Ruby Visual Identity Team

[John W. Long]

Recently I've seen a couple of people mention how much they would like
to see a new look on the main Ruby Web site. I can't help but agree.
I've been wishing the same thing for a bunch of the main Ruby Web sites
for months now.

Here is what I would like to propose. Let's form a Ruby Visual Identity
Team, similar to the one formed for the launch of Mozilla Firefox
[1][2]. Our first project: to redesign ruby-lang.org. After that we
could offer our services for other projects. The Ruby documentation site
for instance [3]. Perhaps even get around to implementing a couple of
nice templates for RDoc [4].

I would suggest that the team be formed from people who have strong
design skills. _Why has been flirting with an idea for ruby-lang.org
[5]. I nominate him to be part of the team. I've also done my share of
design work for Web sites [6][7] and wouldn't mind being involved. Are
there others who can come forward and show evidence of there skills and
enthusiasm for this project? It would also be cool to have people with
strong coding skills, i.e. experience with pure CSS layout and XHTML.

Once we have a team formed (5-8 people) how do we get official blessing
for our endevours?

--
[1] http://www.spreadfirefox.com/
[2] http://www.mozilla.org/projects/marketing/
[3] http://www.ruby-doc.org/
[4] http://redhanded.hobix.com/cult/rdocWithoutFramesAConcept.html
[5] http://redhanded.hobix.com/cult/rubyorgMockup.html
[6] http://wiseheartdesign.com/
[7] http://johnwlong.com/downloads/rubyred-rdoc-template.zip

 

[James Britt]

Recently I've seen a couple of people mention how much they would like
to see a new look on the main Ruby Web site. I can't help but agree.
I've been wishing the same thing for a bunch of the main Ruby Web sites
for months now.

Here is what I would like to propose. Let's form a Ruby Visual Identity
Team, similar to the one formed for the launch of Mozilla Firefox
[1][2]. Our first project: to redesign ruby-lang.org. After that we
could offer our services for other projects. The Ruby documentation site
for instance [3].

I nominate me to redesign ruby-doc.org. I appreciate the offer, but
altering the aesthetics without changing the underlying behavior is not
going to work.

You can see a beta version of the site with a bit of hosts file hacking.

Add this to your hosts file;

207.44.216.66 beta.ruby-doc.org

and browse to

http://beta.ruby-doc.org/

I'm unhappy with the series of boxes (too, um, boxy), but they'll do
while I sort out some other things. Adding neat curved box corners and
other visual treats has been put aside while I nail down behavior. Once
that is stable it will easier to apply the appropriate styling.

Each box shows resources culled from links posted to del.icio.us.
Clicking the resource name just loads that page. Clicking the little
'i' next to a resource shows you what people have posted it and their
extended comments. A modern browser is required. Haven't tested in
older browsers (or even many current ones), so field reports are welcome
so that it degrades nicely

The browse page is a variation on what I haphazardly described in my
RubyConf '04 talk. It organizes resources as tagged on del.icio.us; the
tricky part is automagically metatagging the del.icio.us tags so that
some higher-level grouping is feasible. In theory one should be able to
navigate through known Ruby docs and resources by drilling down via
facets, but it is not as clean as it should be.

Most other links and searching do not yet work.

There's other stuff I'm working on (URL queries into the API documents;
multilingual ri Web service; assorted data feeds and queries) but things
take time.

No assurance that what you see won't arbitrarily change; rational
comments and observations always welcome.

On a more general note, I'm all for people trying to clean up sites,
making suggestions, fixings links, getting things into better shape, but
I'm dead against any sort of formalization of the process across
multiple sites.

I really, really believe that things happen in the Ruby community as
well as they do because people feel they can contribute something in a
community spirit while doing so in a personal manner. Trying to enforce
a uniform anything could be trouble; things tend best to arise out of a
loose consensus and running code.


James Britt

P.S.

As long as we're discussing Web site: Can someone put a link to
*something* on http://www.rubygems.org ?

Maybe to rubyforge?

I'm just sayin' ...

