Main Page graphic re-design

[perlnerd666]

How about a tooltip?

[pml]

Sure. Just make sure the CSS involved doesn't result in a dotted line or something underneath the glyph when you add the alt tag.

Something like:

"This ornate glyph of the capital letter A features at the head of the very first printed book of music, the Harmonice Musices Odhecaton, which was published in Venice in 1501 by Ottaviano Petrucci, and to whose endeavour the IMSLP’s name pays tribute."

PML :)

[perlnerd666]

As far as I can tell, there's no easy way to do this in CSS, unless we add some invisible element and have that positioned over the A. Otherwise the tooltip shows up for the whole page.

[steltz]

I love the idea of the explanation, but I think it should go underneath the A rather than above it, otherwise the A is no longer the thing that hits your eye first.

However, that's going to shove the "Sharing the world's public domain music" down further, which might be a bad idea.

My next suggestion might also be pretty bad, but it might be worth playing with just enough to see if it works or not. Move "IMSLP" and "Petrucci Music Library" slightly to the left, with left justification, and put "Sharing the world's public domain music" (whatever font size makes it work) to the right of it, right justified:

IMSLP Sharing the world's
Petrucci Music Library public domain music

That would leave room under the A for the explanation.

[edit]: sorry, the spacing doesn't come out right because the extra spaces get deleted. This doesn't look like what I intended . . .

[icactus]

ugh there seems to be a love here for putting lots of text everywhere and saying things in the longest way possible. It's obviously a logo and if people really want to know an explanation for the logo they can ask on the forums like was done here. Honestly it's a terrible idea to put any sort of pop-up/hidden/whatever text explanation. I have no objection to scrapping it and using a different logo - it's just a symbol after all - if it's not effective but if any more text would be added to the front page I think the most glaring candidate would be an explanation of what IMSLP stands for and why there is this IMSLP and also Petrucci Music Library.

In actuality I don't think explaining either is important because almost nobody really cares. For those who do, it could go on the "about" page, or the forums like has happened now. In general, I think the main page should have as little material as necessary to best communicate what the site is about and how to use it. That's obviously subjective, but i don't think it's served well with a bunch of disclaimers, asterisks, and footnotes.

Obviously these sorts of discussions are bound to come up but I would urge some restraint on everyone wanting to be a chef so we don't spoil the broth. Let's try to move on to other important aspects of the site/ user experience instead of the aesthetics.

[icactus]

ok so one last thing - the logo is by necessity a background image (there's no way to do the layout and make it a foreground object) so there's no possible mouse over because it's not the top layer. Invisible overlay object would have the same layout problems even if broken up into lots of pieces.

[icactus]

i just added two lines to the "about page" - one to define IMSLP, and the other to explain the origins of the logo. The About page is linked in the footer where all about pages are almost always found so i don't think there's a need to duplicate it higher up. Perhaps room could be made in the sidebar for it. If the Browse categories some day can be drop downs that would free up a lot of space. That may be part of the MediaWiki update - i don't know.

[icactus]

actually a good candidate might be to swap in the "about us" page for the current "random page". I'm sure someone will say they like the "Random page" option but honestly it doesn't have any practical function and i don't think you can argue it's more important than a page explaining about IMSLP and listing the goals and fuctions of the organization... Plus it is right near the top so easy access for curious visitors.

[icactus]

i think this looks better. I added an explanantion of the logo to the former "Associations" box and turned it into an "About us" box.

I think we can at least agree it is more important to have that explanation somewhere than the "amazon" links so they were moved to the footer.

yay we can all go to bed now that that's resolved. And they all lived happliy ever after...

[pml]

My original idea, I will have you know, was to hotlink the ornamental capital A to the Petrucci page — and to have the explanation there.

Perlnerd’s modification of the idea was to tooltip it — which is to have a floating comment appear when your mouse lingers over the image. And faced with a page worth of other possible obvious links, I really doubt that many people would be gravitating to have their mouse pointing at a funny ornamental capital A. Which may have mated with an octopus. Apparently.

But yes, really, really, really — it’s truly a non-issue…

Good night and sweet dreams. PML.

[perlnerd666]

@icactus:
8. When replying to a thread, ensure (a) the reply is on topic and (b) you are not double posting. Instead of double posting, edit your post if nobody else has replied.
Please!

[icactus]

what was off topic? I was attempting different ways of resolving the letter A issue by putting an explanation in different places. That was what the last few posters had been discussing. I didn't realize the forums doesn't like posts by the same person in a row. I'll consolidate.

[NLewis]

@ Icactus - It's not a problem. In this case I think it was fine to post more than once rather than editing the posts. It wouldn't have the same effect. Don't worry about it

@ Perlnerd - Relax - he's a perfectly capable admin who's double posting wasn't for the purpose of bumping or anything else annoying. Besides, you've been off topic a number of times

[perlnerd666]

Maybe I should have just posted 8b

[jujimufu]

I like the new design - the only thing that bothers me slightly is that the blue gradient fades into nothing, and then the mental box that all the content is supposed to be in in that space of the page bleeds into the background white which makes it slightly unstable in terms of design for my taste. (Either expand that area of the page to occupy 100% of the width+height instead of having spacers -which I don't know if is possible or not due to the underlying wiki code- or attach a border to that area/div. Or find another solution altogether.)

Also - is there a way to make the "Featured", "New Scores" and "New Recordings" accordions mutually exclusive (so that only one of them is open at any one moment) so as to avoid content overflow pushing the "Copyright", "News" and "About us" section way down?

I like the flexible/relative design (as opposed to the more absolute -in terms of dimensions and sizes- old one) and light colours. I'm sure it will be improved a lot in ways we can't predict over the following weeks/months/years in pleasant directions