On May 14, 11:15 am, Drew <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Hi,
> It's great that the website is getting a refresh. A few comments ... > > Why all the fancy javascript ? It adds nothing, and slows down both > the download and general navigation. Save the fancy coding for > sage :-) Re javascript: the devmap is endlessly cool, but it puts serious strain on even FF3B5 :( > On a well designed page you shouldn't need to write "click here' to > indicate where to click, it should be obvious from the layout. > > Since people can resize their browsers it helps if the page adapts > gracefully, ie no fixed width pages. > > As far as the look of the site goes, there are lots of great free web > designs out there, eg > > http://www.styleshout.com/ > http://freewordpresslayouts.com/ > > I'd suggest copying one. That's the beauty of open source, we can > learn from the experts. > > A clean simple *dynamic* website is the way to attract interest. I'd > suggest that the front page includes a "latest news" section (with RSS > feed), that way people will feel like it's worth coming back to see > what's changed. A dead front page gives the message that nothings > happening. Sage has a thriving community and the web site should > reflect that. > > Most of these principles were put into the design of this mathematical > web site designed by a few of my colleagues - > > http://epinet.anu.edu.au/ > > Here is another one built by the same guys - > > http://apsa.anu.edu.au/ (note the stylesheet > cribbed from styleshout) > > Both these sites are built using Ruby on Rails, but since the sage > developers are all python people, maybe using something equivalent > like Django would be an appropriate framework to build upon. Using a > framework and stylesheets will help keep the site uniform, rather than > a random collection of individual pages.See - > > http://www.djangoproject.com/ Djanogo seems to mandate a DB backend, so since the Sage website is mirrored in various places I would greatly prefer not to depend on it. It would likely mean the end of many mirrors since static packages [generated via script] just work while db backends not only bring consistency issues [and that includes sqlite - which sucks performance wise for any set of data beyond trivial], but also increase the required tools that need to be installed on the webmirror in question. KISS is the guiding principle for Sage development and so should be the website. But it doesn't have to look ugly :) > -Drew > > -- > Drew Whitehouse > ANU Supercomputer Facility Vizlab Cheers, Michael --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
