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

[Antonio Roberts]

When the new, yet-to-be launched, Inkscape website was being developed
I remember the team took some inspiration from what this guy said
regarding the current Blender website
http://www.blenderguru.com/the-big-issues Scroll down to the Marketing
section.

On 11 March 2012 23:02, Scott R. Looney <scottrlooney at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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