TxP.com home page

jm · 2008-09-10 01:30:12

nemoorange – looks great. Black and white looks good too :).

Gocom · 2008-09-10 01:44:12

So I’ve been following the discussion and I’m really excited that the community feels the same way I do.

Nice Dave. Someone doing something, Dave The Man. Dave, what a nice name. :)

What it misses (following text is after improvements, not for blamy blame blamier blaming):

A logo – website always needs a logo (fact: human memory) that stands out from the content, in this case the carver.
Possibly more obvious link to the homepage: not all will know that the “Textpattern” is a link ;)

What might feel too anti-Textpattern:

Menu-hover gradient. Gradients are so… dead? And also, there is just too much contrast, web2.0-style etc.
Download button. It doesn’t actually fit the “Textis(h)m”-theme. Also it is a full image. Who will update it later?

Updating the content -issue:

Who will deside what is in the “featured showcase” image. Who will always take the image? Ruud or wet?

What i would want to find, but it is hard to spot them:

Link to installation instructions: Me wants to know if it is easy or pain in the ass.
More sightful link to FAQs.
One click link to the changelog: As a developer i want to see if it is dead or not from a respective of code.
System requirements, and what it does. What is it. It is CMS but where it goes. On my PC or does it run on perl?

Last edited by Gocom (2008-09-10 04:56:46)

maniqui · 2008-09-10 04:02:17

First, I liked the Reasons not to try Textpattern by maverick.

About Dave’s proposal.
I liked it! Well done!

About the look and feel:
It’s an attractive “texty”/CSS-based design: it honors the text on textpattern.
However, it also looks like a newspaper site, and so, imho, it makes Textpattern look like a blog/news tool, and not a CMS that can fit many other purposes.

About the carousel:
I liked the images chosen to illustrate each feature on the carousel. I think they illustrate pretty well each feature listed.
Maybe, the text/box accompanying the images could be colorful, so it has some contrast over the image.

I’ve seen the carousel images are background images, and that may be right, because they coud be seen as decorative images, and may not be considered meaningful content.
As an idea, this decorative images may alternate/cycle (maybe using some js/jquery magic) with an screenshot of Textpattern admin (related to the current item on the carousel).
If this idea of cycling (fade-in/fade-out) a decorative background-image with a real TxP screenshot (an <img /> on the dom) isn’t very appealing or doable (i think it is), then I would go with the screenshots and not the decorative images.
IMHO, screenshots on the home page are a selling point. Then, the decorative images (again, all of them are very nice and fit very well each idea) could be used somewhere on inner pages.

About the content:
I know Dave have followed the previously wireframe/content suggested on this thread.
I think the homepage still lacks a little of content.
I would like to see another row of three boxes, including some of the content that’s already on Textpattern.com.
Particularly:

add some of the items under Interface features
add some of the itmes under Publishing features
and… the latest posts on dev’s blog? some supported languages? some featured plugin? any of the things suggested by Gocom on above post?

Finally, some details to take in account for future versions:

highlight some content with <strong>
it would be good if the carousel degrades gracefully. I would suggest to use jQuery serialScroll, which is a nice approach to scrolling elements on a page, and it’s easily degradable to a overflowed box with scrollbars.

Gocom wrote:

What i would want to find, but it is hard to spot them:

Link to installation instructions: Me wants to know if it is easy or pain in the ass.

More sightful link to FAQs.

One click link to the changelog: As a developer i want to see if it is dead or not from a respective of code.

System requirements, and what it does. What is it. It is CMS but where it goes. On my PC or does runs it on perl?

Also missing:

it isn’t stated that TxP is an open source gpl’d software.

jakob · 2008-09-10 08:22:07

I like it! (more than other suggestions up to now). Ties in well with the text-centric pattern and like the fact that it eschews the gloss that one finds everywhere else.

Georgia is the only font used. Everyone else uses sans-serif for their body text.

Others have mentioned newspapers in describing out TXP works, and also the trust users feel when visiting the site.

keeping it minimal

integrated header that could be used across the entire site

Agree in general. Coudal makes a good case for this kind of site, and yours follows a similar vein. Sans-serif fonts could be used for some of the labelling of boxes, though without detracting from the georgia body copy.