 

[centrepins]

I'm not nominating me because I a) don't have much in the way of web
development skills and b) I couldn't design a banana.

But I think it's a great idea and am glad to see that the mantle has
been grasped and somebody is running around holding it.

 

[gabriele renzi]

James Britt ha scritto:

Each box shows resources culled from links posted to del.icio.us.
Clicking the resource name just loads that page. Clicking the little
'i' next to a resource shows you what people have posted it and their
extended comments. A modern browser is required. Haven't tested in
older browsers (or even many current ones), so field reports are welcome
so that it degrades nicely

(my two cents)
the button is interesting, but It is not that obvious to me what it
does, I wonder if there is a way of making it more clear :/
Also, the boxes have too many elements, imo. Once you provided a nice
search/faceted browsing interface, you should not need all those
articles in the home.

Btw, I'd globally prefer listing some latest link (like in current
ruby-doc) and provide browsing links based on the (meta)tags

The browse page is a variation on what I haphazardly described in my
RubyConf '04 talk. It organizes resources as tagged on del.icio.us; the
tricky part is automagically metatagging the del.icio.us tags so that
some higher-level grouping is feasible. In theory one should be able to
navigate through known Ruby docs and resources by drilling down via
facets, but it is not as clean as it should be.

Most other links and searching do not yet work.

cool stuff, thanks for working on it.

 

[John W. Long]

I nominate me to redesign ruby-doc.org. I appreciate the offer, but
altering the aesthetics without changing the underlying behavior is not
going to work.

I would definately nominate you to be part of the the team to work on
ruby-doc.org if we ever did anything to it. Hey, you would lead the
team. And I do appologize. In suggesting that we redesign ruby-doc.org I
was not meaning to degrade any of the work you have already done, which
is great.

On a more general note, I'm all for people trying to clean up sites,
making suggestions, fixings links, getting things into better shape, but
I'm dead against any sort of formalization of the process across
multiple sites.

The main thought is to give those who are open to it access to great
free design services. If that's not something you would want for
ruby-doc.org that is your call. It would be nice to join with those who
have already contributed a substantial amount to the ruby comunity, like
yourself, and help them with site design and aesthetics freeing them up
to do what they enjoy: write more code.

I really, really believe that things happen in the Ruby community as
well as they do because people feel they can contribute something in a
community spirit while doing so in a personal manner. Trying to
enforce a uniform anything could be trouble; things tend best to arise
out of a loose consensus and running code.

It wouldn't necessarily be a "uninform everything." We would look at it
on a site, by site basis. The main goal would be to sell Ruby in the
best possible way. I know we all differ on what the best way to sell
Ruby is, but getting someone who specializes in design to jump on to
this project could really help.

By forming a visual identity team, I would hope to add more to the
community feel, not take away from it. Perhaps we could use a trouble
ticket system of some kind, which would allow people to post in one
place comments and ideas about team projects.

 

[Florian Gross]

Recently I've seen a couple of people mention how much they would like
to see a new look on the main Ruby Web site. I can't help but agree.
I've been wishing the same thing for a bunch of the main Ruby Web sites
for months now.

Here is what I would like to propose. Let's form a Ruby Visual Identity
Team, similar to the one formed for the launch of Mozilla Firefox
[1][2]. Our first project: to redesign ruby-lang.org. After that we
could offer our services for other projects. The Ruby documentation site
for instance [3]. Perhaps even get around to implementing a couple of
nice templates for RDoc [4].

I would suggest that the team be formed from people who have strong
design skills. _Why has been flirting with an idea for ruby-lang.org
[5]. I nominate him to be part of the team. I've also done my share of
design work for Web sites [6][7] and wouldn't mind being involved. Are
there others who can come forward and show evidence of there skills and
enthusiasm for this project? It would also be cool to have people with
strong coding skills, i.e. experience with pure CSS layout and XHTML.

While I'll probably not be able to spend a lot of time on this I would
still like to help out with XHTML and CSS -- I've done this kind of
stuff before and should still be fairly fluent in it.

