Hi,

Sorry for not participating sooner, I had to be out of town for a few days.

I've looked at Damian and Markus's example web sites and here are my
comments:
(I've only seen the latest versions, I think they have been converging
rapidly)

+ on Markus:
Logo with "Firebird" at top of every page. I think this is essential to
give clear indication of where you are.
Plain text links without extra colors on things that look like buttons but
don't press.

- on Markus:
Front page is content free. I hate commercial web sites that do this, also.
First page should have useful summary info about what firebird is and who
is working on it, and look like the others with choices at left.

+ on Damian.
I like the ivory background better than white.

- on Damian
"Firebird" part of logo missing everywhere. Next/previous buttons might be
appropriate on most pages.
I hate the links in colored boxes. They look like buttons but only the
text "pushes". Plain old links work just fine, are reliable on all
browsers, and have less visual clutter.

At least one person opined that Marcus was trying to take over the whole
firebird site with his example. I disagree. I think he spent a few minutes
and set up a reasonable complete framework for seeing what a site might
look like. Less, and you get no feel for how it works.


Now for my vote in the logo wars:
I still like Markus's logo, with "Firebird" (no SQL) the best. The extra
feather on the back of the neck is OK but to me not essential. I don't
like the black with yellow center, nor the non circular logos.

I think we should give some consideration to the possibility of generating
the entire static content of the website from docbook xml + appropriate
stylesheets. I have been pushing this for firebird documentation, and put
together an example framework for documentation at
http://home.earthlink.net/~davidjencks/. This is in tar.bz2 format at the
moment, and is 3.6 meg including everything you need to process docbook to
html (or pdf, I think). So look only if you have linux and a fast
connection.... I will try to replace this with a zip version today and put
up a little package of just the generated html.

I am very glad to see Pavel has put the current website under version
control. This is (to me) essential and an argument for hosting the whole
thing on sourceforge where the version control for the website currently
is.

Thanks
david jencks

On 2001.05.03 04:35:34 -0400 Damian Dowling wrote:
>
> I have uploaded a new version with the text coloured black, that is the
> only change. I would like to leave the layout as it stands (unless
> someone
> can spot something).
>
> Assuming everyone pretty much agrees then we need to decide on the
> following:
>
> 1. Our we going to use this design?
>
> 2. If yes do you still want me to maintain the site? If you want I have
> no
> problems stepping aside for someone else to take over.
>
> 3. Where is the site to be Hosted? Jeff Dodds made an offer.
>
> Thanks for your time.
>
>
>
>
> Damian Dowling
> IT Manager
> Pallas Foods Ltd
>
> Phone: + 353 69 20200
> Fax: + 353 69 20201
> Email: it-manager@...
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