I'm a fan of Notepad++ and I would like to contribute to the project in a way that is fun for me and beneficial to you. I would like to turn the Notepad++ site into a slick and easily updated site.
Section 1: The Key Questions
I have a few essential questions. If you answer "no" to most of these questions, then you can quit reading immediately after that, because these are defining questions, and answering with a no means my suggestions would be rendered irrelevant.
1. Are you open to the idea of revamping the Notepad++ web site, or are you happy with the way things are and look?
2. Do you care about the site or do you prefer to point people to the Notepad Wiki page?
3. Do the people who host your site allow you to have some kind of back-end programming, a web language like PHP or ASP/ASP.NET? Do they allow you access to a database like MySQL, PostgreSQL, Sql Server Express or Oracle XE?
Section 2: The Suggestions
The reason why I would like to offer a redesign and build a site that is more dynamic in nature is because of the following reasons. Please understand that my comments are not meant to be critical or offensive, I'm merely suggestion stuff; if you are not interested please just say "No" and we're good.
1. The site is outdated - the "latest version" status is more often than not outdated, which is plain confusing and counter-productive. A lot of the texts refer to older versions. The "News" tab offers info that is old beyond usefulness.
2. It would be nice to come to the site and see what are the items that were fixed in the latest version.
3. The site has a lot of spelling mistakes.
4. The text/content area is too cramped and would benefit from a bit more space.
5. The site has both a vertical and horizontal menu, with no clear reason why some items are here and some are there. We can centralize the menus either on the left or at the top. We can create a nice drop down menu in case of a horizontal system or one that has a nice inverse bar if we go with a vertical one.
6. We can reorganize the downloads page and make things more accessible and more aesthetically pleasing. The first thing I would suggest is to put a list of categories at the top of the page (so that people know what is available, without having to scroll down) and clicking on a category would "jump" to the relevant section. Each section would have a nice title and a "top" button which would "jump" to the top of the page. Things would also be better organized and indented.
7. If your ISP allows back end programming, we can create a simple mechanism that allows you to post updated news to the website. In this scenario, you would have password protected access to a page that allows you to input information which would go into a database and the web pages would pull the information from the database.
Section 3: The How
If you are open to the idea of revamping the look of the site (and hopefully the site can have a programmable back-end, which would allow us to do some really cool advanced/dynamic stuff) I can sit down and create a sample page or two (possibly the home page and the downloads page) and send it to you in pdf or jpg format. If you hate it, fine; if you like some of it you can make comments etc, state your preferences etc, and I can do the rest of the stuff.
Changing the look of the site does not require a programmable back-end, but if we want to make things truly dynamic and easy for you to update, that *would* require a programmable back-end.
To make things clear beyond the shadow of a doubt: I'm suggesting to do this for fun only, and I do not intend to charge you money for it. I just think that it would be a cool way to do something nice for you since you are the Notepad++ guy.
That's about it.
Thank you for reading this email.
Best Regards.
ps: what are your favorite colors? green and orange? people like their web site to use their favorite colors.
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The section nav table at the top of the page should be ready tonight UTC. I need to translate a couple of missing sections prior. The table background will be a very light blue to keep a good readability of orange links.
CChris
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The current discussion forums are
1/ controlled by Sourcforge, and totally out of our reach or control
2/ slated for replacement by phpBB in the near future. SF still can't say when, but they want to get rid of them. And I think many here so do.
The new UI breaks under IE6 in more ways than one. In particular, the projects /files pages do not display at all. SF doesn't seem to recant about preferring a bloated IE8.
And I can't tell about Safari, because 4.0.2 crashes before displaying any page of any kind.
CChris
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May I know who removed my message "Post header Background image misplaced" posted 2009-07-17 09:00 GMT, and why? Is there really someone who found it less accurate or precise or concise or clear or friendly or polite or pleasant or useful or anything else, than any other post? If not, could someone explain the reason? and why and how this should this help the Notepad++ program or community?
Versailles, Fri 17 Jul 2009 16:29:10 +0200
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First, thank you for taking the time to answer my questions with such detail.
