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  KDE.org: A New Site for a New KDE
KDE Official News Posted by Dre on Tuesday 31/Oct/2000, @11:49
from the whadda-face-lift dept.
Hallelujah! The KDE site has quite a new look! It's been completely redesigned and I like it, thank you very much! But judge for yourself... Is the new layout better? Is the new art better? Are things easier to find? We want to know what you think! I asked Kurt Granroth, the KDE core developer behind the changes, a few questions you might have as well. Read what he had to say below.

I conducted a brief interview with Kurt Granroth, the force behind the new KDE.org design. Here is what he had to say:

Dre. What motivated the changes to the design?

Kurt. We had two principal objectives in mind. First, navigating the old site was a bit difficult. There were too many links on the front page and things were not organized as well as they should be. Second, we wanted to switch to dynamic page generation. As it stood it was quite difficult to update pages, as we did not use templates. Now we are using PHP and templates so maintaining the site will be much easier.

Dre. It looks like the look-and-feel has changed as well. How did that come about?

Kurt. The site design had not changed in several years. KDE has changed a lot in that time and we felt it was time to get a more modern look for the site.

Dre. How long has this redesign been in the works?

Kurt. The idea to redesign has been floating about for quite some time, but all active development has occurred in just the last couple months.

Dre. So how did the new design get implemented?

Kurt. Most of the PHP coding, artwork, and layout was done by me, but it was a highly interactive process. We set up a mailing list two months ago for people interested in the new site. There was a lot of discussion and debating that went on, and the result is a consensus project.

Dre. What about mirror sites? How do they keep being mirrors?

Kurt. The entire site is still available from CVS in the www module, though it's mostly PHP pages now. All the PHP code is available under an Open Source license, though we haven't decided on the exact license yet. For mirrors to be a "true" mirror they will need to PHP-enable their site and mirror the PHP code. The settings that are required to use the pages will be available soon.

Dre. What about mirrors that cannot use PHP? Can you make a static version of the site available?

Kurt. We'll consider this. Perhaps we can create a tarball of the site nightly and let mirrors update their site with that.

Dre. What about other KDE application sites that used the KDE site design as a template. Are they able to use this new design as well?

Kurt. Absolutely. As I mentioned, the PHP code is freely available from CVS. Many of the KDE applications are hosted on SourceForge, which supports PHP so updating those pages should be fairly painless. Otherwise they can download pages from the KDE.org site and modify the static HTML to taste.

Dre. So how is the server handling the increased load?

Kurt. Great so far! We are very happy with PHP. Plus the front page is only regenerated every 30 minutes and served statically.

There you have it. Thanks, Kurt, I love the new design!

<  |  >

 
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Re: KDE.org: A New Site for a New KDE
by Jason Katz-Brown on Tuesday 31/Oct/2000, @12:00
Hum, Shouldn't it be 'Konquer your desktop' intead of conquer??

It would make sense... heh.

Other than that , super superb! PHP was the way to go. Good job.

Jason
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Re: KDE.org: A New Site for a New KDE
by Oleg Noskov on Tuesday 31/Oct/2000, @12:31
This new site looks great and navigation is a lot better. You've done a super job, guys! The only thing I found not working is "Search" in the home page, it produces "Page not found" message.
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Actually...
by Eron Lloyd on Tuesday 31/Oct/2000, @12:57
Should've just used Zope, since it's used right here already ;-).
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Am I the only one?....
by Samawi on Tuesday 31/Oct/2000, @13:15
Or is the Emperor wearing no clothes? This new
site seems really, well, boring and bland, to say the least (like the series finale of Seinfeld). Very functional and sophisticated under the hood, but borrrring.

Oh well, there's no accounting for taste....

> There was a lot of discussion and debating that > went on, and the result is a consensus > project.

I guess this is what happens when you design by committee:-)

Still, congratulations on the new site!
Samawi.
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Re: KDE.org: A New Site for a New KDE
by hevyd on Tuesday 31/Oct/2000, @13:17
It's about time! *sigh* Nearly any major player, whether it be open source or commercial, has a decent website. I have always been embarrassed to show newbies that site so I always pointed them to the comercialized kde.com.
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Screenshots
by Pavel Roskin on Tuesday 31/Oct/2000, @13:52
Why do you begin the "screenshots" section with screenshots of KDE 1.x? People who come to www.kde.org want to see what's new, not what's old :-) Also some screenshots are JPG, some are PNG. JPG format is not suited well for screenshots so please don't use it since compatability with old browsers is not your concern anyway.
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Re: KDE.org: A New Site for a New KDE
by gis on Tuesday 31/Oct/2000, @16:26

