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

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Mar 11, 2012, at 7:02 PM, Scott R. Looney 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. 

Sounds like good ideas.  If you think those projects should be on the exhibition page, you should just add them:
http://puredata.info/docs/sitedocs/AddingToTheExhibition

The only rule is that you can't put projects in the exhibition that you had something to do with (no self-promotion).


> 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?

One of the download sections is labels "distros".  Not good enough?

.hc



> 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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