KDE.org: New Design, New Implementation

The KDE Web Team is proud to present a new and exciting design for the official KDE site! This is the first overhaul of the flagship homepage since Kurt's vastly successful update more than two years ago. The KDE Web Team has maintained a focus on standards-compliance as well as improved the overall usability and accessibility of the site. Also featured prominently is an overhaul of the content as well as the implementation of a whole new design matching the shiny new Keramik/Crystal look from KDE 3.1.

Over the next few weeks and months, even more of the KDE.org family of sites will be migrated over to the new target. Meanwhile, feedback and bug reports are welcome at [email protected]. Maintainers of KDE mirrors: Please take note of the updated requirements for hosting mirrors due to internal changes.

The new maintainers of KDE.org are Christoph Cullmann, Rainer Endres, and Jason Bainbridge. The design of the new website is based on work by Sebastian Faubel.

Chris Howells, Dirk Mueller, Olaf Jan Schmidt, Datschge and Neil Stevens have contributed at various levels performing either invaluable grunt work or contributing designs and ideas.

There are also many people who have also contributed feedback and fixes -- please let us know if we have forgotten anyone who should be listed here.

Huge kudos go out to any and all who have been involved!

A note from Christoph Cullmann:

The whole process of redesigning and restructuring of kde.org began at the end of 2002. After many heated discussions, a multitude of drafts and a lot of fun, we finally reached a state that we felt deserved deployment.

What has been done?

  • A new default design matching the current look of KDE has been created.
  • Much content has been reviewed and updated, and the menu structure has been updated to reflect usability concerns.
  • We have adopted usage of the latest web technology including XHTML and CSS1/2, while maintaining compatibility for older browsers as much as possible.
  • The underlying PHP scripts and HTML code have been overhauled or altogether rewritten. Maintainers of web mirrors should therefore consult the updated KDE Mirror HOWTO.

We hope to port over the remaining KDE pages in time. If you wish to help in this process or otherwise contribute new artwork, patches or bug reports, please contact us at [email protected].

As one of the new maintainers of KDE.org I would like to thank the people involved in redesigning process for their invaluable contributions. I sincerely hope that users will enjoy the new website, and find it a worthy replacement to the old one.

Dot Categories: 

Comments

by Alex (not verified)

Also Konqueror should also appear somewhere on the website. For example near "Conquer your desktop".

Checkout this pic: http://www.kde-look.org/content/preview.php?file=4582-1.jpg for mroe dieas.

WHATEVER YOU DO DON'T CHANGE THE FONTS! THEY WERE PERFECT, and I'M sure if you hada poll wiht more people they would think the same.

by Alex (not verified)

Last suggestion is to make LAtest Looks section under applications.

by Christoph Cullmann (not verified)

here my comments:
- yeah, still some IE problems, agreed, but not that much our failure, more ie probs with CSS, too bad
- transition of the other pages: we work hard to move them over to the new design in the next weeks/months, but much work :P
- Choose location should not seen as language chooser at all, location fits it. The different pages are not that translated versions, they are regional versions of the kde.org page. They have some different content and are no 1:1 translation. That means on kde.de you will found more content which interest the german users and not that much only a german version of kde.org. Therefor it says more to give the countrynames than the languages. if the pages would only be translations than you would be right in deed ;)

- kde logo link to mainpage: will be done, but first I must get home ;)

The old one was ugly, ugly, ugly and of course, ugly. Did I mention ugly? No... it wasn't that bad (I liked it a lot when it first came out), the big problem was that it was horribly inconsistent between subsites (e.g. koffice.org). Hope this would fix the problem. One thing I don't get is that why are the fonts so freaking big? Most websites use 12px ot 10px, but not the sizes you guys are using.... If there is anyone visually impaired, I'm sure he would be using a browser that allows text to look bigger.

by AC (not verified)

The new design simply rulez.

by anonymous ... (not verified)

No more blue .. no more blue :(

by Hervé Parissi (not verified)

I agree, I don't like blue, it's cops/right-wing/M$ colour ! Blue everywhere is making people sick in their mind, yes it does, really, why do you think corrupted politicians use blue background ?
Try to use some black, red, orange & yellow instead but no more blue indeed !
I prefered the formier site, lol !

by ac (not verified)

Has anyone look at using forrest for KDE ?

http://xml.apache.org/forrest/index.html

forrest is now being used to generate the pages for most of the apache projects.

by Heathen (not verified)

Keramik, Crystal, kde.org...

