[theforum] Design Contest Entry

[Martin Burns]

On 1 May 2006, at 16:07, Richard Bennett wrote:

> On Monday 01 May 2006 03:14, Martin Burns wrote:
>> I thought it would be churlish to be whipping everyone else and not
>> knock together
>> something myself.
> I'm guilty of that I'm afraid. I was intending to do something, and  
> maybe
> still will - as an alternative theme or something, but haven't been  
> able to
> free up a day or two yet.
>
> How did you get all that content in there? Had a database-dump been  
> released
> for the contest, that I missed, or did you just screenscrape the  
> pages, ?

Copy & paste from the pages.

> I suppose it is royally late now, but a zip of the current drupal  
> install, and
> some database content would make it easier to do a redesign...

Read-only CVS of the current theme was linked from comments ooh a  
month ago.

> As general comments on your design:
...
> I like the overall clean look, and light feel.

Which was what I was aiming for, so ta.

>>
>> Stuff I'm particularly happy about:
>> 1) The Evolter Map: http://weo.easyweb.co.uk/users/map
>>      although it may be interesting to see how it scales if every  
>> member
>>     puts on a location.
>>
>> 2) The nicely unobtrusive scripting used when you click on the  
>> 'Lists'
>>     and 'Directory' links.
>>
> Now not having made an entry myself, I really have no right to  
> criticize, and
> this isn't meant personally - it is more a general observation - ,  
> you do
> have a lot of positive things in there, a lot of accessibility  
> tweaks added
> in and so, but these are the bits that spoiled it for me.
> Web2.0 is the Flash of 2005+. It is a bandwagon people jump on,  
> they think
> this is the way to go, but it is already passe. it is already in  
> repeat
> mode... everyone thinks hey, that looks cool - I'm gonna do that too,

Yes, I agree - cool for its own sake just sucks arse. But you *can* do
useful things. I could have done a whole *load* more whizzy stuff, but
being congenitally allergic, I didn't. The two things I did were for  
a good
reason:
The map is something that's been talked about for about 4 years now.  
TBH,
I'm sorely tempted by the way they did it on the Ubuntu site, but I  
have nfi
how it's done - it has to be automated or it's pointless. I also  
think the
zoomability matters.

And as for the wee reveals - they're both to remove the need to leave
weo without good reason. LEO is a one page site anyway (plus
some functional interfaces).

Oh, and you missed my actual point which was "It's done unobtrusively" -
no onclick handlers here.

> i mean, if you can show the content in 1
> second, why fade it in over 3? It just slows the process down  
> without any
> added value.

If they were 3 second transitions, I'd agree with you. They're just  
slow enough
to make it clear what's happening - I tried an instant transition,  
and it was
confusing.

> If I do get a chance, I'll submit a late entry and try to showcase  
> my idea of
> Web3.0, which basically takes the best of what we have learned over  
> the last
> 10 - 15 years, and doesn't let the 'cool' or 'wow' factor get in  
> the way of
> commonsense.

Which is what I was going for. Use the capability for a purpose.

> Evolt should be about leading the way, not jumping on bandwagons.

And/or should be about learning from others and building on the best of
what they do where it's useful. Which is what we've always done - we
*could* have done a CSS layout and beaten users of older browsers about
the head the way WASP were telling us (and everyone) we should, and
damn the buggy browsers. But we didn't. We waited until we were sure
we'd have better browser support, and other people had discovered the
workarounds.

> All meant in the most constructive way, I assure you.

And taken that way too.

Cheers
Martin

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