 

[Sam Roberts]

Quoteing (e-mail address removed), on Thu, Feb 17, 2005 at 05:34:49PM +0900:

James Britt ha scritto:

Each box shows resources culled from links posted to del.icio.us.
Clicking the resource name just loads that page. Clicking the little
'i' next to a resource shows you what people have posted it and their
extended comments. A modern browser is required. Haven't tested in
older browsers (or even many current ones), so field reports are welcome
so that it degrades nicely

(my two cents)
the button is interesting, but It is not that obvious to me what it
does, I wonder if there is a way of making it more clear :/

I didn't know that it did anything, and when I pressed it, i don't know
what I'm looking at... My vote - nuke it.

I like the overall layout a lot more. The stuff I want is more
prominent, suggestions:

RAA and rubyforge should be on top bar

nuke the ads, why do we need ads on ruby-lang.org?

at bottom of page, add the "news" section that is now the core
of ruby-lang.org's page

all the more... buttons end in an internal error, intended?

Cheers,
Sam

 

[Francis Hwang]

I nominate me to redesign ruby-doc.org. I appreciate the offer, but
altering the aesthetics without changing the underlying behavior is
not going to work.

Hear, hear. I think that the problem with Ruby's online presence is not
a matter of visual appeal or the lack of nice logo. The problem with
Ruby's online presence is much more about functionality. For example,
when I look at ruby-lang.org my first thought is not that the site has
the wrong colors or fonts, but that the last post to the front page was
in December ... which would make a newcomer think that Ruby is sleepy
little language, and nothing of interest has happened to it in the last
two months.

This isn't meant as a criticism of James or whoever runs ruby-lang.org,
just a suggestion that if you're not already involved and are looking
to help out, it might be more helpful to 1) put more Ruby-related
content on your own blog or 2) volunteer to help out with existing
sites to help add or debug more features.

I'm unhappy with the series of boxes (too, um, boxy), but they'll do
while I sort out some other things. Adding neat curved box corners
and other visual treats has been put aside while I nail down behavior.
Once that is stable it will easier to apply the appropriate styling.

So James, are you planning on moving away from the current blog-style
front page, with individual dated posts? Personally I think that's the
thing people want to see when they come to a front page: Plenty of
activity.

Each box shows resources culled from links posted to del.icio.us.
Clicking the resource name just loads that page. Clicking the little
'i' next to a resource shows you what people have posted it and their
extended comments. A modern browser is required. Haven't tested in
older browsers (or even many current ones), so field reports are
welcome so that it degrades nicely

This can be done outside of a given web page, using the Tasty
bookmarklet:

http://enthusiasm.cozy.org/archives/2004/07/tasty-redux

Personally I'm not too hot about embedding these sorts of tools in the
web page itself.

The browse page is a variation on what I haphazardly described in my
RubyConf '04 talk. It organizes resources as tagged on del.icio.us;
the tricky part is automagically metatagging the del.icio.us tags so
that some higher-level grouping is feasible. In theory one should be
able to navigate through known Ruby docs and resources by drilling
down via facets, but it is not as clean as it should be.

Cool. You might find Topic Maps useful for this, or maybe that's too
heavyweight. I'm quite sure your not the only person trying to harvest
good taxonomies out of a folksonomy like del.icio.us.

On a more general note, I'm all for people trying to clean up sites,
making suggestions, fixings links, getting things into better shape,
but I'm dead against any sort of formalization of the process across
multiple sites.

I really, really believe that things happen in the Ruby community as
well as they do because people feel they can contribute something in a
community spirit while doing so in a personal manner. Trying to
enforce a uniform anything could be trouble; things tend best to arise
out of a loose consensus and running code.

I very much agree. And I hope my comments above don't come across as
suggestions, not really criticism: I use ruby-doc almost every day and
am already pretty happy with it. Thanks, James!

