[OT] Re: Redesign of dlang.org

[w0rp via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 28 July 2014 at 19:31:24 UTC, Sönke Ludwig wrote:
> Am 28.07.2014 21:13, schrieb Gary Willoughby:
>> On Monday, 28 July 2014 at 18:51:45 UTC, Sönke Ludwig wrote:
>>> Also, and this needs to be stressed, the major part of w0rp's 
>>> work so
>>> far is about the technical basis. You dismissed that as a 
>>> minor
>>> detail, but it is not.
>>
>> The design is *the* most important part of the web site. 
>> Period! No one
>> cares how it works, only the user experience of the site 
>> matters. Do you
>> think users give a hoot how facebook works?
>
> Yes, I don't try to argue against the importance of the design. 
> The point is that it's an orthogonal feature and that it can be 
> worked on mostly independently. You focus on the design and 
> w0rp mostly focuses on the technical side, which is probably 
> part of the reason why the discussion doesn't work out very 
> well.
>
>>
>> Also who starts a project without designing it first? I mean 
>> honestly,
>> why start such a major piece of work without even a vague 
>> spec? Has w0rp
>> even asked users here what the site needs to encompass? Has 
>> the question
>> been asked what content must exist, who needs what info and 
>> where,
>> colour schemes, for mobile devices?  etc.
>>
>> </flogging dead horse>
>
> He basically just took the mockup of Aleksandar Ruzicic, which 
> was met with some optimism, and brought it to live. AFAICS 
> that's all he really did WRT the design. The content was 
> basically meant to stay the same as it is now*.
>
> * Honestly, apart from some important key parts, such as the 
> front page or the download page, it would be insane to start 
> over and redo the contents, just for the sheer amount of work 
> that this would mean.

I'm not a designer. I'm a web developer. My understanding of web 
design only comes from a technical and UX point of view. How CSS 
works, how to structure forms to make them easier to read, etc. I 
would love to get some help from a designer. It is as you say. I 
brought Aleksandar's design to life, and that's pretty much how I 
work during the day. I work with designers who provide mock-ups, 
maybe some CSS, and I make it work.

I respect Gary's opinion that you should work on design first 
then the technical aspects, but I believe you can work either 
way, probably both ways simultaneously, and achieve the same 
result. Architecture and design cannot function without one 
another. Because I have far more experience as a web developer, 
I've put the vast majority of my focus on putting the site 
together so all of the pages fit into place, because they aren't 
going to change a great deal from how they are now in terms of 
content.

When it comes to web design, I just fill in the blanks when 
there's no-one else to help. It's amateur work because I'm not 
trained as a designer. So I'm just working on what I know I can 
eventually get right until someone with more design experience 
who is willing to submit pull requests comes along.