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