Hi all,

Continuing our discussion on the other thread, let's get some real action. From this email, I will suggest and collecting some ideas about what we're gonna do with Lazarus web site (and also FPC?). If we settle with the whole things, we could ask some volunteers to do some works over the agreed ideas. I can manage my yunior web designer to help the work, but first I need we agree on how we're gonna reconstruct the whole site. I hope other would do the same so we could collaborate on this work.

This is the first thing: appearance and layout. I've collected some ideas from other development tool websites, maybe they could become our references. But that's all, just references, because I believe we want Lazarus (and FPC?) website to be unique and distinguishable from the others.

http://gcc.gnu.org/
http://rubyonrails.org/
http://haxe.org/
http://www.python.org/
http://www.realsoftware.com/realbasic/
http://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi
http://www.perl.org/
http://www.microsoft.com/exPress/
http://www.wxwidgets.org/
http://java.sun.com/
http://www.monkeystudio.org/
http://developer.apple.com/tools/xcode/
http://www.eclipse.org/
http://netbeans.org/
http://projects.gnome.org/anjuta/index.shtml

Any others more?

Honestly, comparing Lazarus website with the others above, I know we need to make our Lazarus website better and more appeal to the visitors.

Some things need to be considered are:
- who is our audience main target? students? professionals? hobbiests? new comers?
- how we gonna appear Lazarus to the audience? cool? serious? funky? funny?
- ... anything else? ...

Those consideration would be reflected on the color theme, site layout, wording, etc. So we should really consider them seriously as those will be impressed on the audience perception.

Please share your ideas and opinions, then get settle on one, and let's do the work.

Bee Jay wrote

If we settle with the whole things, we could ask some volunteers to do some works over the agreed ideas.

I'd start searching volunteers first :)

thanks,
dmitry

Hi.

- how we gonna appear Lazarus to the audience? cool? serious? funky? funny?

Make a joke about Pascal as a historical language which is only for people stuck in the past.

Back to 1980's anyone ...
Don Johnson -- Miami Vice -- Bee Gees -- Free Pascal Compiler!

The fact is that Pascal is not a fashionable language now. It was taught in schools back in 1980's but not any more.

The casual visitor should realize, after reading the page, that it is actually a modern and competitive language and Lazarus is a proof of its capabilities.

So, the answer to your question is "funky".
Lazarus, the funky development environment!
Spice that with pictures of disco-style from 1980's.

Regards,
Juha Manninen

Bee Jay wrote

Some things need to be considered are: - who is our audience main target? students? professionals? hobbiests? new comers?

Everyone? :-) I believe the most important audience are new comers, and they should spend as few clicks as possible to find answers to important questions. If design should reflect audience, then why not having section on the main page "Are you ..." with items "student", "professional", "hobbyist", "teacher", "alien" which are links pointing to some important bits for that particular group.

- how we gonna appear Lazarus to the audience? cool? serious? funky? funny?

I would go with serious plus some fun(n/k)y stuff here-and-there (we want site visitors to smile, don't we?).

In the debate about a CMS I missed a feature to capture search entries (questions), so that frequently used keywords can be added to lead to the expected information.

DoDi

- ... anything else? ...

Can anybody help me provide pictures and icons about cheetah? Or can anybody point me to good resources of it? I need it for the new Lazarus website design. TIA.

What about
http://images.google.com/images?q=cheetah
?
:-)

Can anybody help me provide pictures and icons about cheetah? Or can anybody point me to good resources of it? I need it for the new Lazarus website design. TIA.

I also need some slogans or buzz words/sentences for the design. My yunior web designer could help with the design and layout, but he doesn't know how to build the wording. He also never heard or use FPC/ Lazarus since -obviously- he's not a programmer. :D

Please, give me you ideas. TIA.

http://images.google.com/images?q=cheetah

Of course, that would be my first destination. :P But what I need here is more iconic, or cartoonish, not real pictures. It's pretty hard to find like those in google. I could ask my designer to draw one, but it'd take some amount of time. :)

Those consideration would be reflected on the color theme, site layout, wording, etc.

Now, I'm seriously considering to use brownish color theme as cheetah's color. So the design would mostly in some favors of brown and combined with black and white. I also want the color scheme to be soft since it would be easy the eyes. What do you think?

01.02.2010 15:49, Bee Jay ?????:

Now, I'm seriously considering to use brownish color theme as cheetah's color. So the design would mostly in some favors of brown and combined with black and white. I also want the color scheme to be soft since it would be easy the eyes. What do you think?

Lazarus itself and lazarus website is using blue color scheme at the moment. But I don't think that color schemes of Lazarus IDE and Lazarus web site must be the same.

Best regards,
Paul Ishenin.

Lazarus itself and lazarus website is using blue color scheme at the moment. But I don't think that color schemes of Lazarus IDE and Lazarus web site must be the same.

Yes, that's what I tried at the first attempt: blue scheme, since it's also my favourite color. :D But, it doesn't look good, the color combination seems awkward if combined with cheetah's color. My designer also suggest if we want the cheetah to be more appeal, we better use brown scheme. If not (using blue or other color scheme), then we shouldn't show the cheetah , we could change the cheetah's color to blue. Might absurd, but it'll looks a bit funny though. :D

http://images.google.com/images?q=cheetah

I'm sorry, I searched with wrong query. Trying http://images.google.com/images?q=cheetah+cartoon resulted more cartoonish images. But, it looks that cheetah had been used by various products. :(

When switching to brown it conflicts with the forum. Then there is again a site vs. forum. while we anted to keep things closer integrated. (otoh, when we finally can switch to smf2 then there is no prob)

Marc

When switching to brown it conflicts with the forum.

Yes, but we could ignore it for now because we couldn't fix all the things at once.

Then there is again a site vs. forum.

The main problem is there's no website for lazarus, as some people thought. Current lazarus website is the forum.

while we wanted to keep things closer integrated. (otoh, when we finally can switch to smf2 then there is no prob)

Yes, I agree with the integration idea, all in one place i.e. the website (product portal), forum, svn browser, documentation, wiki, mantis, contribution section, lazarus ccr, etc. But we can only work on them one in a time. My current focus is the product portal of Lazarus and FPC. Unless, there's someone else would like to collaborate with me to work on the other parts.

It is not meant to be, thats why we have Tp, to be able to display other content that just a forum. But till now noone stood up to design that info.

As long as the integration is the ultimate goal, it's fine with me.

Marc

It would be better a custom design... Could we talk to the Rik - http://silvioclecio.blogspot.com/2009/12/rik-lee-inkscape-com-arte.html

It would be better a custom design... Could we talk to the Rik - http://silvioclecio.blogspot.com/2009/12/rik-lee-inkscape-com-arte.html

Could you help me provide the images, icon, etc for the new web site? My designer is doing this in his spare time, I can't push him too much because he also got some works to do. More people help me on this website reconstructing work, it'll be better (and faster as well). The focus of mine is more on the layout and content structure, because I have no skill on web design and graphic art. TIA.

Bee, what's the status of the webpage-design? Did you get any further?

Joost