Black and white is classy (right?)

Also helps make the yellow as ‘brand identifier’ stand out nicely. Text in grey wouldn’t harm, though to make things subtler and help steer emphasis.

Agree with jukka on unsubtle download button and gradient overlays.

Destry · 2008-09-10 08:47:33

Nice contrib, Dave! Initiative needed. We could spend too many months redoing wireframes to appeal to everyone’s opinions and desires. It should prove more effective in this case to see a little spit-shine too. That’s why I went straight to mockups before. :)

My two cents:

~~Not favorable of Georgia only (and in any case does not follow the humble style guidelines already set forth in wet’s wiki for font styles)~~. Ed. My bad. Looking at the image in 100% mode, I see it works just fine. :) I like it.
Too many lines, looks like one of those prison suits from a 30’s comic. If you eliminated ~~every~~ a few horizontal lines, which is unnecessary for understanding anything, you gain something cleaner that’s just as effective. Ed. Maybe just need to remove the full-width lines from between sections to get rid of the double-line effect which does seem a bit too much.
The reason I wrote “Hemingway used Moleskine®,” is two fold: First, it’s mentioned in “The history of a legendary notebook” that accompanies every Moleskine bought. Second, there’s a thriving community of Moleskine enthusiasts today, just like yesteryear, and most of these people are highly talented artisan, designer, writer types. All-in-all, I think using the nod to Moleskine has a bigger impact than not. (And it rolls better off the tongue.)
I would still like to see another clever way of integrating the different systems so they are not just menu links (that’s fundamental), but also tie-in the subtools and/or menus of each system (wiki, forum, plugins…). The WordPress family of sites does this beautifully. I demonstrated it with my wiki and forum mockups. There’s got to be other takes on it that are clean and user-oriented?

Matthieu, I hope you’re reading and don’t feel put off by the hard critiques from round 1. It’s all good. I for one am expecting to see round 2 from you. (Same goes to arzhou and Dave!)

By the way, all. I’ve skinned a local copy of MW with my initial wiki mocks (link above). I have a few tweaks to make and will then put it to a public demo. I’m using the markup and CSS mods for my local wiki (with minor visual tweaks), so it’s not a loss for me either way; however, outside of the masthead/global nav it should work now for whatever design is finalized because it follows the guidelines as they exist (after changing header font family).

Speaking of style guide, regular text might be something softer than just black, which is well-published to be hard on the eyes when read on white backgrounds. I used #4f4f4f in my mockups and wiki which seems to tame the contrast pretty good before actually appearing gray. Just a thought.

Last edited by Destry (2008-09-10 09:29:23)

Bloke · 2008-09-10 08:54:23

Looking good there nemoorange. Nice work.

I agree with the sentiments in the posts following yours, and would +1 on the following:

color:#333; (or similar) instead of black for copy text takes the edge off the starkness
A sans-serif font for headers, since Georgia for body text works well and keeps with the ‘texty’ theme
A splash of colour in the carousel. Either colour the text box to make the text stand out a bit or maybe pick out just one colour (á la Sin City) from the background pics (whatever they may end up as) and emphasise that slightly. Perhaps yellow if there is any…?
I like the warning by the download box that has shades of Mavericks’ suggestions up there :-)

Very swish though.

Destry · 2008-09-10 09:04:30

Bloke wrote:

A splash of colour in the carousel. Either colour the text box to make the text stand out a bit or maybe pick out just one colour (á la Sin City) from the background pics (whatever they may end up as) and emphasise that slightly. Perhaps yellow if there is any…?

I was going to say I really like the black and white images (though not sure that’s a good idea for actual demos…could be though), but the Sin City thing makes sense and could be sweet! I like the idea of a touch of yellow, or maybe something sepia. That’s all you would need, a single color to accent the images a bit.

EDIT: Dave, with regard to font-family, maybe you could throw up two more clones of your page and make all three linkable in the main nav: One of the additionals would have Georgia headers and sans-serif text. The other having opposite. From that we might be able to really compare and decide what’s the best way to go with font-family while keeping everything else constant. Just a thought.

