nick wrote:
> Deewiant wrote:
> 
>>> ...suggestions...
>> Other than that, the layout's quite good. <g>
> 
> Thank you for the constructive criticism.

I made some changes. Thoughs? Do you think it's good enough?

http://hcoop.net/~natamas/d/template.html

Walter Bright wrote:
> Bruno Medeiros wrote:

>> A logo is an important marketing and even recognition item, agreed. I just bring a small issue: does the logo necessarily has to an animal/mascot? I'm thinking it doesn't, any type of logo would do.
> 
> The mascot is just for fun. A logo could be anything.

In my opinion, the capital D is a strong symbol that is easily recognizable. It doesn't have to be in a specific font or color. Just the character is all that's needed.

nick wrote:

> In my opinion, the capital D is a strong symbol that is easily
> recognizable. It doesn't have to be in a specific font or color. Just
> the character is all that's needed.

As far as I know, it absolutely *has* to be red...

Think it is in tribute to the Red Planet (Mars) ?

--anders

nick wrote:
> Bruno Medeiros wrote:
> 
>>Try this for a great show of the potential of CSS and separation of
>>content and presentation:
>>http://www.csszengarden.com/
> 
> Actually most(all?) of the css designs on that site go against the point
> of CSS, which is that websites should "flow".  You can resize my layout
> and it will remain readable. If you change the font
> size(ctrl+mouse_wheel), everything just gets bigger but stays pretty
> much the same (except the big D).

How true!

There is however a psychological problem. Seems a lot of people actually feel that a fixed-size layout "looks" more professional. Which I completely disagree with, of course. As a computer professional, I tend to (agreeing with you) think that a layout that "flows" and still looks good in any size, is the top of professionalism.

nick wrote:
> nick wrote:
> 
>>I threw together a very quick mockup in html/css and just copy pasted
>>some content into that shell. It could looks tons better with more than
>>15 minutes worth of work:
>>
>>http://hcoop.net/~natamas/random/tabs.png
> 
> 
> Had a bit more time so I followed up on that previous layout(Try
> changing the font size: ctrl+wheel.):
> 
> http://hcoop.net/~natamas/d/template.html
> 
> 
> I'll admit it up front, there is 1 table in there so that I don't have
> to do any crazy CSS hacks.
> 
> Any criticism? (too dark, D too big, etc.)
> Anyone interested in using something like this?

Getting better and better!

Were are we going to end up??? :-)

nick wrote:
> nick wrote:
>> Deewiant wrote:
>>
>>>> ...suggestions...
>>> Other than that, the layout's quite good. <g>
>> Thank you for the constructive criticism.
> 
> I made some changes. Thoughs? Do you think it's good enough?
> 
> http://hcoop.net/~natamas/d/template.html
> 
> 

Definitely better, in my opinion. You changed the location of the 'D' in a different way than what I was thinking of, which is why you didn't need the tables, but what you did actually seems better than my thoughts, so kudos for that.

The stuff in the footer (Home, News, Products, About, Contact, And other things that belong at the bottom) doesn't show up too well, I almost missed them completely. The black background is too dark IMO.

<nitpick>

Still doesn't validate. Too bad about IE's box model.

Without images, the visited links in the top menu (the tabs) have too little contrast against the dark background. I'd suggest changing their background-color as well as background-url.

Every other CSS class/id actually has meaning except for the two in the new title: class="bright" and class="dark". It's so rare to find a site that actually does this correctly that I'd really like to have it done: just rename them to something like "title_d" and "title_prog" or whatever, I think you know what I mean.

That title should be a <h1> instead of a <div>. Slap on display:block and it should work the same, but the page will be more semantically correct.

I'm not sure if this is of much importance any longer, but the page is a bit too wide for an 800x600 resolution, at least with the default font styles - one can always make fonts smaller to make it fit better, but it might still be annoying. The minimum viewport width to display the page in Firefox without a horizontal scrollbar seems to be 896 pixels.

</nitpick>

Georg Wrede wrote:
> nick wrote:
>> nick wrote:
>>
>>> I threw together a very quick mockup in html/css and just copy pasted some content into that shell. It could looks tons better with more than 15 minutes worth of work:
>>>
>>> http://hcoop.net/~natamas/random/tabs.png
>>
>>
>> Had a bit more time so I followed up on that previous layout(Try changing the font size: ctrl+wheel.):
>>
>> http://hcoop.net/~natamas/d/template.html
>>
>>
>> I'll admit it up front, there is 1 table in there so that I don't have to do any crazy CSS hacks.
>>
>> Any criticism? (too dark, D too big, etc.)
>> Anyone interested in using something like this?
> 
> Getting better and better!
> 
> Were are we going to end up??? :-)

Law of diminishing returns tells me that I should stop messing with the layout at some point and get someone to use it. I just don't know who.

Walter, would you like to use this layout for the official D homepage?

Also, regarding the flowing layout: as far as I know, a fixed width layout is good because 60-80 characters is the ideal line width for reading; it's just that you want it to be resolution independent. My layout pretty much is.

Walter Bright wrote:
> Bruno Medeiros wrote:
> 
>> A logo is an important marketing and even recognition item, agreed. I just bring a small issue: does the logo necessarily has to an animal/mascot? I'm thinking it doesn't, any type of logo would do.
> 
> The mascot is just for fun. A logo could be anything.

If I ever get the D book ready to publish, I'd definitely like the D-man to appear in it. With permission, of course.

Kyle Furlong wrote:
> Bruno Medeiros wrote:
>>
>> No one can exert control of the GUI (or any other for that matter) development, but the community *can come* to certain levels of agreement.
> 
> While its true that no one person has a *right* to assert authority over anyone else in this context, it may be benificial to self organize into a more centralized team in order to produce higher quality code in a much shorter time span.

There are two main points to organizing a group effort.

 - Division of labour and responsibilities
 - To assign tasks

The former makes it possible for individuals (or subgroups) to concentrate on "their own turf only", enabling more profound thinking in that area.

The latter is needed so that the mundane or uninteresting stuff gets done too. And this is really important for a polished result.


Of course, the _decisions_ can be reached as democratically as we please, but the organisation's role is to see to it that those decisions are followed through.

>> A logo is an important marketing and even recognition item, agreed. I just bring a small issue: does the logo necessarily has to an animal/mascot? I'm thinking it doesn't, any type of logo would do.
> 
> My idea for the mascot is along the lines of something that will stick in people's heads. So, if a logo can do this, fine. But, in my experience, (which admittedly, is quite small) a mascot has more power to hold itself in a persons mind than a logo.

A mascot and a logo don't compete with each other. I think we need both.

> If D-man does this, fine.

The D-man is already an established mascot. There would have to exist a good reason to change this.

Georg Wrede wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>> Bruno Medeiros wrote:
>>
>>> A logo is an important marketing and even recognition item, agreed. I just bring a small issue: does the logo necessarily has to an animal/mascot? I'm thinking it doesn't, any type of logo would do.
>>
>> The mascot is just for fun. A logo could be anything.
> 
> If I ever get the D book ready to publish, I'd definitely like the D-man to appear in it. With permission, of course.

No prob!