Re: GNUstep.org website redesign proposal

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi Fred,

On 2014-07-05 15:02:32 +0200 Fred Kiefer <address@hidden> wrote:

> I just noticed that the new web page is now online. This might have
> happened a long time ago already as I don't reload the GNUstep page 
> that
> often. Many thanks to whom ever did the change. I expect it was 
> Riccardo
> as it looks very similar to the GAP page.

Yes, it was me, I even forgot to formally anounce it. it was an 
incredible work and done quite in a hurry.

The GAp site had some technical difficutlies in completing the 
transition from the old theme, I did not know how to position and use 
certain images. First I solved the most presing issues and then 
completed the transition of about 50% of the GAP website.

I then started a pilot test for GNUstep.org localy and toyed around, 
including some quite bold and "industry" level prototypes.

However, first Gregory started to ramble again.. then I thought that 
the event in Brighton might bring us some exposure. Thus I thought 
that a redesigned website for GNUstep and GAP would improve our impact 
in case somebody gets curious!

Perhaps you did not notive, but some weeks ago, by retaining the old 
style, I already started reorganizing certain entries and completing 
cetain pages about Systempreferences and such


> It is a bit to minimalistic for me (I really liked Sebastian's ideas)
> and I am still missing a few entries, although it is hard for me to
> point out which ones :-)

Well, I was able to incoroprate one idea of Sebastian: the upper left 
logo instead of the standard Text title.

Please note, that I just updated the style of about 75% of the pages, 
I did not reorganize anything. Sebastians proposal was deeper and it 
had quite legit ideas!

However I thought to follow open-source philosphy and release early. 
The content can be improved later.
Actually, by updating the pages I noticed a lot of hard-to-reach or 
even unreachable content! Or inconsistent stuff.

I will grdually ask about that.

A note about the new design: it is based on bootstrap, so it is up to 
top-notch responsive practices where I exploited them (some content is 
not yet truly updated, I just resyled it). The very minimalistic, with 
little graphic, style is intrinsic to it

For example, if you have an iPhone (or perhaps you notice it already 
on an iPad) look at:
- the menu bar reorganizes vertically and opens with the now standard 
menu icon
- if you check gnustep.org's download page or the window page, you may 
notice that you can horizontally scroll with a "touch" the tables 
without scrolling the whole page horizontally!
- in GAP's homepage, on a wide screen of a laptop or PC you see three 
columns, if you look it on a small device, they will organize all 
vertically, giving you still full accessibility

there are a couple of other detials, but these I like most and I think 
"updating" our own home-brewed styles would be really too much effort. 
Some of these details are quite difficolt to get working and bootstrap 
itself needed fixing - fixes we get for free by using it.

The custom css is now vbery small, before we had two CSS files!

> One technical question: Don't we need a form of legal disclaimer on 
> the
> page, stating who is responsible for the page? In Germany you would 
> need
> something like that.

I don't know about that. I suppose that depends either on where the 
webserver is located or more probably where "gnustep" is localted, 
that is, I would suppose, GNU itself, thus american law.

I also ask what the current webmaster address is.. I also suppose that 
the webmaster author pages should be updated.

Thanks for appreciating.

I'll come back with more questions and doubts to complete the work.

Riccardo