[Tm4j-developers] New TM4J web site design proposal [Long]

[Florian G. H. <f.g...@gm...>]

Hello all,

as I'm sure most of you are aware, we (Thomas Bauer, to a major extent, and
Florian Haas, to a minor one) have put some thought into a possible
re-design of the TM4J project web site. We have completed some design drafts
and would greatly appreciate your comments.

OK, so we (plus Kal) thought about making the project web site design much
more Topic-Map-ish, so we could eventually use it for a Velocity- or
Cocoon-centered application. What we have for now are Photoshop dummies
(we're working on HTML versions), and please feel free to look at them at
http://tm4j.org/tmp/HP_DESIGN_9_WEB.JPG and
http://tm4j.org/tmp/HP_DESIGN_9FLORIAN_WEB.JPG (just two versions of the
same thing with different "topics"), and let us hear your thoughts.
Christoph Fröhlich has already provided some very valuable feedback in an
E-Mail to Kal, which we've attached to this message. Christoph, if you're
monitoring this list, we hope you don't mind our doing this. Please keep
telling us stuff like this, it's really more than helpful.

Some other issues that have already come up in informal discussion:
* Keep the "newsticker"? Or is it just a confusing attention-catcher?
* Keep the "search" box? It would certainly be nice to have a full-text
topic map search (or even TMQL, or Tolog), but how would we implement it?

Let's hope we get some good discussion going about this! :-)

Best regards,

Florian
Thomas


| >Envelope-to: ka...@on...
| >X-Sender: pt7...@po...
| >Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 13:17:26 +0200
| >To: ka...@te...
| >From: Christoph Fröhlich  <cf...@fo...>
| >Subject: Site Design
| >
[...]
| >What I can do for now is to make some suggestions for  the proposed site
| >design.
| >
| >
| >I like the "boxy" layout. It appears straight to me, with focus on the
| >content and no too much illustrative elements.
| >Furthermore, the designers know about proportions, setting fontsizes in
| >relation to each other etc.
| >So. Yes, I like it. Nevertheless, I have some suggestions
| >
| >1.
| >The typo "topic maps 4 java" with the shadow.
| >I think, that element doesn't tell you anything new. It provides
| just the
| >same info as the logo-like TM4J-Typo in the upper left corner,
| along with
| >the subline "Topic maps for Java". What makes it worse, is,  that the
| >shadow attracts the visitors attention. Visually it serves as the "first
| >read", while it provides absolute no info. It is a bit like a
| black hole,
| >where your visitors attention will get lost. The "first read" on
| that page
| >should be the name of the topic in focus, eg. "Florian G. Haas". So I
| >think you should dispose the typo and the shadow.
| >
| >
| >2.
| >Rearrange the boxes.
| >My understanding of the layout says: While the visitor is navigating
| >through the map the content of the three boxes "main information",
| >"navigation bar" and "abstract" changes with the topic in focus.
| Is that right?
| >The other three boxes show site-related info and do not change while
| >exploring the map.
| >i think you should arrange all boxes which display info from the
| map close
| >to each other and do not spread them all over the page
| >If you follow my argumentation in 1. and dispose shadow and
| typo, then you
| >will gain some space at the top of the page for the news and the
| search boxes.
| >
| >
| >3.
| >I miss  some "global navigation".
| >I think you should provide the visitors with some entrypoints to the map.
| >Perhaps something like "Projects", "Persons" etc.
| >While the content of the boxes "main", "navigatioN" and
| "abstract" changes
| >with every click, there should be some stable landmarks, which gives you
| >the chance to start over, after you got lost in the sea of knowledge.
| >
| >
| >
| >  Please kay, keep in mind, that i am not too comfortable with writing
| > english. If it is not possible to understand what I have
| written, please
| > feel free to ask.
| >
| >
| >Regards
| >
| >cf
| >
| >
|