Hi,

I quite like the new design, both from a usability and aesthetical POV. The more blueish color looks better than the old violet one as well. My only tiny complaint is, that it could be a little bit lighter and more colorful. Maybe a few lighter and darker shades of that blue here and there?
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Dates for announcements
by tq123 on Tuesday 31/Oct/2000, @16:38
The new site looks great! Clean and not cluttered; I like that. I would humbly suggest that you put a date on the announcements, though. The KDE 2.0 announcement says, "The KDE Team today announced..." Of course, clicking thru will reveal that "today" is actually Oct. 23, but it's a bit confusing :) Anyway, congrats on the new site!
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Missing a "works best" statement :)
by loom on Tuesday 31/Oct/2000, @16:43
Great new site. It's funny but often people judge the life in a project by how often the web page is updated :) Now with the PHP code hopefully it'll be close to second to slashdot or freshmeat :)

Anyway, I just thought it's missing a "best viewed with Konqueror" logo or something (which I'm using right now btw :))
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Re: KDE.org: A New Site for a New KDE
by Steve Hunt on Tuesday 31/Oct/2000, @17:16
Great job, guys! I am so happy about the changes! We have always beaten GNOME with the software, and finally, we have beaten them with our website. I especially like the "Applications" section, so I can stay up to date on the latest and greatest software for KDE. Kongratulations! I was just wondering if the other KDE sites (such as developer.kde.org) will follow the same design as this.
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Re: KDE.org: A New Site for a New KDE
by John Califf on Tuesday 31/Oct/2000, @17:55
Yes, I really like the new look especially the top banner with Konqui the dragon showing things off. It loads quickly too.

I'm sure the site will evolve more quickly now with the new framework in place, in response to comments by visitors. A little more in the way of fancy graphics might be useful, maybe in the context of stories. Thank God you got rid of the notebook image and the animated gif.

There are two gripes, though.

1. Centering. Since you are using a fixed width page it should be centered in the browser. Currently everything is flush with the left edge and the title banner doesn't line up with the tables below. This is how it looks in the current Konqueror. Not quite right.

2. apps.kde.com. If you are going to link to this site, please get the webmaster there to fix the site. It's horrible. Yes, it does have the apps, but hangs up if you are using a proxy. Doesn't eveyone use junkbuster or something? The default view with 4 (count em) frames puts a strain on any browser, including Konqueror. Switching to the no-frames view usually crashes or hangs up Konqueror and Netscape, placing a recursive view of the entire page in the cetner frame, at least for me, and clicking on app links in the right hand frame often does the same.

I feel that Kde should have its own apps listing anyway and not rely on this commercial site. To me, it's a confict of interests. If you insist on using it for apps annoucements please at least make it usable for those of us who value our privacy and refuse to accept cookies or turn off our filtering proxies.

John
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Re: KDE.org: bad rendering on netscape on windows
by mike on Tuesday 31/Oct/2000, @21:22
Looks alot better than the old site. However when I load it with Netscape on windows it does not render correctly. The text is too far to the left on top of the blue border area. Its about one capital letter too far left. Other than that it looks quite nice.
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Re: KDE.org: A New Site for a New KDE
by jannek on Wednesday 01/Nov/2000, @02:21
Looks very good. It has similar functional look as KDE desktop and loads quickly. Very nice indeed.
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Re: KDE.org: A New Site for a New KDE
by Jörgen Lundberg on Wednesday 01/Nov/2000, @02:49
Some minor points. First, the color selection on the top links (FAQ | Download | Screenshots | news) when they been clicked on in less then optimal. Red or whatever the color is does *not* work well blue. The links are almost invisible.

Second, the top "cell" containing Conquer your... is not aligned with the rest of the page. It starts at position (0,0), hence it look out of place.

It looks *great* other than those small gripes.
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Quick to load, yet looking better
by ante on Wednesday 01/Nov/2000, @04:02
"However, we decided a long time ago that we wanted a web site that was quick to load, and that if there was choice between looking exciting and being a no-nonsense way to get to the information you wanted then we would go for the latter. "

You are quite right about that! I always liked the free bsd ( http://www.freebsd.org ) site for those qualities. However, I think the bsd site looks very good while the new KDE site is a bit dense. I like the free bsd colors better, but that is a question of taste - KDE choose blue, ok.

Some points:
- The new site could use some more white. The three blocks that start with KDE is... fill up the space. I keep it simpel, I compare with the bsd site: there the blocks have headers: What is ... Cutting edge ... , etc. Headers make for good reading as have been discovered ages ago :-) People do not read web pages, they scan them (As surveys show.). So give them headers... It solves the problem the site is dense, it makes the info more readable.

