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

[Gerd M. <ge...@sm...>]

On Wed, 27 Feb 2002 00:25:04 +0100
"Florian G. Haas" <f.g...@gm...> wrote:

> 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! :-)

I like the overall design. It's frugal but very distinctive.

But I agree with Christoph that the 'a topic map
engine for java' line in the header is to much. Also the shadow of 
'topic maps 4 java' is to heavy. Perhaps you should drop the 'topic maps for java'
from the TM4J logo and leave 'topic maps 4 java'.

The navgation bar doesn't stand out enough. So you have to search for at first.
I would suggest another background color for it and maybe we should also move it
to left side. 

Also I think the newsticker isn't necessary if we have the 'news' box.

I would also drop the 'optimized for explorer' hint. The site should work for
all browsers in the same quality.

Best Regards,
Gerd

______________________________________________________________________________
Gerd Mueller                                                  ge...@sm...     
SMB GmbH                                                http://www.smb-tec.com