Subject:
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Re: New homepage for LUGNET part 2
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.admin.suggestions
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Date:
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Sat, 2 Dec 2006 14:24:55 GMT
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Viewed:
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5676 times
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In lugnet.announce, Rene Hoffmeister wrote:
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Hi all,
References:
http://news.lugnet.com/admin/general/?n=11314
http://news.lugnet.com/org/wishlist
I’m pleased to announce a first draft for the new LUGNET homepage. Before
visiting the site, please note the following:
1) The site is formatted using CSS. It means, the final page could look
totally different than this example, without fiddling around with the Mark-Up
(which is XHTML 1.0, btw). It’s possible to provide different styles later,
as well as user-defined homepages. XHTML and CSS both should are valid as
checked via the W3C validators. Anyway, please report any syntax error so I
can straighten it.
2) You will notice a somewhat different color scheme. This is due to the
fact, that I co-ordinated the colors blue, red and yellow in accordance with
chromatics to the best possible harmonious affiliation.
3) Theoretically, the site should be best viewed in any browser,
graphic-browsers as well as text-based browsers. Netscape 4.7x isn’t
supported with CSS, but should work by turning CSS off.
4) The site is designed to get rated “Triple-A” according to the WCAG (see
here: http://www.w3.org/WAI/). Please, if you know people with
disabilities, I would be very glad to hear about their opinion. But please
note, that only the new homepage is designed considering WAI thus far, not
any page behind the links (not yet)!
5) Links might be broken or leading to unexpected areas.
Since the recent BrickShelf gallery is generated “on-the-fly” at this stage
and I’ve done this using PHP, the page is provided as a PHP document.
Again, do not see this as the final draft. Quite the reverse: I would be
happy to read as many feedback, ideas, suggestions, comments and criticism as
possible over the weekend. THANK YOU!
One more thing before the link: If there’s anybody outside who has
experiences with parsing XML documents (namely RSS feeds), either via Perl or
PHP, I would be happy to get a little bit food for thought. I have a very raw
first transcription, but this is far from “good”.
http://www.lugnet.com/index-test-2.php (Enjoy!)
http://www.lugnet.com/articles.php (Slow loading, raw implementation)
PLMKWYT!
Leg Godt!
Rene
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Rene -
First, thanks for your initiative. I’m very glad to see LUGNET moving forward.
As for the new homepage: I really, really like the top stories section right in
the middle of the page. I do agree with Ted, the expanding and contracting
stories are a bit annoying. I like that previously read stories contract, but I
would rather have to click on the headlines to make them expand again, not just
mouse over.
I really like the Latest MOC feature (and the roll-over help on “MOC” is neat,
too), but it looks like it’s done manually. I’m concerned that it might become
too much to keep up with and get out of date. Is there any way to automate that
feature? I’d also like it to be a little more prominent - maybe where the search
box is now. Which leads to another nitpick...
I really don’t like that search box. I’d rather have every page on LUGNET (even
the homepage) have the same header across the top: Home, News, Guide, then the
search box in the middle, and New Message, Traffic, and Sign In on the top right
- all the stuff that’s at the top of the newsgroup pages now. The top part of
the new homepage takes up too much real estate, and most of it is empty space.
Also, the welcome statement and the non-Spotlight items kind of run together and
they’re also intermingled with the Top Stories in that middle section. How about
putting the welcome statement at the top of the page (under the standard header
I described above), and separating out (or integrating) the Top Stories and the
non-Spotlight items somehow?
Next... the Brickshelf recent gallery feature is very nice. How about adding the
Flickr LEGO feed? I think it would be neat to add some blog feeds on the right
side too. Now that I think about it, you could scrap that search box and move
the LUGMAP and Latest MOC to the left side, then that whole series of yellow
boxes on the left could be a sort of “beyond LUGNET” sidebar full of pics, blog
posts, and links.
For the left sidebar, put Latest MOC at the top, then the Popular Newsgroups
list, LUGMAP, and Membership. The stuff in the Newsgroups box is mostly
duplication (the Spotlighted stories are already in the middle of the page,
Traffic should be in the header, etc.), so that can go.
One last little thing - the new favicon isn’t as good as the old one - the logo
is smaller and the white background doesn’t look good. But all in all, I really
like the redesign and I’m looking forward to the final product. Thanks again,
Rene.
Marc Nelson Jr.
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