- Gis already remarked it could be more colorful. Yes, the blue links on a blue background look quite grey, dull. It is also hard for visually impaired people. This should be changed, if only for accessability.

- The box with the links at the left side takes 1/3 of the width. It does make the links prominent, very good. On the other hand, a 1/3 - 2/3 balance looks dull, not exciting. Changing colors in the links box makes the links better readable, so the width can be brought down. It does not take heavy graphics to make a page look more exciting.

While the free bsd and KDE sites seem to have the same goal (quick to load, no nonsense) the bsd one is very beautiful, the new KDE one is not attractive visually. More close to home: the KDE's iconfactory ( http://www.kde.org/artist/introduction.html ) , while using almost the same style is much better too... While the bsd site is almost provocative in it's use of colors, the iconfactory is within the "corporate look" KDE uses.

Glad you've got the internals right! :-)

Ante
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feedback using bugs.kde.org
by Daniel Naber on Wednesday 01/Nov/2000, @04:11
BTW, you can use bugs.kde.org to report bugs against our web page, too. The module (if you' re using email) is called "www". Actually this wasn't used very much in the past, but I like the idea to handle web bugs just as software bugs.
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The dinosaur must go ... it makes no sense
by couard anonyme on Wednesday 01/Nov/2000, @08:43
Put it somewhere on the site maybe but in the header?? This is silly. At least with the old laptop image an average joe/jane could tell WTF the site is about! And why all the hype about "powerful" this and that? The page in the best tradition of free software should simply state the honest facts. Let the users/reviewers decide how powerful it is.
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Re: KDE.org: A New Site for a New KDE
by David Rugge on Wednesday 01/Nov/2000, @08:43
The KDE web site was a fairly good design but it had not changed for so long that it seemed bland compared to many other Linux project sites. The new look is wonderful. Kudos to everyone that worked on it.
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Bad grammar and phrasing and an unclear message
by couard anonyme on Wednesday 01/Nov/2000, @09:04
The three paragraphs at the top do not sound right to a native English speaker (the third is meaningless to the point of being embarassing). I know they are the same as with previous version of the site but I complained about them too ;-) Here's my rewrite (note the changed order which makes more sense):

KDE is a Open Source graphical desktop environment for Unix workstations. It combines ease of use and contemporary graphical design with the stability of the Unix operating system.

KDE provides a solid foundation for a growing number of applications. KDE includes a high quality development framework for Unix that makes developing software easier and faster, from simple applications to complex office suites and word processors.

KDE is an Internet project and is truly open in every sense. Development takes place on the Internet and is discussed on our mailing lists, USENET news groups, and IRC channels to which we invite and welcome everyone.

,p>There might be mistakes here too, but anything is an improvement over the current poorly worded version.
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Re: KDE.org: A New Site for a New KDE
by bob on Wednesday 01/Nov/2000, @09:59
I like it, with one minor exception. The links at the top of the page are hard to read once you've already visited them (well, in IE anyways). Click on the FAQ, then go back to kde.org and look at the link.
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Re: KDE.org: A New Site for a New KDE
by Bryan Cebuliak on Wednesday 01/Nov/2000, @17:57
I note your heavy use of tables as an HTML block device on your site as opposed to using

or

blocks. Tables are used as margins rather than using cascading style sheets to set margins. Is this because Konqueror IS NOT YET CSS2 COMPLIANT? (now if I could only get KMail for KDE2 2.0 to stop crashing on startup)
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Re: KDE.org: A New Site for a New KDE
by Adrian Bool on Thursday 02/Nov/2000, @02:58
Just one gripe, at least on my system your
use in the kde.css file of,

td {font-family: verdana,geneva,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;
font-size: small;}

results in a hard to read font being used
(I think arial)... Just leaving it to helvetica
make the page a lot more readable!
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New News
by Johan on Thursday 02/Nov/2000, @03:17

I regularly check the KDE page to read the news. At first I was delighted to see that the news section is now in view with a "normal" browser window - no more scrolling to get to the point!

But - in the old version I could click into the news list from then first page and then read ALL the news with just the help of the scrollbar. Now I have to go forth and back between news-view and first page. And if there are more than five new items I also have to press "more" and get yet another view of the news, this time listing something like the first paragraph of the latest news (?).

I would really like a system that works like the old one - click in first page news list sends me to the right anchor in an all-news-full-text page (or all-news-since-30-days). If I want to comment something I won't bother having to click twice, but when I simply want to read the news it's too much work as it is now!
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