New Main Page full redesign project

[kalliwoda]

So I will not keep my mouth shut - while I appreciate the improvement in functionality.

Just compare the IMSLP mug and the sandbox page and I think its immediately apparent what huge effect a little color has
(has everything in our life have to be something blue-silver, bathroom, cars, ...and imslp ???)

[Philidor]

So I will not keep my mouth shut...

Excellent!

[helenyhou]

If you don't mind yet another person chiming in (design by committee is HARD), I have a few very very picky suggestions to make and then a few personal preferences. I'm not great with Wiki at all, but I do web as my main job and got lightly involved in the Journal

Suggestions: Add some padding around the th's (Featured, New Scores, Recordings) - 0.7em 0.5em 0.2em worked for me in Firefox to center and give some breathing room. Be sure that the RSS | Atom bit has spaces around the pipe. Also, because the td's have a grey background, the white background for the text looks kind of funny because there's some grey left over in the aforementioned boxes. I'd imagine a lot of that would get fixed once there aren’t other styles butting in, but just to be nitpicky

Personal preferences: I am a believer that redundancy with web navigation is generally a positive thing. I personally miss the homepage boxes for browse/search, as the sidebar is just so tiny and utilitarian looking that I almost never use it, and I doubt I am unique. I'd also say that there should probably be some sort of brighter highlight color or something that can call attention to areas, either a background color or a text color for headings or something.

This is all just a web person's perspective You know how it is: when it's what you do, the tiny details are the noticeable ones... But, I am glad to see a movement to clean up the homepage!

[Philidor]

Hi Helen,

lightly involved in the Journal

Modesty, modesty. Without Helen's CSS and other skills the Journal would look like a pile of cr*p.

Good to see you, and thanks again for your brilliant help. When IMSLP was shut down in April by the UK Music Publishers' Association, the Journal was a key vehicle for dealing with the fall-out. You helped put the vehicle on the road.

Phil

[helenyhou]

You helped put the vehicle on the road.

It's my pleasure! The IMSLP is such an important project and has saved me many times over as it does for others; it's very gratifying to do what I can. Though it's a little off-topic, be sure you let me know whenever you need a little oil change or paint job

[icactus]

doublepost

[icactus]

Or if the grey "A" doesn't look fun we could just go for broke and make the thing a shining triumph to deliberately draw your attention toward it. It's also up on the site: http://imslp.org/wiki/User:Icactus/sandbox2

[icactus]

It's like it is saying to you: "Come see the light - you don't have to pay for that work, it's in the public domain."

[steltz]

Much better )

[icactus]

I've tried about 100 times and I the only way to fit any browse boxes (in such a way that they wouldn't look like a "submit" button for the search box) is to wait until the search box can go in the upper right corner of the website. Then there will be room to replace the search box on the page with a couple browse options without crowding. For the time being i think browsing is being over emphasized. Google has trained us all to put whatever we're looking for in a search box, so if they want violin music they'll type: "violin sonatas," etc.

The average user is not coming to IMSLP to look through an alphabetical list of composers, which is what "browse composers" takes you to.

[feldmahler]

Icactus,

I slightly modified your page to use the same accordion feature as the work pages. If it looks good to you, feel free to update the other boxes. The classes are: 'acc-c-a' for a collapsible and active (initially) accordion, 'acc-c-na' for a collapsible and inactive (initially) accordion, and 'acc-nc-a' for a non-collapsible accordion.

I'm slightly concerned about how the RSS/Atom links work out though.

[icactus]

great! That's what I had in mind in the first place but couldn't do it within the wiki. I'd actually prefer a tabbed version much like the work page but there isn't enough space in the heading to fit "Featured" "New Scores" "New Recordings" without making a mess of the page. I'll see if it's necessary to redo the shades of blue to match better with the new work page colors. I can't decide yet if it works as is or not....

Still need people to weigh in on the various Letter "A" or silver border options...

[icactus]

Feldmahler -

By the way, where are you storing the CSS for those divs? I don't see them on the common and they have been taking an unusually long amount of time to load on the page. I wonder if the response time would be faster if they were included on the common.css.

[icactus]

Yeah, the accordion can't handle multiple elements in the heading so the RSS buttons are messed up, but they can be added to the footer of the boxes since most visitors will have no interest in an RSS feed and don't need to see it first thing. Also, are we now using a different font for all text? As of now there are three fonts going on sandbox2. If the new work page is the new default font I'll change the rest of the page.

[NLewis]

Absolutely brilliant. I was not expecting it to ever look this nice. Thank you so very much.