Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 09:54:08 -0600 From: Sean Kelly <kelly@fsl.noaa.gov> To: mpcd@freebsd.org, jkh@time.cdrom.com, chat@freebsd.org Subject: Snazzier FreeBSD home page Message-ID: <199606071554.PAA25347@gatekeeper.fsl.noaa.gov>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Regarding: http://www.freebsd.org/~mpcd/ First, all I can say is ``about time!'' (Oh, but what a precious commodity time is!) Especially since the Linux home page (slowly at http://www.linux.org/) has had a nice looking layout for awhile. This is something I've been trying to do for quite some time, but I got hung up on the icons. (You'd think being limited to 16 or so colors on a 32 by 32 grid would make things easier, but it really does take artistic skill to make decent looking images with such limitations.) Anyway, I like the overall feel of the pages. The initial home page seems a bit `busy'. Left or right-justifying instead of the `stairstepping' of the quick links running down the left side of the page might help. Also, the badges of honor at the bottom don't work too well with the copyright and number of access information. The copyright could work better if relegated to a single line, running across the bottom of the page, and in a tiny font. Another way to clean up that area would be to get rid of the text that says when the counter was last updated---we really ought to just do our best to make sure it's always up to date. The update counter also shouldn't need to say from when you're counting. I agree that including that kind of information makes the information more statistically useful, but this is the world wide web! Who cares! (Actually, I don't like those popular page access counters since they usually don't give me any useful information---they're a lot more useful to the maintainer of the page. In FreeBSD's case, though, it's interesting to note that FreeBSD and Linux are fairly close together: 433723 to 481784 as of now or so.) Another thing that contributes to the overly busy appearance of the page is the plethora of fonts in use. I've got my browser-selected font, but then there's the 1970's sitcom title font for the links down the left side of the page, the FreeBSD logo font, and the bold and commanding sans serif for the `What's New' and `Quick Index' buttons. I'd suggest keeping the FreeBSD logo font since it's used in other pages to unify the display, but using the same sans serif in place of the 1970's sitcom title font. The `Quick Index' button yields information that's particularly thorough, but not exaclty quick. The popup window that appears after pressing `FreeBSD QuickLinks' would be more useful if it were smaller. Here's a place where icons might come in handy. Icons would also encourage more browsing by people who aren't familiar with FreeBSD yet pressed the QuickLinks button (which is likely). Overall, the Linux home page still has a more professional feel. As FreeBSD is obviously the more professional operating system because of its heritage and design decisions, it should strive to exude that same quality in its web pages. Were I in a position of power to choose between the two operating systems for a new ISP, and I had *just* the web pages to go on, I'd certainly think Linux is the more polished system. -- Sean Kelly NOAA Forecast Systems Laboratory kelly@fsl.noaa.gov Boulder Colorado USA http://www-sdd.fsl.noaa.gov/~kelly/
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199606071554.PAA25347>