Francis Hwang
http://fhwang.net/

 

[Michel Martens]

Definitely onboard, as Raymond Babbitt (aka Rain Man) would put it. I
have been designing websites for the last 8 years, though most of them
have already phased out. Here is a small sample:

http://www.soveran.org (personal weblog)
http://www.soveran.com (my evil capitalist face)
https://visitorzone.ejkreed.com (my latest work for Cisco Systems Argentina)

Recently I've seen a couple of people mention how much they would like
to see a new look on the main Ruby Web site. I can't help but agree.
I've been wishing the same thing for a bunch of the main Ruby Web sites
for months now.

Here is what I would like to propose. Let's form a Ruby Visual Identity
Team, similar to the one formed for the launch of Mozilla Firefox
[1][2]. Our first project: to redesign ruby-lang.org. After that we
could offer our services for other projects. The Ruby documentation site
for instance [3]. Perhaps even get around to implementing a couple of
nice templates for RDoc [4].

I would suggest that the team be formed from people who have strong
design skills. _Why has been flirting with an idea for ruby-lang.org
[5]. I nominate him to be part of the team. I've also done my share of
design work for Web sites [6][7] and wouldn't mind being involved. Are
there others who can come forward and show evidence of there skills and
enthusiasm for this project? It would also be cool to have people with
strong coding skills, i.e. experience with pure CSS layout and XHTML.

While I'll probably not be able to spend a lot of time on this I would
still like to help out with XHTML and CSS -- I've done this kind of
stuff before and should still be fairly fluent in it.

 

[benny]

The problem with
Ruby's online presence is much more about functionality. For example,
when I look at ruby-lang.org my first thought is not that the site has
the wrong colors or fonts, but that the last post to the front page was
in December ... which would make a newcomer think that Ruby is sleepy
little language, and nothing of interest has happened to it in the last
two months.

maybe we could reuse the Ruby Weekly News as news items on ruby-lang.org

regards,
benny

 

[James G. Britt]

Quoteing (e-mail address removed), on Thu, Feb 17, 2005 at 05:34:49PM +0900:

James Britt ha scritto:

Each box shows resources culled from links posted to del.icio.us.
Clicking the resource name just loads that page. Clicking the little
'i' next to a resource shows you what people have posted it and their
extended comments. A modern browser is required. Haven't tested in
older browsers (or even many current ones), so field reports are welcome
so that it degrades nicely

(my two cents)
the button is interesting, but It is not that obvious to me what it
does, I wonder if there is a way of making it more clear :/

I didn't know that it did anything, and when I pressed it, i don't know
what I'm looking at... My vote - nuke it.

The intent is to provide a way to give more information about any
particular resource to see if it is worth pursuing so that a user does
not have to load each remote page to see what it is about. Whether
or nor this particular implementation serves that goal is another
matter.

I like the overall layout a lot more. The stuff I want is more
prominent, suggestions:

RAA and rubyforge should be on top bar

I don't see how they are immediately relevant to Ruby documentation or the RDP.

nuke the ads, why do we need ads on ruby-lang.org?
Money.


at bottom of page, add the "news" section that is now the core
of ruby-lang.org's page

There is so little news that it isn't worth featuring on the main page
anymore. People interested in news from the site would do far better
to get it from an RSS feed.

all the more... buttons end in an internal error, intended?

See my previous posting where I say that most links do not work
(unless you're talking about JavaScript or WEBrick errors). Most of
those will behave as they do on the current ruby-doc site.

 

[Yukihiro Matsumoto]

Hi,

In message "Re: Ruby Visual Identity Team"

|> Ruby's online presence is much more about functionality. For example,
|> when I look at ruby-lang.org my first thought is not that the site has
|> the wrong colors or fonts, but that the last post to the front page was
|> in December ... which would make a newcomer think that Ruby is sleepy
|> little language, and nothing of interest has happened to it in the last
|> two months.
|maybe we could reuse the Ruby Weekly News as news items on ruby-lang.org

I have just found that currently David Alan Black was the only English
speaking staff in the www-editors. James Britt and Chad Fowler were
members, but I think their accounts were vanished at the "site crash"
last year.

David, Chad, and James, can you organize recruiting a few more
submitter?

matz.