Where would KDE be without the help of these wonderful teenagers who are making it what it is today: a big shiny ball of blue? I thank God KDE doesn't let trained designers interfere with the appearance of the project. Who wants subtle when you can get loud? Who wants elegant when you can get flashy?

Carry on my fine lads. I know you won't rest until you've given everything in KDE that signature baby blue glow. And I love you for it.

by Datschge (not verified)

And feel free to contribute your own CSS color/design scheme to the existing seven available ones.

by Myself (not verified)

I wish they worked for me (tried konqueror CVS Head, mozilla 1.3b) I expected it to work *at_least* with konqueror!

Ahhhhh... I know.... It just works with IE!

by Datschge (not verified)

The www.kde.org server currently doesn't allow using cookies and GET posts so no browser can fix it at the moment. http://kate.kde.org/media/settings.php and http://czechia.kde.org/media/ however are on other servers with the correct setup and work fine, check them out to see how it is intended to look and work.

by Martin (not verified)

Green start button, red close button, pop-art window colors,....

Where would Windows be without the help of these wonderful designers
(Frog Desing) who are making it what it is today: a big shiny ball
of all colors at once? I thank God Microsoft doesn't let
the taste of ordinary end-users interfere with the appearance of
the project. Who want subtle when you can get loud? Who
wants elegant when you can get flashy?

Carry on snobbish designers. I know you won't rest until you've given
everything in the world something _YOU_ call design. And I love you for it.

by Heathen (not verified)

Microsoft has a monopoly with Windows. They don't have to do well.

Hi!
I tried to choose a different coloring scheme under settings, but it did not work with konqueror 3.1.0 or mozilla 1.2.1.

I have javascript enabled and cookies enabled.

I can see the cookie coming in, but after I accept it, the selector displays again the kde-windows coloring...

regards,
andorsch

Same problem here. As I posted in a previous thread, this thing doesn't seem to work for me. Tested on konqueror from cvs head and mozilla 1.3b. Mmmmm... maybe we should use IE ;-)

BTW, I'm getting zope errors quite often in these threads... may be quite busy?

by Anonymous (not verified)

Looks like KDE.org can use php-nuke for its current layout.

My default settings are light text on a black background. The site's default settings are white background, no text color set.

That means I get my white text color default, on the site's white background color default, and I can't see it unless I select all, or change style sheet options.

If the background is specified, the forground/text should be as well, to avoid just this sort of problem. Unfortunately, this is an all-to-common mistake, both according to the tutorials at http://richinstyle.com , which specifically caution AGAINST this mistake, and from my own experience.

(Disclaimer: I am not a web designer. I just suffer when folks that are make this sort of mistake on something that WOULD be common sense, if they stopped to think about it.)

Duncan (No e-mail address because last time I posted that here, I had to dump that address for the spam it generated and create a new one. Luckily it was one I could do that too. There should be a warning!)

by luci (not verified)

it does seem http://www.kde.org/media/settings.php is there for nothing now... unimplemented?
will it be working some time in the future?

by luci (not verified)

it must be a bug, 'cause e.g. at http://czechia.kde.org the stylesheet switching at settings.php does work well with the switch.php script...

by EUtopian (not verified)

I see that the new site has received some criticism, and I hope it doesn't removes focus from all the great work. Personally I have nothing but praise for the site, I think it looks gorgeous and is one of the most well-designed sites I have seen. Clear and simple yet beautiful. I can't really think of anything that I dislike about it.

by Alex (not verified)

Please make the text light up or change size when the mouse is voer the links on the navigation panek

by Jim Dabell (not verified)

Good idea, but please avoid changing the size or making it bold. I (and many others) hate text jumping around on mouseover, it makes a site less usable.

My preference would be for a slightly lighter shade of grey to be used as the background for the link.

by Alex (not verified)

Even better than my idea, change the background color of the row in the table for the text. PERFECT.

PLEASE incorporate this!

by capit. igloo (not verified)

can we expect, some day or other, a multilingual site and forum like mandrakeclub ?

The CSS styling does not work with mozilla through
a squid proxy.