Last edited by Destry (2008-09-10 09:50:54)

zero · 2008-09-10 10:12:57

Nice work, nemoorange! I’ll make some comments later. I want to throw these into the mix too. I was going to do 6 altogether, one for each main navigation tab, so as to see the variations between home, weblog, docs, forum, resources and assist. But those can wait now. Anyway, here’s home and docs

My reasons for producing these was to move this thing forward because Destry and Matthew are obviously very busy, and Azhou too. So I tried to combine stuff already discussed, plus add some of my own ideas. I know I can depend on you guys to change what’s wrong with them :-) Note the integrated nav and the subnav. For weblog I was going to make the subnav: start, design, development, issues and contact. For the forum: Index Rules Search User list Profile Logout Help. For Resources: no subnav, just one page with links, but eventually it would be txp.org and use its subnav. For Assist: Start, contributors, donate. Those are my first thoughts and probably would change.

Note the blank canvas on the home page. I was going to say we must put something great here, so it’s brilliant to see some actual content, Dave! I also think Maverick’s Reasons Not to try is great, but haven’t figured the best way to put it in, so that’s why I’ve stuck with Bloke’s Reasons to try.

Anyway, what can we take from all contributions so far, so we can make them into something exceptional?

zero · 2008-09-10 10:37:50

Regarding your submission, Dave (nemoorange). First, I like the newspaper feel, it’s classic and simple and txp is about publishing, so +1 for that. I think “Just Write” should be on the opening image. The general idea for those images is great but I would make some small changes to content, I’d also use a bigger font and make more contrast – it’s almost illegible at the moment. That’s also a reason for not using Georgia for body text because sans-serif is easier to read, according to studies. But hey, that means I’ve just changed your whole concept! So it’s something to think about but perhaps only for certain details.

You haven’t included integrated nav – at least as I see it. What would your page look like when you go to forum or docs? wouldn’t it look quite different? Perhaps you could explain or show us your vision for that?

I think you make a very good point about just emphasising about 5 pieces of content. That’s why Jukka and Maniqui’s thoughts, although good ones, are hard to do because you simply cannot fit everything in! Perhaps using “Download Info” on the button would satisfy you, Jukka?

By the way, I haven’t included Demo or Showcase in my own effort because these pages do not exist and would take time to prepare and who is going to do them this side of Xmas? But they can be added later. For now, I just think that using the Featured Sites page with prominent links to We Love TXP and the Let’s See Yours Then forum is practical and sufficient.

zero · 2008-09-10 15:17:16

Is everybody busy making their sooper-dooper version :-)

I’ve done some more, with slightly differing styles, and nav included for you to think about so we can get practical and get this thing done.

weblog
forum
assist v2
assist v3

els · 2008-09-10 18:36:26

jakob wrote:

I like it! (more than other suggestions up to now).

I agree 100%! Unfortunately I don’t have the time at the moment to do anything more than skim over this thread now and then and look at the designs, but this one really stands out for me.

renobird · 2008-09-11 01:23:55

Wow. This has become such a “horse by committee”.
No offense to all of you hard at work…but damn.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_committee

Don’t get your leotard in bunch.
I’m just making a joke.

)

Last edited by renobird (2008-09-11 01:27:07)

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#133 2008-09-10 01:30:12

Re: TxP.com home page

#134 2008-09-10 01:44:12

Re: TxP.com home page

#135 2008-09-10 04:02:17

Re: TxP.com home page

#136 2008-09-10 08:22:07

Re: TxP.com home page

#137 2008-09-10 08:47:33

Re: TxP.com home page

#138 2008-09-10 08:54:23

Re: TxP.com home page

#139 2008-09-10 09:04:30

Re: TxP.com home page

#140 2008-09-10 10:12:57

Re: TxP.com home page

#141 2008-09-10 10:37:50

Re: TxP.com home page

#142 2008-09-10 15:17:16

Re: TxP.com home page

#143 2008-09-10 18:36:26

Re: TxP.com home page

#144 2008-09-11 01:23:55

Re: TxP.com home page

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