Seeing that you were open to the idea of revamping the Notepad++ site, I sat down and created an initial home page. I have the structure of the site itself pretty clear in my head, but first I wanted you (and people who's opinion you trust) to see my work. Maybe you like it, maybe you don't. Also, I'm pretty sure you are going to have plenty of comments, suggestions and requests.
My design goal was this: first, make a bold, impressive home page, and then, when people click on one of the items on the menu on the right, they enter the actual site. The site itself (the second layer, which I have not created yet) will have a banner on top with a logo and a nice narrow and wide chameleon picture, and then a menu that would either be on the left (vertical) or at the top (horizontal). The rest of the page would be the content. This menu would have the same options as the one on the home page and people would click on menu items to navigate to specific pages. Pretty standard. The third layer of the site would be the functionality that allows you to update the site content using a password-protected module that would not be visible to users.
The screen-shots I'm attaching to this message are showcasing the following:
1. My web design skills. I'm not a trained designer, I'm a developer with an eye for order.
2. A suggested home page, kind of like a "splash screen"
3. A selection of colors that would be used as the "color theme" of the site, i.e., the site itself, all the menus etc would use these colors.
4. The page displays the same no matter which browser you use: IE (7 & 8), Firefox (3.x), and Opera (9.x)
Why did I send 4 separate images that look very much alike? Details follow:
#1: Is the home page
#2: What you see when you mouse over one of the menu items on the right.
#3: What you see when you mouse over one of the menu buttons below the chameleon picture.
#4: What you see when you mouse over one of the links in the footer.
That's about it.
Quick summary: I'm not some design genius, I'm a software & database developer that likes organized sites that are easy to maintain. Please do not hesitate to tell me your sincere thoughts. If you don't like it, no problem, no offense taken. If you do somewhat, and would like to change stuff such as colors, text, menu items, etc, please tell me. I'll wait for your initial comments to start with the site itself.
Thank you again for spending your valuable time reading this message.
Best Regards,
Nissim
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I find the style is sober and elegant as "splash screen".
Since it's about changing the look and feel, why don't we change the colour scheme and the lizard picture (I like orange, but not green)?
> The site itself (the second layer, which I have not created yet) will have a
> banner on top with a logo and a nice narrow and wide chameleon picture...
Well, it's hard to me to image the second layer. A mockup will be more self-expressive
Now for the questions :
1. The current site are translated in several languages, and the current system(only php and html, w/o DB) favorates the contributions of translators ( see : http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/skinflint.php ). So in the future (new site with php + mysql), how can we build a procedure to make the contribution of translation easier?
2. Javascript : Probably you are one of members of anti-javascript club. I would like to know anyway : is it possible to detect the javascript status (activated or not) in users’ browser in order to generate (or not) the javascript code. I’d like to keep some features of current site – for example the folding capacity.
3. I'd like to know in which way you will reorganize the existing element in your "second layer". All in one line (or one column) menu (again, a mockup will help me get the whole picture)?
4. Like I said, I'm impressed by the first mockup. However, I would like to know if there is a "design B"?
Thank you for your time and your nice mockup.
Don
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Hi Don,
I emailed you design #2. My concern is this: the attached zip file (with the screen shots) was almost 2mb. I hope it was not rejected by your email service provider. If you have not received anything from me, then please send me an email, and I will resend my email in parts.
Best Regards,
Nissim
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Hi everyone! I'd like t contribute with the website too. If you need a php developer, I can be useful. I've been in projects like adultmeeter.com, spacash.com, and actually I developed winky.com.
Greetings!
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
> Section 1: The Key Questions
> 1. Are you open to the idea of revamping the Notepad++ web site,
> or are you happy with the way things are and look?
Yes, the revamping Notepad++ web site is needed, for both graphical design (look & feel) and reorganization of data (programable code).
> 2. Do you care about the site or do you prefer to point people to the Notepad Wiki page?
Notepad++ site web is rather an entry, a picture of Notepad++ which contains the static data.
whereas wiki page (NpWiki++) contains the "dynamical data" (which will be updated frequently by the community).
