[sword-devel] CrossWire website up and running

[DM Smith]

Peter von Kaehne wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> After a last late night session with Troy to hammer out wording and some
> design flaws the new website for CrossWire is up and running.
>
> I have incorporated a lot of the ideas etc which were mentioned on the list.
>
> I am sure (actually I am aware of some) there are enough problems left
> with the site as it stands, but I decided it is now so much better than
> what had been there (and all the flaws present now were already present)
> that an update could happen.
>
> I have done no radical redesign of look and feel - rather the opposite.
> I am no designer and my taste is appalling and saw no need to inflict it
> onto the world.
>
> I have though radically gutted the structure of the previous site,
> removed table designs as far as I could, removed inline style statements
> largely and particularly removed style like HTML markup. All this is now
> controlled by a single CSS sheet. everything possible is encapsulated in
> a div and all divs should have an id or a class, possible both. So if
> anyone feels called to create a new look - it should be easy.
>
> The site should work fine in a text browser. No Javascript is used.
>
> My target was to make the site a) maintainable to a simple user like
> myself and b) bring it into a shape where it can again collect dust, but
> without causing too much damage that way.
>
> So all stuff which is and should be dynamic and changing is concentrated
> in a few places and made easily maintanable
>
> Specific problems remaining:
>
> The biggest is now the Sword site - it is gutted and largely without
> coherence. I will work on that.
>
> The next are several subsites /osis, /crosswire and /flashcards
> (probably a few more) which break the design. This is easily remedied
> and will happen in the next few days.
>
> The software list are still quite long (but much shorter) and the
> screenshots are still there. There are different opinions here regarding
> the suitability of screenshots (i.e Troy thinks they should stay, others
> think they should go) and I simply did not care enough to fight it out.
> Once someone comes up with a cool idea on which all agree I will change
> it. But just for the record - not everyone's icon is nice enough or
> informative enough, so icons instead of screenshots are right now a
> valid alternative (and then, some projects do not have icons)
>
> The Sword fora need to be restyled as CrossWire fora if at all possible.
> I had no look yet at them, but will do so.
>
> A central code page should be there. I will look into that. Once up and
> running it shall contain links to all public repos and all latest
> tarballs etc of all directly hosted CW projects.
>
> I like my icon bar for looking at software categories, but am not
> conviced yet by its handling. If someone has an idea how to make it less
> jumpy I would be grateful.
>
> If you are aware of anything else, please tell. Now is the time.
>
> And if you really hate what I have done... all is in svn.

Love the design!

Some nit-picks.

Agree with the OS icons being jittery and needing to be made more obvious.

IMHO, the links in the banner need to flip to other pages having the 
same banner and sidebar. In the banner "The SWORD Project" should 
probably link to: http://crosswire.org/index.jsp?section=Sword

Maybe add to the banner "Bible Study Software" and link it to a page 
that is the entry point for the software.

One of the things I like about our wiki is that external links are 
clearly marked. I'd like to see a distinction for links that lead elsewhere.

I'd like to see the banner and sidebar fixed and the content of the page 
scroll (without frames, iframes or javascript). I'll see what I can do, 
but don't hold your breath:)

On the old news page, there used to be a module download statistics 
listing. I'd like to see that on the modules pages. Or somewhere else.

On the main page under The Sword Project there is a link labelled 
"library" that goes to http://crosswire.org/index.jsp?section=e-library 
which is a blank page.

In Him,
    DM