[Haskell-cafe] Design for 2010.2.x series Haskell Platform site

[Mark Lentczner]

On Jul 16, 2010, at 11:09 AM, Don Stewart wrote:
> If anyone is interested in a 2010.2 series design for the HP site, the
> repository containing the stylesheet is here:
> 
>    http://code.haskell.org/haskell-platform/

I like the content. The layout has some flaws when rendered on my environment (Safari 4, but with perhaps narrower than most peoples windows):

* The background image tiled looks pretty bad - since I see repeats and it doesn't really tile.
* The three columns at the bottom overlap! Perhaps this is a valid case for a <table> rather than three <div>s and CSS layout.
* The word "Download" isn't actually part of the download link. Many people might think to click on the Download text itself. Can we make that a link that auto-detects your OS and redirects appropriately?

On Jul 17, 2010, at 7:21 AM, Thomas Schilling wrote:

> Webdesign for an open source project is pretty much doomed from the
> beginning.  Design requires a few opinionated people rather than
> democracy.  

Truer words were never spoken!  Good web sites always proceed from a single graphic designer's vision.  Great ones combine that with, tweaking after deployment based on log analysis and A/B testing.

I saw we just appoint a short group of designers and let them at it, and deploy it, and then see how it fares! I nominate Thomas and Christopher! 

As for CSS wrangling, I've got a fair bit of experience at that. I've even done it in the context of MediaWiki themes(*). If anyone needs some help on that aspect, I'm volunteering. I'm pretty sure I could reproduce Christopher's image in XHTML/CSS if desired.

	- Mark

Mark Lentczner
http://www.ozonehouse.com/mark/
IRC: mtnviewmark

(*) My work on http://www.contextfreeart.org/ involves getting MediaWiki (used for the download and documentation sections), phpBB (for formus), custom PHP (for the gallery), and static pages to all style identically with CSS. I think I mostly succeeded.