RFC: Proposed new web site design

[Jeremy Newman]

Jeremy White wrote:
>   2.  Lots of people hate the secondary scroll bar.

I love the secondary scroll bar. It allows a larger amount of content to 
fit into a small space. I did add a "more news" link to the area. That 
link will take you to a full width news view. Don't forget, the site 
will also still have the news available as RSS.

>   3.  People want a longer introduction to Wine.
>       I think it needs to be short and sweet.  We'll noodle;
>       suggestions welcome.

I used Francois suggestion for the top blurb. I also darkened it a bit.

>   4.  We should have hovers on the Wiki page (Jer is working on that).

Added some simple hovers.

>   5.  Some folks found the grey text a bit hard to read.
>       (I avoid color discussions like the plague; I think it's kind of
>       like emacs vs vi.  I just report the news).

Since monitors vary so much, it is a problem. I agree, I had it a bit 
light. Made it darker.

>   6.  There was some agitation for more news, more description,
>       and perhaps more visual elements, like a screen shot.

I think these elements belong on secondary pages. The goal is to keep 
the front page simple.

>   7.  There is some concern as to Wine vs WINE
>       I had raised this privately, and was given the back hand
>       of the artiste.  I appreciate the work of the artiste,
>       and so have backed off.

Everywhere else it is Wine, the logo is just that a logo. I preserved 
the logo from the old site.

>   8.  There were comments about the icons
>       Some folks didn't like the download icon, some folks wanted
>       the icons to pop more when hovered.  The artiste is chewing on it.

I agree the red glow needs to be more pronounced. We will tweak it a bit.

Other tweaks I made.

* More IE6 tweaks. I spent way too much time fixing the layout on that 
#*$'n browser. There still are a ton of users on it. It is the only one 
of the IEs that currently works well under Wine. On that topic, someone 
needs to fix the PNG loading with this new design. I'm using a 
CSS/javascript hack to get alpha channels to load in IE6. This hack 
breaks under wine, and the images are not loaded. It would be a good 
time to fix it before we take this live. I'd hate the new layout to not 
look good under our own software.

* Front page rollovers use CSS now instead of JavaScript.

* Front page layout, dropped the tables, and used CSS and DIV tags. 
Alexander suggested the news area be a bit wider, and grow a bit more as 
you stretch out the browser Window. I believe I accomplished this in a 
way that works on all browsers.

* The design should hold up at 800x600 now.

Other thoughts.

* Rounded corners are here to stay. To me they feel consistent with the 
roundedness of the Wine glass logo.

* AppDB, Forums, and Bugzilla will look like the Wiki Sample, just with 
their sidebar navs, and content areas. This is why I did not mock them up.

* I like the larger logo on the front page. I did compromise and make 
the logos on all other pages smaller.

-Newman