Re: Some more possible tweaks to the appearance of the website

[Trevor Daniels]

Paul Morris Wednesday, February 18, 2015 6:43 AM

> I have some more changes to propose for the website.  You can see two 
> mock-ups at the links below (just remove the spaces in the URLs).  One uses 
> the current green color for the background, and in the other I tried out a 
> blue background which offers more contrast.

Individually comments below.  Most I like, but a couple I don't.

Thanks for doing this - I'm well aware of the effort involved and the 
difficulties of achieving good artistic design (usually by my failing!)
Trevor

> 3. current green background color:
> http://clairnote.org  /lilypond-web-demo3/
> 
> 4. blue background color:
> http://clairnote.org  /lilypond-web-demo4/

Definitely more contrast, but also definitely not an improvement.

> Below is a list of the main changes.  Let me know what you think and if you 
> like one version better than the other.  

> SITE BACKGROUND
> 
> - The background color that fades in at the top left corner also fades in at 
> the top right.  This complements the horizontally centered site design and 
> provides greater symmetry (especially noticeable on wider monitors where the 
> background color falls more outside of the main content area than behind it).

Like
 
> - Rather than the background color fading to pure white and the boxes that 
> contain the site’s content having a slightly off-white background (as on the 
> current site), the background fades to off-white and the content boxes are 
> pure white.  This way the  foreground/content is slightly brighter than the 
> background, which helps the eye focus on the content.

Like
 
> HOME PAGE
> 
> - Simplified by removing two graphical elements — the “squiggle” and the 
> “What is LilyPond?” green bar that fades out horizontally — both of which are 
> unlike any other visual elements on the site and so they don’t “tie in” well 
> with the overall design.  (IMHO they don’t add much and actually distract 
> from the nice big image with the lily and music notation.  They both had pure 
> white backgrounds, so that’s why I’m proposing this change to go with the 
> background changes.)

Don't like.  The new apearance is cleaner, but also, I think, too stark.  I 
also rather liked the separated text and link to "read more".  It looks far 
more inviting.
 
> - The summary text is larger.

I agree the original text is a little small, but this changed text looks too 
large for my eyes.

> - For each news item the horizontal dividing line comes before the title, 
> rather than after it, which makes it easier to tell them apart.  (See also 
> the introduction/examples page, which uses the same css class for some 
> reason.)

Like
 
> OTHER PAGES
> 
> - The boxes containing the site content have slightly rounded corners to 
> match the rounded corners of the navigation bar, for greater visual 
> consistency.

Like
 
> - The spacing of the headers on these boxes is adjusted slightly so the words 
> are more vertically centered.  

Like