it would be out of view, yes. The design can be
done with a range for min and max width. The range of width may be 800x600
to 1024x768 but often that is unnecessary. Most screens are bigger than
800x600 these days and making the boxes scale in width requires grid-9
slicing (does CSS support that yet?) or actually cutting up the images into
several pieces and placing them into a table (which I have done successfully
many times before, its just a pain in the ass).

> I don't believe CSS supports gradient backgrounds (yet) so this will have
> > to be an image.
>
> You might get away with stretching the background image vertically, but
> then not all boxes would have the same gradient. All depends on the
> gradient range I guess.
>
> Herman

I could stretch the gradient but doing so on a very long page would lose the
effect when the page is first viewed (before they scroll down) and I want to
avoid that. I could easily use the same gradient for the full screen version
and the half screen version though and simply have that stretch, just not
have it stretch when the box goes longer than a full screen view (1024x768).

Jean-Philippe

herman at frontier

Jun 7, 2007, 4:17 AM

Post #13 of 27 (1033 views)
Permalink

Re: Time to Vote? (as Re: Official Thread: Mythtv.org Redesign) [In reply to]

> Yes, obviously there will need to be pages that are mainly text but the
> design should be able to adapt. I like your design but im not sure how
> well it can adapt to a view that doesn't center on a main section of
> text. I'd love to see what you can come up with though for battling this
> design issue.

My main question would be how many non-main-section-of-text pages there
would be. I would think most of it would be content, or images, both of
which flow nicely I think. But I'll think about some more mockups :-)

>> But wouldn't that move your menu out of view?
> The design is built to accommodate a screen resolution of 1024x768
> including extra space required by browsers with a bloated UI. So the menu
> should not be out of view on this screen and certainly not on anything
> bigger.

I didn't mean on a regular window (although I personnally never have my
browser windows maximized, even on 1024x768), but what happened if the main
section of text was too long to fit. I personally would prefer for the menu
to stay put in those cases.

> cutting up the images into several pieces and placing them into a table
> (which I have done successfully many times before, its just a pain in the
> ass).

Nowadays I prefer to use empty id'd or class'd divs, instead of tables.

Herman

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herman at frontier

Jun 18, 2007, 2:21 PM

Post #14 of 27 (919 views)
Permalink

Re: Time to Vote? (as Re: Official Thread: Mythtv.org Redesign) [In reply to]

> My main question would be how many non-main-section-of-text pages there
> would be. I would think most of it would be content, or images, both of
> which flow nicely I think. But I'll think about some more mockups :-)

Ah well, to kick the habit, another mockup:
<http://www.ozuzo.net/~herman/mythtv4.png>

Herman

(and now back to that other thing, a Flash-based mythmusic mockup...)

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Jun 20, 2007, 10:51 PM

Post #15 of 27 (888 views)
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Re: Time to Vote? (as Re: Official Thread: Mythtv.org Redesign) [In reply to]

ok, I've been trying to figure out the best way to integrate a "full"
menu but still keep a relatively sane/simple layout on the page, like
Jean-Philippe's layout.

I think that if we move to consider the top menu a more dynamic area,
with two to four separate regions represented, we can fit in two
horizontal menus.

http://newmyth.forevermore.net/ (note: requires firefox for now)

The extra two regions would be a blank area at the top for artistic
purposes, and a breadcrumb area somewhere to the left of the submenu.
With the addition of a breadcrumb, the submenu area would probably get
marked off visually even when its content is hidden.

I should also say that though I like Herman's latest rendering, I don't
think that it will provide the kind of integration that I'm looking for
on trac, wiki, etc.

Anyway, thoughts? I'd like to get this conversation moving again so
that we can consider deploying a new site in the next month or so.

-Chris

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ctreleaven at cogeco

Jun 21, 2007, 5:21 AM

Post #16 of 27 (883 views)
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Re: Time to Vote? (as Re: Official Thread: Mythtv.org Redesign) [In reply to]

At 10:51 PM -0700 6/20/07, Chris Petersen wrote:
>I think that if we move to consider the top menu a more dynamic area,
>with two to four separate regions represented, we can fit in two
>horizontal menus.
>
> http://newmyth.forevermore.net/ (note: requires firefox for now)
>
>The extra two regions would be a blank area at the top for artistic
>purposes, and a breadcrumb area somewhere to the left of the submenu.
>With the addition of a breadcrumb, the submenu area would probably get
>marked off visually even when its content is hidden.

Is the "pop up" submenu deliberate (ie not just an artifact of my using Safari rather than Firefox)? Because, I think those are a terrible design. First, the user has no visible indication that there _is_ a submenu. Second, it is awkward to navigate. The user has to hover the mouse over the main menu and then, without accidentally touching another main menu choice, slide down to one of the submenu choices. But if you goe to far, the submenu disappears and you have to start all over.

