refreshed website soft launched

[Colin Clark]

Hi Jess and website-istas,

On 25-Feb-09, at 10:30 AM, Jess Mitchell wrote:
> The font size is smaller than it was on the old site, but we did  
> that intentionally to keep from too much scrolling and the effect  
> the other site gave.  For a reminder, have a look here:  http://fluidproject.org/blog/
> My vote would be to keep the text small, but we can certainly  
> entertain how small.

The more I look at the new site and compare it with other sites I find  
are well-designed and easy-to-read, I don't think it's the font size  
that is the root cause of our problem here.

To me, it's an issue of layout and structure: the body text size looks  
small because of the context it's been flowed into. Taking another  
pass through the design of the two-column main layout and the post-it  
notes might help address this issue.

We may also want to try to play around with different font families  
within a range of a few points of our current size. I'm thinking  
Verdana might actually prove to be more readable at this size, but the  
only way to know for sure is to experiment a bit.

In the end, we have two factors we need to balance: readability and  
keeping essential navigation "above the fold." These are design  
constraints we can iterate on.

> We also need to address the blog...
> I am tempted to put more than just release announcements on the  
> news.  For example, I'd love to reproduce the short blurb here http://www.jasig.org/ 
>  and the longer text here http://www.jasig.org/fluid-uportal-collaboration-20 
>  on our news feed.

+1. Although the past year has been pretty heads-down, and many of our  
announcements have been limited to Infusion release news, we've  
certainly used the site's news feed to announce all kinds of things.  
The example you mention from the new Jasig site is a perfect example.

> It also brings up the blog -- I'm thinking it should be on the Get  
> Involved page -- we don't have a link to it on the new site at all.


Get Involved makes sense to me, yes. And a new WordPress theme to go  
with the refreshed web site will be great. Maybe with a smaller font  
size? :P

Colin

---
Colin Clark
Technical Lead, Fluid Project
Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, University of Toronto
http://fluidproject.org