 

[Bill Guindon]

Quoteing (e-mail address removed), on Thu, Feb 17, 2005 at 05:34:49PM +0900:

James Britt ha scritto:

(my two cents)
the button is interesting, but It is not that obvious to me what it
does, I wonder if there is a way of making it more clear :/

I didn't know that it did anything, and when I pressed it, i don't know
what I'm looking at... My vote - nuke it.

The intent is to provide a way to give more information about any
particular resource to see if it is worth pursuing so that a user does
not have to load each remote page to see what it is about. Whether
or nor this particular implementation serves that goal is another
matter.

I agree that it's not obvious, but I like the feature. Perhaps a
different icon would be more obvious. Either way, might pay to put
the icon above the boxes with a one line description of what it does.

Also, a minor stylesheet bug when viewed with Mozilla 1.7.2 -- the top
navigation bar is covering the words "programming language" in the
page title.

Overall, I like the direction you're heading in.

 

[Francis Hwang]

maybe we could reuse the Ruby Weekly News as news items on
ruby-lang.org

That'd be a start. My gut feeling, though, is that something that big
and clumpy isn't the usable or linkable as web content. Far better to
model a new blog after, say, RedHanded. (Of course, we can't all write
like Why, but it's good to dream.)

Francis Hwang
http://fhwang.net/

 

[James G. Britt]

Hi,

I have just found that currently David Alan Black was the only English
speaking staff in the www-editors. James Britt and Chad Fowler were
members, but I think their accounts were vanished at the "site crash"
last year.

David, Chad, and James, can you organize recruiting a few more
submitter?

Sure. By the way, who should I contact to get my access issues
staightened out?


Thanks,

James

 

[Ben Giddings]

Add this to your hosts file;

207.44.216.66 beta.ruby-doc.org

and browse to

http://beta.ruby-doc.org/

I can't do beautiful design. If I tried to design myself out of a paper
bag, I'd probably suffocate, so take my comments with a grain of salt...

but yuck.

That page is *way* too busy for my tastes. I'm overwhelmed with
bold-face, small-font links all over the place that overflow their
boxes. At a glance, I have no idea what I'm looking at, and no way to
find what I'm looking for. I'm sure the links are useful, I just don't
feel invited to click on any of them. I don't know if they have to do
with Ruby or not, and don't know what I'll get when I click on them.

Then there's a huge ad over on the right side of the page, which makes
the overall layout look like the type of page you find when you mistype
a URL and end up at a page that's trying to make money off people
mistyping URLs.

Overall, it has the aesthetics and user-friendliness of the classified
section of a newspaper. Classified sections have their uses, it's just
not something that you want to cozy up with and read for fun.

But, like I said, I am no graphic designer. I just have my own likes
and dislikes. It's not my site, and despite its flaws it has a lot more
useful ruby information than my site ever did. On the other hand, it's
not where I'd send anybody for more information on Ruby.

I think any redesign efforts should focus on ruby-lang.org, and not any
of the other Ruby sites anyhow. Instead of your having to put up ads to
help pay for your bandwidth, people should be able to access Ruby
documentation at ruby-lang.org (at least in my opinion).

Anyhow, I really don't want to be harsh or mean. I really appreciate
that you're hosting the most comprehensive set of Ruby documentation out
there right now. That's a real service to Ruby programmers. I just
don't happen to be on the same aesthetic wavelength as you.

Ben

 

[Sam Roberts]

Quoteing (e-mail address removed), on Thu, Feb 17, 2005 at 05:34:49PM +0900:

James Britt ha scritto:
(my two cents)
the button is interesting, but It is not that obvious to me what it
does, I wonder if there is a way of making it more clear :/

I didn't know that it did anything, and when I pressed it, i don't know
what I'm looking at... My vote - nuke it.

The intent is to provide a way to give more information about any
particular resource to see if it is worth pursuing so that a user does
not have to load each remote page to see what it is about. Whether
or nor this particular implementation serves that goal is another
matter.

Just trying to give useful feedback... and I don't understand what the
info is. It looks kindof like a snippet of cvs log, but I can't
decipher.