Notepad++ site web is important, since its role is the prior interface for users. It should point to NpWiki++ for some technical information because that will release a lot of effort of site maintenance.
> 3. Do the people who host your site allow you to have some kind of back-end programming,
> a web language like PHP or ASP/ASP.NET? Do they allow you access to a database like MySQL,
> PostgreSQL, Sql Server Express or Oracle XE?
Notepad++ is hosted in SourceForge. They do provide php + mysql under LAMP environment.
> Section 2: The Suggestions
> 1. The site is outdated - the "latest version" status is more often than not outdated, which is plain confusing and counter-productive.
The last version number is usually updated, at least I try to keep it updated.
> A lot of the texts refer to older versions. The "News" tab offers info that is old beyond usefulness.
true.
> 2. It would be nice to come to the site and see what are the items that were fixed in the latest version.
Yes, good idea. An history section should be added.
> 3. The site has a lot of spelling mistakes.
Please point them out.
> 4. The text/content area is too cramped and would benefit from a bit more space.
I'm not against adding more space if you can improve the page readability.
> 5. The site has both a vertical and horizontal menu, with no clear reason why some items are here and some are there....
The first thing for me is to list all the content to show in web site, then according to that, reorganize the menu.
> 6. We can reorganize the downloads page and make things more accessible and more
> aesthetically pleasing. The first thing I would suggest is to put a list of categories
> at the top of the page (so that people know what is available, without having to scroll down)
> and clicking on a category would "jump" to the relevant section. ...
It's true that it's not easy to navigate on download page. I'd like to do the folding feature (javascript) for each section, but I got no time. The anchors and the section shortcut list on the header is a good compromise between the coding effort and navigation facility. Chris is doing it on the current download page.
> 7. If your ISP allows back end programming, we can create a simple mechanism that allows
> you to post updated news to the website. In this scenario, you would have password protected
> access to a page that allows you to input information which would go into a database and
> the web pages would pull the information from the database.
A web application to publish the content is nice to have.
>... I can sit down and create a sample page or two (possibly the home page and the downloads page)
> and send it to you in pdf or jpg format. ...
Not sure I follow you, are you offering the graphical design as well?
As I mentioned before, both graphical design and reorganization of data (programable code) are needed. And I don't see the advantage to recode the web page without change the current look and feel...
> ps: what are your favorite colors? green and orange? people like their web site to use their favorite colors.
Difficult to say... it's not green for sure (the green colour was for going with lizards).
light blue, light purple, or orange might my favorite colour.
> To make things clear beyond the shadow of a doubt:
> I'm suggesting to do this for fun only, and I do not intend to charge you money for it.
> I just think that it would be a cool way to do something nice for you since you are the Notepad++ guy.
Thank you for your very kind offer.
Don
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Hi Don, I sent you an email with the images attached but I don't know if what I have is the correct email for you. If you can, please send me your email to (remove the redundant stuff):
### nmsalinas ### at ### yahoo ### dot ### com
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What's happening with this? Is the website revamp still underway?
If it's fallen flat or lacks manpower, I'd be happy to take it over/contribute. Front-end web development is my specialty and I've donated websites to other open source projects - see http://codecamel.com/donate
Cheers,
Brent
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Just wanted to comment that the new website looks great - nice work!
I have to admit I tended to avoid browsing to the old one at work, for fear that people would think I was reading about reptiles instead of work-related stuff :P
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July 12, 2009
Hi Don,
I'm a fan of Notepad++ and I would like to contribute to the project in a way that is fun for me and beneficial to you. I would like to turn the Notepad++ site into a slick and easily updated site.
Section 1: The Key Questions
I have a few essential questions. If you answer "no" to most of these questions, then you can quit reading immediately after that, because these are defining questions, and answering with a no means my suggestions would be rendered irrelevant.
