[maemo-community] maemo.org redesign

[From: Andrew Flegg]

On Sat, Sep 27, 2008 at 11:31 PM, Andrew Flegg <andrew at bleb.org> wrote:
>
> Here're my thoughts. No mockup yet; I'm no graphic designer, so it'll
> take me a while.

I've attempted to do something with Inkscape:

    http://bleb.org/software/maemo/maemo-org_mockup.png

Key features:

> == Small links ==
> Pervasive across *.maemo.org. [snip]

And I *mean* pervasive. The overall outline and top-bar should be
present on *.maemo.org sites. I've used the term 'Add-ons' rather than
'Downloads', because things added to the tablet'll be coming through
Application Manager rather than directly downloaded. "Extras" is nice,
but too general at the top-level.

> == Big links ==
> Task oriented boxes; nicely rounded rectangles, with graduated fills,
> white text, a glossy look and lovely icons; [snip]

These are to guide people who end-up here from Google or
maemo.nokia.com. High-level, simple English. They'll go to the level 1
pages the same as the pervasive links at the top.

> == Swarming ==
> Below the above, we show the current activity in the community. This
> is NOT just the latest content (seriously, most of the time that's not
> that useful), but instead shows rolling averages of things like the
> wiki, Bugzilla and the mailing lists; and top-rated news items. This
> is to try and capture where the community is currently focused.

The formatting of the portlets capturing this swarm information is
sub-optimal, but Inkscape ain't the best for doing DTP. Hopefully, you
can get the gist and look past the over-simplified detail.

The portlets correspond to the easy-to-use buttons above, + an about
box + news & events. Content is syndicated from a VARIETY of sources,
weighted by activity/newness/etc. and sorted into the buckets. For
example, the "latest community activity" is showing threads from
maemo-users, maemo-community and pages which have been recently
changed a few times in Category:Users and Category:Communnity in the
wiki.

Similarly, latest developer activity aggregates content from
-developers and Category:Development in the wiki.

These lists should be better styled, possibly including dates - and
maybe even mini-icons as bullet points to represent the source of the
information.

Anyway, this is close to what's in my head at the moment. If nothing
else, hopefully it'll inspire some discussion.

Thanks in advance,

Andrew

-- 
Andrew Flegg -- mailto:andrew at bleb.org  |  http://www.bleb.org/
maemo.org Community Council member