So what have I been up to lately? Well, I have recently got a nice new job with a local ex-ISP turned “cloud services” provider so I’m looking forward to jumping into the new role which, I hope, will be far more interesting as it will unleash my passion for Linux in a commercial environment. I’ve been a bit less active on the Sabayon front because of the job hunting and such but should increase again soon.
One of the things I’ve been working on is the Sabayon website design, the plan is to provide the whole portal and services with a uniform clean look that is more accessible and easy to use. I’ve attached a screenshot of the homepage draft design, feedback as always is encouraged.
I have moved bugs.sabayon.org to the Bugzilla.git repository but have not been able to work on the new styling for a while which is a shame however its high on my todo list.
I’ve also been improving some of my various other projects, for instance the IRC bot ParkerBeta on the #Sabayon IRC channels on Freenode, the facts database module recently got an update to enable to the deletion of particular numbered entries on entries with multiple output. The not so functional Entropy module is getting a major update to use another of my recently started projects a JSON API for entropy, its currently in the very early stages, but when finished should allow lots of cool stuff to built on top of it, think nice AJAX web interfaces etc.
So finally: Sabayon 5.5 may or may not be planned for around Christmas.
Looks pretty good. I like the rough layout, but if it were up to me, I’d also plan to make drastically less use of text and hyperlinks on the main web page area.
The main page area could be the short description/mission statement, the download link, donation meter, news, maybe the forums and IRC. Adorn them with a bunch of colorful icons and not quite so much text.
The rest could be put in a navigation bar.
Some advice for the website:
Since the 2 wallpaper screenshots at the top right corner seem to be the anchor visual point, I think they need to be reworked a little. For example, the smaller image is duplicate of the larger – this does not add new information, making it somewhat obsolete. Also I am not sure about the different angles of the 2 images. I adore the aesthetics that Apple has infused to our everyday culture, so since this reminds me remotely of it, perhaps to follow their style more closely on this matter – it’s not a bad thing to do.
I’m not sure about the sharp black-light gray duality of the top and bottom sectors. No transition is O.K. Maybe to make the gray gradient starting from darker color – look e.g. the one from your homepage, where the copyright notice is located.
I think newest forum & planet posts have to be maintained – if you take them out of the homepage I bet the visits will go down. Homepage has to be interesting as much as possible in information. Then the challenge would be to make them visually pleasing, but it’s not such a difficult task.
Anyway, a big thank you for working on those things. You’re generally super!
Un nuovo sito per Sabayon « GNUpress!
Links 28/10/2010: Finnix 100 Released, Colour E-reader With Linux, Mozilla Firefox 4 Delayed | Techrights
Congratulations on the new job; hope you enjoy it.
Regarding the SL Home Page, an overhaul is long overdue in my opinion, so bravo for doing it.
I like the way you have stated the very basic things first, which is absolutely the correct thing to do (it’s surprising that, on some home pages, it is actually not obvious what it is that they are selling or offering!).
You have exactly the correct approach in stating up-front what SL is, and what it is supposed to do and be. However, perhaps it would be good to hyperlink ‘bleeding edge’ to an explanatory page, because many people don’t understand what that term means (they think it means ‘state of the art’). You do infer its meaning by stating “but at the same time it’s stable and reliable”, but I think it would be good (on a secondary page) to make it darn clear what a ‘bleeding edge’/testing branch distribution actually is. Perhaps you just need to link to the Wikipedia definition of ‘bleeding edge’, which is short and to the point.
From the maquette that you posted, it appears you are going to explain on a secondary page all the different editions of SL. Perhaps you are thinking about something along the lines of my post “x86_64, x86, K, G, Core etc. – What do they all mean?” in the SL Forums? That would be useful to newcomers too.
Perhaps the “Our Community” column could do with trimming down, with a hyperlink ‘Ways to help’ to a secondary page where you go into more detail. Or perhaps all you need on the Home Page is a hyperlink ‘Our Community’ to a secondary page with this text and more on it.
Perhaps also the ‘Stay Updated’ column could do with trimming down, or perhaps just have three hyperlinks under that header, linking to the press releases for the latest releases, always in the following order: KDE/GNOME ISO; CoreCDX ISO and SpinBase ISO; Daily ISOs.
In addition to the prominent Download link (again, I like your whacking great ‘Download’ button) I think there should be prominent, uncluttered links to the Wiki, Forums, Planet, Web Chat and Bugzilla.
Basically I suggest that the front page have less text, a little more empty space and some more bling (tasteful and uncluttered, obviously) to capture the eye. I think something a bit ‘cleaner’ (more minimalist, perhaps?) would be more captivating.
All my opinion, of course, but I hope it is of some help anyway.
Good luck, and thanks for all your hard work.
Tweets that mention Life, New Sabayon Site Design & Sabayon 5.5 Teaser | v00d00.net -- Topsy.com
I’m inclined to agree with Fitz on the matter.
As far as the home page goes, less is better. It’s job should be to quickly say what the entire website is all about and provide links to everything relevant.
Generally, when I visit a homepage, I know exactly where I want to go from there. If there is a lot of text, it just makes it harder for me to find the link I’m looking for and I get annoyed. From looking at this mockup, it is pretty obvious from the links at the top and the big download button that finding where the majority of people will want to go shouldn’t be much a problem.
Of course, everybody is different and looking for a different amount of depth, so you can’t just go with a couple of people’s opinions on the matter.
I definitely like the stylizing and it wouldn’t be very difficult to change the color scheme with the layout you’ve got either (which might be good for future purposes).
Overall, I award you 4 out of 5 chicken feet.