Craig
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adeffs.mythtv at gmail

Jun 21, 2007, 5:44 AM

Post #17 of 27 (883 views)
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Re: Time to Vote? (as Re: Official Thread: Mythtv.org Redesign) [In reply to]

On 6/21/07, Craig Treleaven <ctreleaven[at]cogeco.ca> wrote:
> At 10:51 PM -0700 6/20/07, Chris Petersen wrote:
> >I think that if we move to consider the top menu a more dynamic area,
> >with two to four separate regions represented, we can fit in two
> >horizontal menus.
> >
> > http://newmyth.forevermore.net/ (note: requires firefox for now)
> >
> >The extra two regions would be a blank area at the top for artistic
> >purposes, and a breadcrumb area somewhere to the left of the submenu.
> >With the addition of a breadcrumb, the submenu area would probably get
> >marked off visually even when its content is hidden.
>
> Is the "pop up" submenu deliberate (ie not just an artifact of my using Safari rather than
> Firefox)? Because, I think those are a terrible design. First, the user has no visible
> indication that there _is_ a submenu. Second, it is awkward to navigate. The user has to
> hover the mouse over the main menu and then, without accidentally touching another
> main menu choice, slide down to one of the submenu choices. But if you goe to far, the
> submenu disappears and you have to start all over.

generally I agree with Craig on these web drop down menu's, but I
found Chris's implementation quite easy to use (in Firefox at least),
the spacing was large enough so that the mouse would have to move
quite a bit out of the way to have the sub menu change and the submenu
pops up almost immediately after the mouse hovers over the menu
header.

I also like that the "Download" "sub menu" font color is different to
let the user know that it is not an actual sub-menu but a description
of what can be found there (the current version #). Do the menu
headers with submenus ("About", "News", and "Support") need their own
page or are the sub-menu pages enough? (ie, do the headers need to be
links to something as well?)

--
Steve
Before you ask, read the FAQ!
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then search the Wiki, and this list,
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jra at baylink

Jun 21, 2007, 7:34 AM

Post #18 of 27 (880 views)
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Re: Time to Vote? (as Re: Official Thread: Mythtv.org Redesign) [In reply to]

On Wed, Jun 20, 2007 at 10:51:42PM -0700, Chris Petersen wrote:
> I think that if we move to consider the top menu a more dynamic area,
> with two to four separate regions represented, we can fit in two
> horizontal menus.
>
> http://newmyth.forevermore.net/ (note: requires firefox for now)

I'm not entirely happy with that, Chris, but I can't tell you if it's
the black boxes on a black background issue, or the layout.

My instinct is twofold: go to a midnight blue on the background,
possibly a slight gradient... and maybe unbox "About"?

Additionally, those boxes don't appear to float if you reduce the
horizontal size of the browser window. Which is odd. Explicit CSS?
Or could my browser be broke? (FF2)

I know I haven't been in this thread much, but my schedule just
lightened up a bit.
--
Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra[at]baylink.com
Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274
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jra at baylink

Jun 21, 2007, 7:43 AM

Post #19 of 27 (873 views)
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Re: Time to Vote? (as Re: Official Thread: Mythtv.org Redesign) [In reply to]

On Mon, Jun 18, 2007 at 11:21:48PM +0200, Herman Kuiper wrote:
> Ah well, to kick the habit, another mockup:
> <http://www.ozuzo.net/~herman/mythtv4.png>

Wow. That's neat. How does it flow? Do you have the actual HTML on a
server, too?
-- j
--
Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra[at]baylink.com
Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274
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Jun 21, 2007, 9:01 AM

Post #20 of 27 (876 views)
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Re: Time to Vote? (as Re: Official Thread: Mythtv.org Redesign) [In reply to]

Craig Treleaven wrote:
> Is the "pop up" submenu deliberate (ie not just an artifact of my
> using Safari rather than Firefox)?

It's intentional. It's the only way I can think of to give people
single-click access to sub-areas of the site (notice that the parent
menu item is also a clickable link to another page) without taking up
space for all of them all at once.

> Because, I think those are a terrible design. First, the user has no
> visible indication that there _is_ a submenu.

You must have missed my comments about that visual indication being a
requirement of the final design. What I did was just a proof of
concept. The submenu would also always be visible when the user is
browsing within a particular section, too.

> Second, it is awkward to navigate. The user has to hover the mouse
> over the main menu and then, without accidentally touching another
> main menu choice, slide down to one of the submenu choices. But if
> you goe to far, the submenu disappears and you have to start all
> over.

Did you use it? I don't think my implementation is all that bad. Ample
padding (which would need a little more around the "parent" menu items
themselves) is usually enough to keep things usable.

-Chris

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herman at frontier

Jun 21, 2007, 9:29 AM

Post #21 of 27 (871 views)
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Re: Time to Vote? (as Re: Official Thread: Mythtv.org Redesign) [In reply to]

> I think that if we move to consider the top menu a more dynamic area,
> with two to four separate regions represented, we can fit in two
> horizontal menus.

