384546 - Home page example site needs to be less "busy"

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Camino Graveyard :: Product Site, defect)

Description

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

The site we use on the home page is pretty busy and has lots of strong colors.  It feels pretty overwhelming, like it's sucking too much attention to the site itself and not enough left for the features we are illustrating with the site.

* Needs to have a search field (or other text box) on the top
* Needs to have a feed
* Non-controversial, etc.

Comment 1

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

The one that Smokey and I talked about was wordpress.com, but we're definitely taking suggestions...

Comment 2

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

After looking at 50+ sites tonight, we've narrowed it to 

* http://news.google.com/?ned=us&topic=t 
    body { overflow: hidden ! important }

* http://delicious.com

I think I prefer Google News Sci/Tech, partly because delicious is pretty geeky for most of our audience.

Comment 3

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

Attachment: Google News Sci/Tech

Imagine the scrollbars disappearing ;)

Comment 4

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

Attachment: delicious

Comment 5

[froodian (Ian Leue)]

Attachment: new Preview.jpg

I think the compression is ugly.

This will require code changes for making the spelling feature hint come up in the right place.

Comment 6

[philippe (part-time)]

if you use the google page for the screen shot, could you use 
body {overflow-x:hidden !important}

(that would leave the vertical scrollbar in place; looks more natural)

Comment 7

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

Yeah, I thought of that only after Ian was already fighting color and compression; I think we should do that, too.

Comment 8

[froodian (Ian Leue)]

Attachment: new Preview.jpg

This addresses philippe's comment, and should have better compression quality too.

Comment 9

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

Comment on attachment 269532 [details]
new Preview.jpg

r=ardissone; looks much better wrt compression and colors

Comment 10

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

Ian also said that the feed hover thing will need to move slightly....

Comment 11

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

I'll work on the CSS later tonight.

Jon, do you have the original of this file so we can cut down on some of the quality loss we're seeing?

Comment 12

[Jon Hicks]

Done, and can be seen at: http://camino.hicksdesign.co.uk/

Comment 13

[Jon Hicks]

I have to say though, that I think using the google news site makes the homepage look dull - very blue, grey and white. I'm open to any other suggestions for sites?

Comment 14

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

This is live, but I agree with Jon.

Jon, we couldn't find any better site. We tried to think of any and went through Alexa's top 500. Nothing really worked. :( If you think of one, please open a new bug and we'll work on it.

(Just for the record, the initial image was by froodian, css and such by hicks.)

Comment 15

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

I think the current image is a *lot* better, but if we go changing it again, one with a fewer number of colors all jumbled together would be nice (i.e., there are 7 colors all stuck on the left, and 5 more in the logo); that seems a bit distracting, especially up against the feature listing.

And for the record, the image that's there now is not by froodian; it has the fake tabs ;)

Comment 16

[froodian (Ian Leue)]

IMO, the image on the site still displays many of the same problems that the original did - the fake tabs don't accurately reflect Camino's UI, which as the potential first introduction to Camino for many visitors is a big deal. Also, the left side of the browser window is a little jagged, and Angelina Jolie was way prettier than Daniel Radcliffe.  ;)

Even though the site is less than ideal, I think the image posted to this bug is better than the one currently in production, and we should switch to it with a followup bug to find an even better site.

Comment 17

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

The other thing that bothers me about the current in-production screenshot is that we've got an Aqua scrollbar and Graphite menu, which is impossible to achieve in real life ;)

Comment 18

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

Reopening until we at least fix the wacky tabs and the Aqua/Graphite schizophrenia.

Comment 19

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

Taking for the moment so it stays in my queue. Per discusion in the channel, pending getting the original layered files, we'll post the image in comment 11, and I'll work on changing the CSS to support it so it can go live.

Comment 20

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

Ian's image is live now, with accompanying CSS changes.

It would be nice to have a smaller image and one with better compression, but the wacky tabs and the Aqua/Graphite schizophrenia was more important to fix.

Comment 21

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

Attachment: CSS changes

If, heaven forbid, we need to back it out, here are the CSS changes.  The image is still on the server, as Preview-Hicks2.jpg.

Comment 22

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

Er, and as always, you'll have to force-reload to get the new image and the new CSS.  Go Gecko supercaching :p