Ok, here is what I think.

I think that I hope this is a joke.

I would have thought it's not all too difficoult to make a simple,
plain, clear website, along the lines of what exists for other OSS
projects.

Of course, before starting to implement pages, it would be wise to
think about the structure and for this purpose spending some time to
compare the structure of other, existing OSS sites would probably be
a good aproach. I just recommended something like that in a private
mail to you.

But what you have done on your demo page goes beyond all my
imagination of poor design. Are you an IT-Manager or just yet another
child playing?? My God.

Ok, now all are again upset because Markus isn't friendly. Well, let
me give you some advice anyway:

I recommend not to try to do a glitter and glamour website. It only
takes much time to do and there's no need for this in an OSS project,
I agree with Claudio.

Now, what I would like to see, is a simple, clean and well structured
website, which gives a professional impression to the visitor. What
doess that mean:

1. First and foremost: Do not alter my logo design. Putting it in yet
another circle is simply ridiculous, and it changes the logo. I have
done the logo for Firebird and Firebird shall use it, yes. But as it
is, please. I did not give Firebird the right to tamper with this art
work. If you want it changed, discuss that with me please.

2. No frames please.

3. The tittle, with logo, at the top and not at the bottom, please.

4. The navigation menu at the left or top, not at right.
Alternatively something like Apache.org, why not. But not at right.

5. I recommend to use white background, no gimmicks. I'd avoid dark
background because you need white text on it, which is bad. In any
case not something like black boxes in the blue background, it's
simply horrible.

6. The title is too big. And that "SQL Database" on 2 lines, but half
a line shifted looks awful.

7. Don't use more than one background colour. Either white only, or
white plus one colour for navigation areas. (not blue plus yellow).
The logo already has a colour and that's enough, basically.

Ok, I guess this is the moment for an apologize to Pavel. Indeed I
was not happy with your site, but it seems things are not really
improving with this new thing.

My Recommendation:
Think about a good structure for the site. That's the first thing to
do. Before that, you cannot really start implementing pages.

Then, use pages with white background, no colours at all. And use
standard HTML links to present that content. No playing with font
type font size and all that stuff. That way you should be able to get
an acceptably looking website even without any design skills. And you
can then "grow on the job" and improve it over time.

The first recommendation is therefore: Look at how others do!

For now you have put together a piece of crap and asked us to look at
it and comment. Well, I did.



Markus.

--- In IBDI@y..., Damian Dowling <it-manager@p...> wrote:
> Hi
>
> I have put up a demo site, it is not finished, it is just for
testing the
> layout. In fact i am not happy with it at all but i said i would
have
> something for Monday so here it is:
>
> http://www.pallasfoods.com/fb_testbed/
>
> I know the contents is terrible, i will have to do a rethink on
that part.
>
> Tell me what you think.
>
>
> Damian Dowling
> IT Manager
> Pallas Foods Ltd
>
> Phone: + 353 69 20200
> Fax: + 353 69 20201
> Email: it-manager@p...