Wouldn't such menus require some kind of scripting to get it to work on
not-so-much-compliant browsers? Or would the fallback be to have all
menus visible on "other" browsers?

> I should also say that though I like Herman's latest rendering, I don't
> think that it will provide the kind of integration that I'm looking for
> on trac, wiki, etc.

The latest one would be a frontpage only, as I was trying to figure out
what "less blog-like" would be :-) As second-level pages would have way
more content (I guess) to use a "fill-the-box" approach, there wouldn't
be any on those.

Also, what do Trac and Wiki expect, i.e. what kind of "skinning" is
possible there?

Herman

-----------------------------------------------------------------
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Beech Ave 162 - 1119 PS Schiphol-Rijk - t/f: 020-6589034/6142816
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jra at baylink

Jun 21, 2007, 9:36 AM

Post #22 of 27 (876 views)
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Re: Time to Vote? (as Re: Official Thread: Mythtv.org Redesign) [In reply to]

On Thu, Jun 21, 2007 at 06:29:41PM +0200, Herman Kuiper wrote:
> Also, what do Trac and Wiki expect, i.e. what kind of "skinning" is
> possible there?

You can re-skin MediaWiki, though it's not entire trivial. Travis
Derouin, from WikiHow, has probably done one of the most impressive
jobs; I think Cornell LII has one around as well that's hard to spot
through not being monobook.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra[at]baylink.com
Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274
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Jun 21, 2007, 3:17 PM

Post #23 of 27 (875 views)
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Re: Time to Vote? (as Re: Official Thread: Mythtv.org Redesign) [In reply to]

Herman Kuiper wrote:
> Wouldn't such menus require some kind of scripting to get it to work on
> not-so-much-compliant browsers? Or would the fallback be to have all
> menus visible on "other" browsers?

IE 6 needs help. Other browsers should be fine without scripting.

> The latest one would be a frontpage only, as I was trying to figure out
> what "less blog-like" would be :-) As second-level pages would have way
> more content (I guess) to use a "fill-the-box" approach, there wouldn't
> be any on those.

Yeah. That's really my only issue. I'm a big fan of certain key
sections always being in the same place. For instance, the links to
different sections should always be in the same place on every page.
Left-nav menus work great for this, but they can waste a lot of
horizontal space if the page is long (leaving a big white space on one
side or the other).

> Also, what do Trac and Wiki expect, i.e. what kind of "skinning" is
> possible there?

Both can be skinned, but since mediawiki likes a left nav by default, it
would be nice now to have to reinvent that, and just let our global
site-specific stuff exist at the top. Trac is almost entirely top-nav,
which makes it easy to integrate with other top-nav layouts (take a look
at the support/dev link on http://pidgin.im).

-Chris

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herman at frontier

Jun 22, 2007, 1:40 AM

Post #24 of 27 (849 views)
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Re: Time to Vote? (as Re: Official Thread: Mythtv.org Redesign) [In reply to]

> IE 6 needs help. Other browsers should be fine without scripting.

Ok, I hadn;t looked into what kind of CSS IE7 currently supports (using it
myself only since last week...) Are there browser stats available for
mythtv.org? Wouldn't be surprised if they are different from average :-)

> Yeah. That's really my only issue. I'm a big fan of certain key
> sections always being in the same place. For instance, the links to
> different sections should always be in the same place on every page.
> Left-nav menus work great for this, but they can waste a lot of
> horizontal space if the page is long (leaving a big white space on one
> side or the other).

Given that more advanced CSS is expected for the menu anyhow, a fixed
position for a left-nav menu should be doable, with a scripted CSS
attribute for older IEs.

> Both can be skinned, but since mediawiki likes a left nav by default, it
> would be nice now to have to reinvent that, and just let our global
> site-specific stuff exist at the top. Trac is almost entirely top-nav,
> which makes it easy to integrate with other top-nav layouts (take a look
> at the support/dev link on http://pidgin.im).

Mine has left and top, even more easy ;-) <minor pet-peeve>Surrounding an
URL with <> makes it easier to click on the link, one of things I don't
like about Thunderbird is why it can't surround pasted URLs with them, as
Mulberry does</minor pet-peeve>

Herman

-----------------------------------------------------------------
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jochen.kuehner at gmx

Jun 22, 2007, 7:32 AM

Post #25 of 27 (839 views)
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Re: Time to Vote? (as Re: Official Thread: Mythtv.org Redesign) [In reply to]

i also like this one...

Jay R. Ashworth schrieb:
> On Mon, Jun 18, 2007 at 11:21:48PM +0200, Herman Kuiper wrote:
>
>> Ah well, to kick the habit, another mockup:
>> <http://www.ozuzo.net/~herman/mythtv4.png>
>>
>
> Wow. That's neat. How does it flow? Do you have the actual HTML on a
> server, too?
> -- j
>
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