[ANN] Redesign 2005 Blog

[why the lucky stiff]

The vit-core team (assigned to redesign ruby-lang.org) has unveiled our
first two designs today. We're rolling these out with a new blog so you
can comment on each design and watch the RSS feed for updates.

http://redhanded.hobix.com/redesign2005/

Your feedback is essential to this project! If you have comments, post
them on the blog soon so we can move this project along.

Thanks, Rubyland.

_why

 

[Karl von Laudermann]

The vit-core team (assigned to redesign ruby-lang.org) has unveiled our
first two designs today. We're rolling these out with a new blog so you
can comment on each design and watch the RSS feed for updates.

http://redhanded.hobix.com/redesign2005/

Your feedback is essential to this project! If you have comments, post
them on the blog soon so we can move this project along.

There seem to be some problems with the blog itself. When writing a
comment, neither the "preview" button nor the "fancy stuff" link did
anything when I clicked them. This is on Firefox 1.0.1 on Windows XP.

However, since the mail/news gateway is supposedly not working, you
probably won't even see this post. :-/

 

[Curt Hibbs]

The vit-core team (assigned to redesign ruby-lang.org) has unveiled our
first two designs today. We're rolling these out with a new blog so you
can comment on each design and watch the RSS feed for updates.

http://redhanded.hobix.com/redesign2005/

Your feedback is essential to this project! If you have comments, post
them on the blog soon so we can move this project along.

Thanks, Rubyland.

_why

You can either post on the blog, or you can join the discussion ML:

http://rubyforge.org/mail/?group_id=556

Curt

 

[Paul Duncan]

--YNEMMPJXay2VNSoy
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

=20
You can either post on the blog, or you can join the discussion ML:
=20
http://rubyforge.org/mail/?group_id=3D556

These look really great!

Curt

--=20
Paul Duncan <[email protected]> pabs in #ruby-lang (OPN IRC)
http://www.pablotron.org/ OpenPGP Key ID: 0x82C29562

--YNEMMPJXay2VNSoy
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc"
Content-Description: Digital signature
Content-Disposition: inline

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1ArawEBeBcc75gekZk4VMX8=
=+f7d
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--YNEMMPJXay2VNSoy--

 

[Anders Engström]

The vit-core team (assigned to redesign ruby-lang.org) has unveiled our
first two designs today. We're rolling these out with a new blog so you
can comment on each design and watch the RSS feed for updates.

http://redhanded.hobix.com/redesign2005/

Your feedback is essential to this project! If you have comments, post
them on the blog soon so we can move this project along.

(Posted on the blog - but I thought I'd bring it up here too)

I like the design of both layouts. But IMO this poll should really be
about selecting the "default" template for ruby-lang.org. I don't know
how flexible the (X)HTML is - but shouldn't it be possible to ship a
bunch of CSS's and let the user choose which one to use?


//Anders

 

[gabriele renzi]

Anders Engström ha scritto:

(Posted on the blog - but I thought I'd bring it up here too)

I like the design of both layouts. But IMO this poll should really be
about selecting the "default" template for ruby-lang.org. I don't know
how flexible the (X)HTML is - but shouldn't it be possible to ship a
bunch of CSS's and let the user choose which one to use?


//Anders

but doing this would "avoid" one of the main reason to redesign
ruby-lang: have a better entry point for people new to the language.

 

[Ben Giddings]

(Posted on the blog - but I thought I'd bring it up here too)

I like the design of both layouts. But IMO this poll should really be
about selecting the "default" template for ruby-lang.org. I don't know
how flexible the (X)HTML is - but shouldn't it be possible to ship a
bunch of CSS's and let the user choose which one to use?

To make it easier for those of us working on the project, it would be
really helpful if the comments on the two designs were put on the blog,
and comments about the process in general, or any other Ruby site design
things went to the vit-discuss mailing list:

http://rubyforge.org/mail/?group_id=556

Ben

 

[William Morgan]

Excerpts from Anders Engstr?m's mail of 11 Mar 2005 (EST):

I like the design of both layouts. But IMO this poll should really be
about selecting the "default" template for ruby-lang.org. I don't know
how flexible the (X)HTML is - but shouldn't it be possible to ship a
bunch of CSS's and let the user choose which one to use?

Maybe this is OT, but check out http://www.csszengarden.com/ for a cool
example of multiple CSS choices over the same HTML. I think my favorite
is "table layout assassination!".

 

[Zach Dennis]

Maybe this is OT, but check out http://www.csszengarden.com/ for a cool
example of multiple CSS choices over the same HTML. I think my favorite
is "table layout assassination!".

That is pretty sweet, thx for posting that link,

Zach

 

[Simon Strandgaard]

The vit-core team (assigned to redesign ruby-lang.org) has unveiled our
first two designs today. We're rolling these out with a new blog so you
can comment on each design and watch the RSS feed for updates.

http://redhanded.hobix.com/redesign2005/

Your feedback is essential to this project! If you have comments, post
them on the blog soon so we can move this project along.

It looks good.. its difficult to choose.


Aredridel suggested to put a link to a mac binary on the frontpage.
The number of mac persons that does ruby seems high.

 

[Curt Hibbs]

Aredridel suggested to put a link to a mac binary on the frontpage.
The number of mac persons that does ruby seems high.

There should be an OSX version of the One-Click Ruby Installer fairly soon,
so this shouldn't be a problem.

Curt

 

[vruz]

The vit-core team (assigned to redesign ruby-lang.org) has unveiled our

first two designs today. We're rolling these out with a new blog so you
can comment on each design and watch the RSS feed for updates.

http://redhanded.hobix.com/redesign2005/

Your feedback is essential to this project! If you have comments, post
them on the blog soon so we can move this project along.

