[10:43] mpt, ping :) [10:43] hello [10:44] mpt, poolie and I had hoped to get your feedback on the latest design for the bazaar site. [10:45] emmajane, ah, I saw all the other feedback you'd received and thought you'd think that was quite enough. :-) [10:46] mpt, pfffbt. They're all developers. what do they know? ;) [10:46] haha [10:47] Well, the target audience for this Web site *is* ~80% developers [10:47] It's quite unusual in that way [10:47] (though Launchpad has the same property) [10:48] Sorry, Thunderbird is being useless at letting me find that design feedback thread [10:49] mpt, We're actually hoping to target non-developers as well. The developers are likely to ignore the front page anyway and come into the site via a side door on Google. [10:49] mpt, http://bazaar-vcs.org/BazaarPersonas [10:50] or just: lp:~emmajane/+junk/dancingmonkeys [10:50] ah, thank you [10:50] erm the branch isn't an alternate to the personas. [10:50] Yes, Kris is in the ~20% I was thinking of [10:50] * emmajane nods. [10:50] IT managers, CTOs, those sort of people [10:51] http://www.flickr.com/photos/emmajane/3902988367/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/emmajane/3903764440 for screenshots, but they don't really give the full context without the window decorations from the browser. [10:52] I've been thinking of the front page as the page for "vulnerable" people who need version control but are sort of afraid of it. [10:52] the programmers and devs and people who like version control will launch past the front page but still need something "friendly" to show their co-workers, bosses, etc. [10:52] - Can I trust it? [10:52] - Is it better than the alternatives? [10:53] * emmajane nods [10:53] emmajane, I agree with whoever it was who said that reusing the Bazaar icon for "Extend" was awkward -- I'd go so far as to say that varying the Bazaar logo itself is uncool unless it's actually for a Bazaar variant [10:54] * emmajane nods [10:54] A big green rounded button seems to be the emerging pattern for downloading software :-) [10:56] Other than that, I think the visual design of this revision is much better than the previous one [10:56] cool. [10:56] It would be great to get an illustrator to do actual buttons, but I don't think that's in the current plan. [10:58] I also agree with poolie that it would look better if the backgrounds were liquid-width, even if the rest of the site isn't [11:00] The "Take a tour..." and "More about..." links could also do with a little bit of graphic treatment [11:00] They look a bit lonely at the moment [11:02] I explicitly left the button treatment off those. I don't see how a button fits in nicely on that side of the page without it just looking like I went shopping at the button discount store. Suggestions welcome. :) [11:03] previous versions had them wrapped in a div with a button class but then I changed my mind. :) [11:04] Not necessarily a button, maybe just a bullet of some sort [11:04] * emmajane nods [11:04] ➤ Take a tour [11:04] yeah [11:04] I was thinking yellow arrow on black shape? [11:05] flip the colour scheme but keep the imagery consistent? [11:06] that could work [11:07] Have you (or has anyone else) got reliable data on developers' current impressions of Bazaar? [11:08] Not me. [11:08] I have exposure to "new" people and people who just want Bazaar to work (mainly through the Drupal community). [11:10] new people are through the three or four conference presentations I've given and Ubuntu documentation team. [11:11] There's definitely the "word on the street" information, but as far as I know there's been no actual/current market research. [11:11] In my mailed feedback I mentioned including logos of well-known projects/organizations that use Bazaar [11:12] with reference to the Personas page, that would be for Kris [11:12] * emmajane nods. It was in an earlier design as well. [11:13] I also mentioned including graphs of performance compared with other VCSes [11:13] that would be for Randy [11:13] http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0374/ <--- that's the "latest" summary that compares vcses. [11:13] but it's not market research [11:18] There's a lot this page has to do, I don't envy you this task :-) [11:19] heh, thanks. :) [11:19] mpt, It's a gateway into more useful mini-homepages. [11:19] yes [11:20] It needs to be just enticing enough to get people through the right door. [11:20] One maybe-silly possibility that occurs to me is a carousel of the qualities you want to convey, where clicking on each shows you a summary, with a link to those more-useful secondary pages [11:20] at least that's what Ikeep telling myself. [11:20] the carousel at one point was going to start with the "tag line" which poolie isn't fond of and then go through various screen shots. [11:21] it could be made into a more formal "tour" though. [11:21] it was always going to be a link through to something else though. [11:21] Bazaar is: _Easy to use_ / _Fast_ / _Supported_ / _Extensible_ / _Free_ [11:21] * emmajane nods [11:21] ... [11:22] You don't mention anywhere on the front page that Bazaar is free! [11:22] it's got the GPL stuff, but it's true I don't use the "F" word [11:23] the license is now also on the copyright line at the very bottom. [11:24] I mean free as in zero price [11:24] yup [11:24] as opposed to, say, Perforce [11:25] or Visual SourceSafe [11:33] updated that text and extended the colour strips to the full width. [19:50] emmajane: oh, please do use the flying monkeys [19:50] newz2000, :) [19:50] isn't that the awesomest!?? [19:51] it's up there, that's for sure [19:52] :) [19:52] it's been a long afternoon of me cussing because I'm not a graphic designer or an illustrator. [19:52] I know that feeling [19:53] The bazaar logo was me grabbing a pic of an Iowa street sign and running it through inkscape's vectorizing plugin [19:53] kwwii said it looked like a chinaman taking a leak. :-) [19:53] * emmajane chuckles. [19:54] I'm loving having the design team because now no one expects me to do art. I love it. [19:54] newz2000, at one point I was doing skews on road signs to try and make them straight on intead of "as seen from below" [19:54] newz2000, lucky duck. ;P [19:56] Despite you're supposed non graphic design / illustration skills, the bazaar site does look good and I'm eager to see it go live. [19:56] emmajane: will it be drupal based? [19:57] newz2000, thanks :) [19:57] newz2000, plain text. [19:57] if it were drupal there's no way I'd be doing HTML prototypes. [19:58] oh, I always start w/ html [19:58] well, i start w/ inkscape, then go to html before doing a theme [19:58] but maybe I'm old fashioned [19:58] * emmajane nods. [19:58] I'm too lazy to change that much about drupal. [20:09] newz2000, any idea if there's a way to center sliding door buttons? [20:09] they're floated so they're always going to be at the edge. [20:09] * newz2000 thinks it through [20:09] but if you don't know the width of the text you can't force a width on the parent. [20:10] even a parent div with won't work because of the float on the button.... [20:10] (and without the float the buttons go to the full width of the parent element) [20:10] *logically* the answer is "no"...but I wasn't sure if there was a hack... [20:11] you have a set number of buttons using sliding doors, you want the group of them to be centered? [20:12] I want individual buttons to be centered below an image. [20:12] so they look like a road sign with text beneath... [20:12] y'know the two-part road signs? [20:12] gotcha [20:13] I've not used sliding doors in that scenario, don't know of anything to help [20:13] * emmajane nods. [20:13] maybe if you set the width of your container to be too small [20:14] and let your button push it out [20:14] * newz2000 is stabbing in the dark [20:15] I just uploaded: lp:~emmajane/+junk/dancingmonkeys [20:15] hmmmm. that might work. [20:15] * emmajane tries that. [20:16] hm. [20:17] that starts the button at the center instead of centering it. [20:17] i did: width: 1px; overflow: display; [20:20] emmajane: do you have that posted anywhere or is it in your dancingmonkeys branch? [20:20] newz2000, it's in the dancing monkeys branch. [20:21] emmajane: where can I look? [20:21] You should be able to do a bzr checkout of the branch, no? [20:21] it's all just static files. [20:22] yeah, I've got the branch, looking for the sliding doors stuff [20:22] I like the "skip to extended navigation" [20:22] I could see that being very useful [20:23] good use of the mini sitempa in the footer [20:23] thanks :) [20:23] the buttons are appalling, but in theory beuno's graphic designer can redraw them for me. [20:24] who is Nathan Smith? [20:24] erm. not sure, why? [20:24] in the source, meta name="author" content="Nathan Smith" [20:24] Thought maybe that was an alias of yours. ;-) [20:25] oh good grief. [20:25] * emmajane sighs. [20:25] the author of 960.gsss? [20:25] ah. I'll bet there are many sites out there with this then. :-) [20:26] yeah [20:27] You did something that is very natural here, but if you think about it, may be a bit ironic or humorous [20:27] * emmajane face palms. I got the *copyright* fixed at least. ;) [20:27] before I say it I want you to know you can poke fun at my code any time... [20:27] :) [20:27] I laughed a little bit because you have an alt tag on the screen shot [20:27] oh you're welcome to find flaw with this. [20:28] that strikes me as ironic [20:28] ? [20:28] no, it's a good thing because people may have images turned off even if they can see [20:28] ironic? [20:28] not ironic, but funny [20:28] plus search engines like them and most importantly blind people wnat to know whta they're missing out on. [20:29] technically I should hvae a longdesc as well. [20:29] true [20:29] but I'm lazy :) [20:29] ok. I think I might needto find food before I pass out [20:29] it's gone 8:30 here. [20:30] ok. Have a nice night and weekend. [20:30] thanks :) [20:30] and thanks for answering all of my inane questions :) [20:30] it's much appreciated.