I don't see how they are immediately relevant to Ruby documentation or the RDP.

I misunderstood your post. from the context I thought you were proposing
this as possible ruby-lang.org front page.

I think it is a lot nicer than current ruby-lang front-page, but missing
a few useful links, those above.

Money.

Again, just my opinion, but going to ruby-lang.org and seeing a slew of
perl & python ads down the side yesterday (mustve been triggered by
association of ruby with "scripting language", today there is only one
other scripting language, and three asian translation links,) was weird.

Of course, I'm not paying for the sites, and I'd rather have the site
with ads than no site at all, so if the money is needed, there you go.

See comment below on relative size of google ad and ruby-lang.org's
content bar, though. Your beta page has more content than google, unlike
ruby-lang.

There is so little news that it isn't worth featuring on the main page
anymore. People interested in news from the site would do far better
to get it from an RSS feed.

My comment was assuming that this page was offered as replacement for
ruby-lang.org.

The fact that most of the ruby-lang.org is take up by a blog that would
be better read by RSS, and that the google ad is about the same size as
the content listing on the left, and that I have to search through the
small type for anything I've ever wanted, is something I don't like
about the ruby-lang.org site.

So, if any are going to work an a redesign, and are interested in user
comments, the above are mine.

See my previous posting where I say that most links do not work
(unless you're talking about JavaScript or WEBrick errors). Most of
those will behave as they do on the current ruby-doc site.

"most" doesn't say which should or should not work. If those links are
not intended to be working yet, thats cool, if they are thought to work
by you, just letting you know they don't work for me.

Cheers,
Sam

 

[Curt Hibbs]

By forming a visual identity team, I would hope to add more to the
community feel, not take away from it. Perhaps we could use a trouble
ticket system of some kind, which would allow people to post in one
place comments and ideas about team projects.

I don't have strong design skills to offer (although, I can recognize good
design when I see it . But, I have a string interest in the success of
this effort and I can (at least) offer some administrative and
organizational assistance.

I will go ahead and create a RubyForge project for this effort. We can make
good use of the project's mailing list, trackers and wiki for communication.

I'll post back here later today when its all set up.

Curt

 

[Ben Giddings]

So Matz asked Chad Fowler, David A. Black and James Britt to lead the
effort to form teams to spruce up ruby-lang.org

=== What needs to be done? ===

According to Matz:
* form a team to design the appearance
* form another team to choose the CMS
* create prototype on that CMS
* www-admin would replace www.ruby-lang.org

I'd add 1 thing to that, which is to have another team go over the
current ruby-lang.org site and find outdated pages and broken links.
This team could then submit one big email to (e-mail address removed)
with the list of suggested fixes. This would just be a band-aid measure
until the big redesign could be finished.

=== Volunteers so far ===

Designers:
John Long <[email protected]>
http://wiseheartdesign.com/

Michel Martens <[email protected]>
http://www.soveran.com/
http://www.soveran.org/

HTML/CSS:
Florian Gross <[email protected]>

Organization / Cheerleading:
Curt Hibbs <[email protected]>

Whatever I can do to help / Cheerleading:
Me (Ben Giddings) <[email protected]>

=== People I hope will volunteer ===

why_the_lucky_stiff, for his m@d cartoons, graphics, enthusiasm, and
panache.
http://whytheluckystiff.net/

David Heinemeier Hanson <[email protected]>, for his m@d business
skills, and ability to create and promote awesome ideas (and whoever did
the design for rubyonrails.org, if it wasn't DHH).
http://www.basecamphq.com/
http://www.rubyonrails.org/

Tim Sutherland <[email protected]>
His weekly summaries are great, so hopefully he could be involved in
adding something like that to the main Ruby site.

=== People I hope will volunteer ===

Curt Hibbs is currently setting up a Rubyforge project to help organize
the effort, and will use its mailing list, trackers, and wiki.

Curt, why don't you take it from here, and tell people what they should
do next.

Ben

 

[Curt Hibbs]

Thanks for the volunteer summary, I will be sure to add those to the project
as soon as its been created.

Curt