1. Are you open to the idea of revamping the Notepad++ web site, or are you happy with the way things are and look?
2. Do you care about the site or do you prefer to point people to the Notepad Wiki page?
3. Do the people who host your site allow you to have some kind of back-end programming, a web language like PHP or ASP/ASP.NET? Do they allow you access to a database like MySQL, PostgreSQL, Sql Server Express or Oracle XE?
Section 2: The Suggestions
The reason why I would like to offer a redesign and build a site that is more dynamic in nature is because of the following reasons. Please understand that my comments are not meant to be critical or offensive, I'm merely suggestion stuff; if you are not interested please just say "No" and we're good.
1. The site is outdated - the "latest version" status is more often than not outdated, which is plain confusing and counter-productive. A lot of the texts refer to older versions. The "News" tab offers info that is old beyond usefulness.
2. It would be nice to come to the site and see what are the items that were fixed in the latest version.
3. The site has a lot of spelling mistakes.
4. The text/content area is too cramped and would benefit from a bit more space.
5. The site has both a vertical and horizontal menu, with no clear reason why some items are here and some are there. We can centralize the menus either on the left or at the top. We can create a nice drop down menu in case of a horizontal system or one that has a nice inverse bar if we go with a vertical one.
6. We can reorganize the downloads page and make things more accessible and more aesthetically pleasing. The first thing I would suggest is to put a list of categories at the top of the page (so that people know what is available, without having to scroll down) and clicking on a category would "jump" to the relevant section. Each section would have a nice title and a "top" button which would "jump" to the top of the page. Things would also be better organized and indented.
7. If your ISP allows back end programming, we can create a simple mechanism that allows you to post updated news to the website. In this scenario, you would have password protected access to a page that allows you to input information which would go into a database and the web pages would pull the information from the database.
Section 3: The How
If you are open to the idea of revamping the look of the site (and hopefully the site can have a programmable back-end, which would allow us to do some really cool advanced/dynamic stuff) I can sit down and create a sample page or two (possibly the home page and the downloads page) and send it to you in pdf or jpg format. If you hate it, fine; if you like some of it you can make comments etc, state your preferences etc, and I can do the rest of the stuff.
Changing the look of the site does not require a programmable back-end, but if we want to make things truly dynamic and easy for you to update, that *would* require a programmable back-end.
To make things clear beyond the shadow of a doubt: I'm suggesting to do this for fun only, and I do not intend to charge you money for it. I just think that it would be a cool way to do something nice for you since you are the Notepad++ guy.
That's about it.
Thank you for reading this email.
Best Regards.
ps: what are your favorite colors? green and orange? people like their web site to use their favorite colors.
The section nav table at the top of the page should be ready tonight UTC. I need to translate a couple of missing sections prior. The table background will be a very light blue to keep a good readability of orange links.
CChris
The current discussion forums are
1/ controlled by Sourcforge, and totally out of our reach or control
2/ slated for replacement by phpBB in the near future. SF still can't say when, but they want to get rid of them. And I think many here so do.
The new UI breaks under IE6 in more ways than one. In particular, the projects /files pages do not display at all. SF doesn't seem to recant about preferring a bloated IE8.
And I can't tell about Safari, because 4.0.2 crashes before displaying any page of any kind.
CChris
May I know who removed my message "Post header Background image misplaced" posted 2009-07-17 09:00 GMT, and why? Is there really someone who found it less accurate or precise or concise or clear or friendly or polite or pleasant or useful or anything else, than any other post? If not, could someone explain the reason? and why and how this should this help the Notepad++ program or community?
Versailles, Fri 17 Jul 2009 16:29:10 +0200
For me, it's off topic.
You may post it as a new thread.
Don
July 21, 2009
Dear Don,
First, thank you for taking the time to answer my questions with such detail.
Seeing that you were open to the idea of revamping the Notepad++ site, I sat down and created an initial home page. I have the structure of the site itself pretty clear in my head, but first I wanted you (and people who's opinion you trust) to see my work. Maybe you like it, maybe you don't. Also, I'm pretty sure you are going to have plenty of comments, suggestions and requests.