Thanks team for your effort.

My take on this:

When it comes to the content, or picking what should go in the front
page, choosing what's hot, popular or having the power of igniting a
superb Ruby PR machine I think it should be wise to have a good read
at Paul Graham's essay on popularity.

Matz has been quoted several times talking about his fondness for
LISP, and how it helped him to figure out what Ruby should be, and I
think there's a great deal of wisdom we're inheriting from the LISP
hackers that preceded us.

Graham has the ability to put into simple words what would otherwise
take me rivers of ink (or carpal syndrome) for me to write about.

http://www.paulgraham.com/popular.html

Especially paragraph number 9.

And then redesign, comment, ellaborate some more, and think of what we
REALLY want for the long term.


cheers,
vruz

 

[Thursday]

The vit-core team (assigned to redesign ruby-lang.org) has unveiled our
first two designs today. We're rolling these out with a new blog so you
can comment on each design and watch the RSS feed for updates.

http://redhanded.hobix.com/redesign2005/

Your feedback is essential to this project! If you have comments, post
them on the blog soon so we can move this project along.

Thanks, Rubyland.

_why

Holy cow, John's "Ruby Red" 3.0 is simply amazing.

Designs by others are impressive too. Lots of talent in ruby land!

 

[Josef 'Jupp' Schugt]

The vit-core team (assigned to redesign ruby-lang.org) has unveiled our
first two designs today. We're rolling these out with a new blog so you
can comment on each design and watch the RSS feed for updates.

http://redhanded.hobix.com/redesign2005/

Your feedback is essential to this project! If you have comments, post
them on the blog soon so we can move this project along.

All design studies I saw so far at first sight look nice but at second
sight are not so good.

http://redhanded.hobix.com/redesign2005/images/john-rubyred-3.0.png
shows large text using serif fonts and small text using sans-serif. If
one uses both kinds of fonts it should be the other way round. One also
should not use underlined and non-underlined links. Given the link
text/other text ratio one should stick to non-underlined links.

http://redhanded.hobix.com/redesign2005/images/michel-clean-1.1.png
definitely is better. What I do not understand is why it reads 'Español'
but not '日本語'. Background color is very bright. Something like the
one on the right of
http://redhanded.hobix.com/images/ruby-org-mockup.gif were better (not
to use too bright background colors is a matter of accessibility, some
people have problems with to strong contrasts).

Just my 0.02 EUR

Josef 'Jupp' Schugt

 

[Francis Hwang]

All design studies I saw so far at first sight look nice but at second
sight are not so good.

http://redhanded.hobix.com/redesign2005/images/john-rubyred-3.0.png
shows large text using serif fonts and small text using sans-serif. If
one uses both kinds of fonts it should be the other way round.

I was convinced that the conventional wisdom was that sans-serif body
text fonts are more readable at the low DPI you get out of most
monitors, though actually now that I spent a whole 60 seconds Googling
I wasn't able to come up with anything substantive either way.
Personally, I just redesigned my site, using serif fonts as body text
... this might be less legible to some people, but, you know, I use a
modern OS with decent anti-aliasing, so it all looks fine to me

One also should not use underlined and non-underlined links. Given the
link text/other text ratio one should stick to non-underlined links.

Consistency is important, but I'd argue the other way: You better have
your links underlined, otherwise you're going to leave your readers
madly scrubbing around the page hunting for links. Life's too short.

There are ways to tone down the visual impact of those underlines using
CSS, if you're concerned about what all that underlining is going to
look like.

Francis Hwang
http://fhwang.net/

 

[Aredridel]

I was convinced that the conventional wisdom was that sans-serif body

text fonts are more readable at the low DPI you get out of most
monitors, though actually now that I spent a whole 60 seconds Googling
I wasn't able to come up with anything substantive either way.
Personally, I just redesigned my site, using serif fonts as body text
... this might be less legible to some people, but, you know, I use a
modern OS with decent anti-aliasing, so it all looks fine to me

Yeah. Moreso, modern hinting (which even Windows 98 does well enough) is
quite adequate to getting things looking good with serifs.

Consistency is important, but I'd argue the other way: You better have
your links underlined, otherwise you're going to leave your readers
madly scrubbing around the page hunting for links. Life's too short.

Underlines ++

Ari

 

[martin.ankerl]

http://redhanded.hobix.com/redesign2005/images/john-rubyred-3.0.png

I was convinced that the conventional wisdom was that sans-serif body
text fonts are more readable at the low DPI you get out of most
monitors, though actually now that I spent a whole 60 seconds Googling I
wasn't able to come up with anything substantive either way.

Sans-serif is the better choice for screen fonts:
http://psychology.wichita.edu/optimalweb/text.htm

martinus

 

[Aredridel]

http://redhanded.hobix.com/redesign2005/images/michel-clean-1.1.png

definitely is better. What I do not understand is why it reads 'Español'
but not '日本語'. Background color is very bright. Something like the
one on the right of
http://redhanded.hobix.com/images/ruby-org-mockup.gif were better (not
to use too bright background colors is a matter of accessibility, some
people have problems with to strong contrasts).

I think more have problems with low contrast, in my experience.

 

[Douglas Livingstone]

Almost every web site uses black on white because it gives the *most*
contrast... if you have a problem, or know anyone with such a problem,
suggest to them to make their monitor less bright.

Douglas

 

[vruz]

I was convinced that the conventional wisdom was that sans-serif body

Sans-serif is the better choice for screen fonts:
http://psychology.wichita.edu/optimalweb/text.htm

very informative and useful link, thank you