[Clipart] new site design in progress

[Jonadab the Unsightly One]

Jon Phillips <jon at rejon.org> writes:

> Check it: http://rejon.org/website-snapshot.png

Overall, I like this.  Some more detailed comments follow...

* I'm not sure about changing the yellow slide to green.  I think I
  liked it better as yellow, as the red->orange->yellow progression is
  very natural.  Unless the yellow looks bad with the blue, I think
  the logo should go back to the yellow.
  
* I like the blue areas at the top.  Rather than trying to _match_ the
  logo, blue _complements_ it, which is good.  Also the colors of the
  sidebars.
  
* For the download stuff across the top:
  * People are going to try to click on Get ClipArt!, so it ought to
    be a link.  I'm unsure whether it should be a link to the package
    downloads or the browse.  Whichever it links to should probably
    also have a more prominent link to the other option.
  * "Downloads" is ambiguous.  I know that it points to the bulk
    packages, put a new user won't know that.  "Browse" is much more
    obvious what it does.
  * I tend to think the order should be reversed:  Browse first and
    then Download Packages afterward.

* Will the random clips be screenshots thumbnails, clipart thumbnails,
  or a mixture of both at random?  I assume each thumbnail will point
  to the full image either way?

* I like the Contribute and Project Info stuff.  But I'm thinking
  maybe the left and right sidebars could be combined into one
  sidebar.  It would be taller and so would go along the side of the
  news items too, but then the other stuff would have more width.  It
  would be a tradeoff, and I'm not certain.  Could we see it both ways
  so as to be able to compare?
  
* Regarding Quick Submit:  the submission thingy on the front page as
  it currently stands takes up quite a lot of space, more than you
  depict there certainly.  I like your design better, among other
  reasons because there's some chance the user might actually see that
  there are news headlines down below, which currently is very
  unlikely unless the user scrolls down.  However, I'm not sure how to
  condense the upload form to that size.  Well, removing a lot of its
  whitespace would help, but it's long no matter how you look at it
  and needs a complete redesign to fit in that space and still collect
  the same information.  Maybe I'll look into this issue separately.

* Under "Incoming Clip Art", after the ones that are listed, there
  should be a "More" or "Older" link, or something.

* I assume the list of Contributors is just a sample.  It obviously
  doesn't list some of the most prolific contributors.  I like the way
  it's layed out, though it should be sorted in some kind of order,
  either by number of images contributed or alphabetically.  Later,
  when our metadata stuff is more worked-out and integrated with the
  DMS that Bryce is working on, we might be able to make those links
  to browse the images submitted by that contributor -- by category.
  
* The screenshot doesn't show much of the news items or the footer,
  and I'd like to see those.  For the news items, it'd be cool if a
  small version of the logo could be used as a bullet for each point.
  (There are 16, 32, 48, and 64 pixel versions of it at
  http://openclipart.org/openclipart-NNpx.png
  where NN is the number of pixels on a side.  I'm not sure which
  size would be most appropriate for this, 32 maybe?)