My design goal was this: first, make a bold, impressive home page, and then, when people click on one of the items on the menu on the right, they enter the actual site. The site itself (the second layer, which I have not created yet) will have a banner on top with a logo and a nice narrow and wide chameleon picture, and then a menu that would either be on the left (vertical) or at the top (horizontal). The rest of the page would be the content. This menu would have the same options as the one on the home page and people would click on menu items to navigate to specific pages. Pretty standard. The third layer of the site would be the functionality that allows you to update the site content using a password-protected module that would not be visible to users.
The screen-shots I'm attaching to this message are showcasing the following:
1. My web design skills. I'm not a trained designer, I'm a developer with an eye for order.
2. A suggested home page, kind of like a "splash screen"
3. A selection of colors that would be used as the "color theme" of the site, i.e., the site itself, all the menus etc would use these colors.
4. The page displays the same no matter which browser you use: IE (7 & 8), Firefox (3.x), and Opera (9.x)
Why did I send 4 separate images that look very much alike? Details follow:
#1: Is the home page
#2: What you see when you mouse over one of the menu items on the right.
#3: What you see when you mouse over one of the menu buttons below the chameleon picture.
#4: What you see when you mouse over one of the links in the footer.
That's about it.
Quick summary: I'm not some design genius, I'm a software & database developer that likes organized sites that are easy to maintain. Please do not hesitate to tell me your sincere thoughts. If you don't like it, no problem, no offense taken. If you do somewhat, and would like to change stuff such as colors, text, menu items, etc, please tell me. I'll wait for your initial comments to start with the site itself.
Thank you again for spending your valuable time reading this message.
Best Regards,
Nissim
Nissim,
I have to say it is quite impresive.
I find the style is sober and elegant as "splash screen".
Since it's about changing the look and feel, why don't we change the colour scheme and the lizard picture (I like orange, but not green)?
> The site itself (the second layer, which I have not created yet) will have a
> banner on top with a logo and a nice narrow and wide chameleon picture...
Well, it's hard to me to image the second layer. A mockup will be more self-expressive
In order to have various opinion, I upload the mockup you provided :
> #1: Is the home page
http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/commun/misc/site1.jpg
> #2: What you see when you mouse over one of the menu items on the right.
http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/commun/misc/site2.jpg
> #3: What you see when you mouse over one of the menu buttons below the chameleon picture.
http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/commun/misc/site3.jpg
> #4: What you see when you mouse over one of the links in the footer.
http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/commun/misc/site4.jpg
Now for the questions :
1. The current site are translated in several languages, and the current system(only php and html, w/o DB) favorates the contributions of translators ( see : http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/skinflint.php ). So in the future (new site with php + mysql), how can we build a procedure to make the contribution of translation easier?
2. Javascript : Probably you are one of members of anti-javascript club. I would like to know anyway : is it possible to detect the javascript status (activated or not) in users’ browser in order to generate (or not) the javascript code. I’d like to keep some features of current site – for example the folding capacity.
3. I'd like to know in which way you will reorganize the existing element in your "second layer". All in one line (or one column) menu (again, a mockup will help me get the whole picture)?
4. Like I said, I'm impressed by the first mockup. However, I would like to know if there is a "design B"?
Thank you for your time and your nice mockup.
Don
Hi Don,
I emailed you design #2. My concern is this: the attached zip file (with the screen shots) was almost 2mb. I hope it was not rejected by your email service provider. If you have not received anything from me, then please send me an email, and I will resend my email in parts.
Best Regards,
Nissim
Hi everyone! I'd like t contribute with the website too. If you need a php developer, I can be useful. I've been in projects like adultmeeter.com, spacash.com, and actually I developed winky.com.
Greetings!
> Section 1: The Key Questions
> 1. Are you open to the idea of revamping the Notepad++ web site,
> or are you happy with the way things are and look?
Yes, the revamping Notepad++ web site is needed, for both graphical design (look & feel) and reorganization of data (programable code).
> 2. Do you care about the site or do you prefer to point people to the Notepad Wiki page?
