[PD] Editing CSS style, make pd.info better? [WAS: puredata.info site design provocation]

[Scott R. Looney]

yes i have to admit i'm starting to judge the relevancy of a website at
least in part with design modernity. was just looking at various open
source 3D gaming engines and i could instantly tell the 2003-2007 era from
the 2008-2012 era. i still investigated what each site had to offer, but
graphic presentation added to the friendliness/accessibility factor. sites
like the current Processing site and Openframeworks.cc seem cleaner and
easier to both attract users and navigate.

my thoughts on the design:

overall an excellent beginning to a new look! it started me thinking about
possible further improvements. so consider this a design brainstorm thingy
with NO obligation that anyone has to do what i'm suggesting (especially
Marco who started the ball rolling). i don't have any time to do it at the
moment (i'm avoiding grading right now) but it certainly gives me ideas, so
here we go:

Navigation

i'm not pushing this but it seems like side based navigation is sort of
less common on modern websites? the look is pretty modern and clean
however. Processing (2 columns) and Ofx (2 or 3 - not sure) both use top
navigation which i think draws the eye better. i resisted top nav for a
while but i think it relates better to subject matter. bigger more graphic
pictures on the front page of various projects i think will attract more
attention to the artistic aspects. a better top banner is a MUST.

Exhibition page

should definitely be overhauled with a much more graphic look whenever
possible. Marco's Xth-Sense, Billy's Helmholtz ship animation any other
graphic demonstrations of PD in action in realtime either audio wise or
using video manipulation ala Gem or whatever should be there in plain view,
not just a link to someone's website. No idea if Plone can do graphic grid
placement of thumbnails for videos but that's what comes to mind. i'm not
against a carousel video thing, but i think it's a consideration for future
design.

if it's just a patch processing audio, i don't know, maybe some audio
examples of the patch via a jquery-type player onscreen? the idea is to get
folks interested equally in what PD can do as well as finding out more
information about the artist if they are so inclined.

Downloads and Distributions - separate categories

at the moment if i wanted to find out what PD-vanilla or PD-extended was,
i'd have to go to the Downloads page. i'm not sure if that's intuitive
enough. if i wanted to find out what a distribution was about versus
downloading it, i'm not sure if i'd go to Downloads.

so maybe something labeled Distributions? then put PD-vanilla, PD-extended,
and something like l2ork there? i see a huge amount of talk on the list
from Ivo about his version and some of it's benefits. i think it should be
listed there. there should be Download links of course as well.

Such a page might also be called 'About PD', give a brief
history/description of how PD itself works and then the other variants
listed below with download links?


Objects list

This is probably overly ambitious but existing objects or patches for
vanilla, pd-extended and 'unauthorized' contributed extensions would be
great to see described possibly in a simple table form grouped by category,
or even better, tagged in multiple searchable ways in a database. i ran
into a website listing all of the available objects and contributions from
around 2011 and actually started to pull everything off and reorganize
everything into a database in Filemaker but got too busy to do anything
with it. ideally some indication or form that could be updated by each
contributor would be useful. i would propose a form that at least
highlights the following:

name | object or patch | category tag/s | vanilla or collection name (like
cyclone) | description(short) | distributions (extended, l2ork, whatever) |
documentation/example of patch | dependencies (which, if any)

this would sort out objects from patches and especially objects/patches
that rely on other libraries to be installed to work. if things were
organized correctly PDDP might be able to pull its info from this
centralized database, which might help cut down on redundant efforts.

allright i gotta get to work, feel free to discuss/elaborate/tear it
apart/whatever.

best to all,

scott
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