[Pydotorg-redesign] What are the goals?

[Tim Parkin]

>So far, everyone has said that it's possible to have something readable
>in Netscape, even if it doesn't look particularly good, so I don't see
>what the issue is.
Only Simon Willison and Myself have said this, the only other
consensus was that the number of netscape 4 visitors was 1.17%.
Unless the issue was resolved elsewhere.

The issue is that a web design CAN be built
in XHTML/CSS for netscape 4.x but is substantially
more work and sacrifices a lot of the advantages of CSS.
Some people see this as important just as
Todd says. I'm glad that we agree it's a
waste of time.

>(re marketing document) That's a long document
> that's difficult to wade through, not to mention
> a lack of clarity about how relevant it is to the
> website redesign.
I presume all of it is relevant if the website is to be
any sort of marketing tool. I've used the whole document
in the process of developing a site architecture/visual design.

>Speaking strictly for myself, one problem is that a key design proposal
>(yours) has not been available as an HTML page.  I'm not prepared to
>spend time looking at it until either most other people have approved
it
>or it's available in HTML.  I'm just not going to download pictures of
>an evolving design.
Why not? This is how most design processes go. I hope the PWC can
agree it would be an incredible waste of time if I were to
develop the site in HTML only for them to say "I don't like
the design, can you change it" which would probably mean
recreating a whole load of HTML. I do have a full time job aswell
(actually running a company which is probably more like 5 full time
jobs).

If the visual design is irrelevant to you then
I'm happy to create a text only version that
reflects the information architecture and the
way the document design would degrade in lynx.
I really appreciate that you are the one of the
only PWC representatives supplying feedback and
I hope you don't mind me speaking frankly. If the
visual design is relevant and yet the effort can't
be found to assess a single image then I'm sorry
to say I'm a ittle dissapointed, especially 
considering the amount of work that has been put 
in by myself and other parties. 

I wasn't going to build the HTML without any
further mandate from the PWC/PSF but as it
looks like this is unlikely to happen,
I will carry on regardless under the presumption
That; the mailing lists are high enough profile
that people would have objected had they disliked
what was available.

It should be remembered that the current design
proposal was originally prototyped in HTML to ensure
the design could be achieved and the results
acceptable and this has been available on the
redesign wiki for quite a while. I'm not sure how
obvious this had been made so. Please note that little
effort has been made regarding cross browser
compatibility or that the results are optimised for lynx
however as the design is semantic HTML it should render
fairly well.

http://www.pollenation.net/assets/public/index_about.html

This demonstrates how the menu, the breadcrumb
trail and the semantic content would appear. Although
this doesn't indicate the content or the
information architecture. If a mock up of the
lynx version of the site would be beneficial,
this would be realistic to achieve in a short
period of time. If this is the case then I'll
proceed with this in order to demonstrate the
proposal. If not then I'll continue under the
previous assumption.

>> . Usability / Clarity
>> . Professional Design
>> . Both Marketing / Informational Purposes
>> . Best Practices in Web Development
>
> Right.  But I don't know how much agreement
> there is in achieving those requirements.
Does this mean the PSF, having proposed these requirements,
can't agree whether it's a) worth achieving. Or
b) possible to achieve. I'm not sure I understand. 

Is it that all of the requirements aren't in one place?
That's one of the reasons I had compiled all of the
statements by PSF/PWC members togather. If any one has
any objections to the design requirements stated in the
previous post then raise them so they can be discussed.
Otherwise, tacit approval would seems to have been reached.

I'm not trying to be difficult :-) , all I want is that
there is a continuing movement forward and that effort
is not going to waste when a little feedback could stop it.

Verbosely... Tim