Notepad++ site web is rather an entry, a picture of Notepad++ which contains the static data.
whereas wiki page (NpWiki++) contains the "dynamical data" (which will be updated frequently by the community).
Notepad++ site web is important, since its role is the prior interface for users. It should point to NpWiki++ for some technical information because that will release a lot of effort of site maintenance.
> 3. Do the people who host your site allow you to have some kind of back-end programming,
> a web language like PHP or ASP/ASP.NET? Do they allow you access to a database like MySQL,
> PostgreSQL, Sql Server Express or Oracle XE?
Notepad++ is hosted in SourceForge. They do provide php + mysql under LAMP environment.
> Section 2: The Suggestions
> 1. The site is outdated - the "latest version" status is more often than not outdated, which is plain confusing and counter-productive.
The last version number is usually updated, at least I try to keep it updated.
> A lot of the texts refer to older versions. The "News" tab offers info that is old beyond usefulness.
true.
> 2. It would be nice to come to the site and see what are the items that were fixed in the latest version.
Yes, good idea. An history section should be added.
> 3. The site has a lot of spelling mistakes.
Please point them out.
> 4. The text/content area is too cramped and would benefit from a bit more space.
I'm not against adding more space if you can improve the page readability.
> 5. The site has both a vertical and horizontal menu, with no clear reason why some items are here and some are there....
The first thing for me is to list all the content to show in web site, then according to that, reorganize the menu.
> 6. We can reorganize the downloads page and make things more accessible and more
> aesthetically pleasing. The first thing I would suggest is to put a list of categories
> at the top of the page (so that people know what is available, without having to scroll down)
> and clicking on a category would "jump" to the relevant section. ...
It's true that it's not easy to navigate on download page. I'd like to do the folding feature (javascript) for each section, but I got no time. The anchors and the section shortcut list on the header is a good compromise between the coding effort and navigation facility. Chris is doing it on the current download page.
> 7. If your ISP allows back end programming, we can create a simple mechanism that allows
> you to post updated news to the website. In this scenario, you would have password protected
> access to a page that allows you to input information which would go into a database and
> the web pages would pull the information from the database.
A web application to publish the content is nice to have.
>... I can sit down and create a sample page or two (possibly the home page and the downloads page)
> and send it to you in pdf or jpg format. ...
Not sure I follow you, are you offering the graphical design as well?
As I mentioned before, both graphical design and reorganization of data (programable code) are needed. And I don't see the advantage to recode the web page without change the current look and feel...
> ps: what are your favorite colors? green and orange? people like their web site to use their favorite colors.
Difficult to say... it's not green for sure (the green colour was for going with lizards).
light blue, light purple, or orange might my favorite colour.
> To make things clear beyond the shadow of a doubt:
> I'm suggesting to do this for fun only, and I do not intend to charge you money for it.
> I just think that it would be a cool way to do something nice for you since you are the Notepad++ guy.
Thank you for your very kind offer.
Don
Hi Don, I sent you an email with the images attached but I don't know if what I have is the correct email for you. If you can, please send me your email to (remove the redundant stuff):
### nmsalinas ### at ### yahoo ### dot ### com
Hi,
What's happening with this? Is the website revamp still underway?
If it's fallen flat or lacks manpower, I'd be happy to take it over/contribute. Front-end web development is my specialty and I've donated websites to other open source projects - see http://codecamel.com/donate
Cheers,
Brent
The new web site is on its way - with or without a new design :
http://notepad-plus.tuxfamily.org/
The site is based on drupal, so we need a graphical design rather the manpower of php coding.
Feel free to submit your graphical design to us.
Don
You mention only the graphic design, but upon selecting a design, the Drupal template would also need to be coded (HTML/CSS), is that right?
Don,
I don't know if you enabled page caching on Drupal. If you haven't, please look at:
http://nadeausoftware.com/articles/2007/03/speed_drupal_web_site_enabling_page_caching#HowtoenableDrupalpagecaching
Just wanted to comment that the new website looks great - nice work!
I have to admit I tended to avoid browsing to the old one at work, for fear that people would think I was reading about reptiles instead of work-related stuff :P