When I look at my logs I see rather strange lines
being served

http://www.kde.org/media/styles/standard.css - NONE/- image/gif

the style sheets are being severed as images...
When I turn the proxy off everying looks OK.

by Jim Dabell (not verified)

Sounds like your proxy is broken in some way. I've just checked that address, and it's certainly being served as text/css:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 05 Mar 2003 13:21:52 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) PHP/4.1.2
Cache-Control: max-age=28800
Expires: Wed, 05 Mar 2003 21:21:52 GMT
Last-Modified: Tue, 04 Mar 2003 16:03:33 GMT
ETag: "ed00d-c26-3e64ce55"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 3110
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/css

by Myself (not verified)

Ok, let's put things clear. Am I the only one that feels that this CSS stylesheets thing doesn't work? I tested:

* with/without proxies
* from two different internet providers/locations
* 3 different browsers (konqi from cvs, mozilla, opera).
* Cookies and java/javascript were on in all cases,

and ***Neither works***

This means that it doesn't seem to be my network config, nor my browser's problem. IT MUST BE A BUG on the site.

A Couple of questions. Is there a script that says:

if (in UK) then make_it_not_work

??? That's the only answer I find :-(

by Datschge (not verified)

The www.kde.org server currently doesn't allow using cookies and GET posts so no browser can fix it at the moment. http://kate.kde.org/media/settings.php and http://czechia.kde.org/media/ however are on other servers with the correct setup and work fine, check them out to see how it is intended to look and work.

by Myself (not verified)

Thank you very much, ... at last I saw the colors changed! :-)

They are worse...

Entirely blanck pages with a squid proxy.

the page title is stranegly "Gif image 1x1 pixels"
under mozilla.

Without a proxy it works

by Jim Dabell (not verified)

Then it sounds like you have an over-zealous ad-blocker. Those are the only things I can think of that routinely replace things with 1x1 images.

Following on from above comments squid proxy
2.3.STABLE4

Several different squid proxies used, anonymizing
turned off so I am not stripping headers.

Mozilla 1.3b no css
opera 6.1 no css
konqueror 3.1 css works

With no proxy all three work correctly.
Mozilla set to http/1.0. No pipelineing
no keep alive just to be conservative.

by NS (not verified)

I think KDE should have a survey, if KDE folks like the new KDE webpage?

Items should be:

* Hate it
* Looks Ok
* Don't Care
* bad
* Good
* Nice
* Excellent

Or something like this.

I don't really like it. It looks like novice webpage. It should be compact. http://www.apple.com/macosx/ has good text spacing and layout except for those big tab above and very big icons and big J Box image. Mimimised scrolling, a probably small tab layout will do.

But I think should be replace by now with the negative comments. Please redo the webpage and then have a SURVEY.

by Myself (not verified)

Jeeez! Please give a better example. The page you suggest (apple one) has (IMHO) one of the worst ever designs for webpages. Reasons:

* No "about" page: what the heck is MacOSX? Weird name. Not a single word mentioning what it is. This is the most irresponsible thing a web designer can ever do.
* Fonts are tiny. They're specifying 9px and 10px fonts in the stylesheets!!!! That's not the correct way to do things, man.
* The menu in the left is "too mixed" with the text, so that the text moves left and right... not nice to read.
* The box photo and icons that are showed as main "menu" look... well messy and silly. The second one is just my opinion, but I guess most agree on the term "messy"
* The site is not configurable at all compared to kde.org, since it's pixmap based, and it takes ages more to load
* I doubt it supports easily accessing in text mode (blind people, wap phones, console browsers as lynx (without fb graphics ;-) ),....)
* It's not standards compliant: see http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.apple.com%2Fmacosx%2F

In contrast, kde.org:

* Has more intelligently chosen the fonts
* Is standards compliant: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=www.kde.org
* Is much more tidy to find easier things
* There's of course loads of info about "what's kde?"
* It's configurable
* Mainly text based: fast! Dialup users appreciate it

Ok, maybe it doesn't fit to the tastes of some people, but... come on, don't even try to compare to that crap webpage.

Regards,

U

PS: I probably forgot some other complaints, but the list was already too long ;-)

You must be kidding guys. The new web site looks problematic in Konqueror 2.2.1.
1. Button heights are 4 ro 5 pixels
2. Tables do not align
3. Resizing spoils.
4. Colors change during loading.

Do not blame or accuse me. I've been using KDE ever since and my setup is really OK. You should have checked.

Check out the file I've attached.