Re: Website Candidates

["K. Loberg" <iris.loberg@comcast.net>]

Hi John and everyone,

     I appreciate that the design is heading in the direction of the design 
of the American Hemerocallis Society's web site:  http://www.daylilies.org/ 
People may want to re-check out the Daylily page, as their website designer 
Tim Fehr has done even more remarkable things with the site he's designed.

     I wasn't sure if you were trying to exhibit different design elements 
between the three samples you provided, as all three looked pretty much the 
same, except that the colors of the surrounding background were different. 
I'm sure different people are going to pick different colors as their 
favorite background.

     One thing that I see that I suggest be corrected, is script language 
which will control the height and width sizing, so that it will 
automatically re-size to the browser resolution size of whatever monitor 
being used on the viewer's screen.   I have my browser set to 1024 x 768 
pixels, and I know many who run it at an even higher resolution, such as 
1280x1024, and yet others who use the older lower resolution, 800 x 600. 
Depending on the resolution, the design can exhibit a very wide border, 
about 1 < inches of a white border on each side of 2 of them in my case, and 
I kind of find that annoying.  It is less noticeable in the green background 
because it is a full green background.  Older technology and web designs 
didn't pay much attention to this feature, but it is something that can be 
accounted for today to accommodate many different sizes of monitors and 
different resolutions selected by users on the screens.

     An example of java script language which will detect monitor sizes is:

                        width = 
parseInt(document.documentElement.clientWidth);

                        height = 
parseInt(document.documentElement.clientHeight);

     Another consideration is whether this design is going to carry through 
other linked pages, and whether viewers are going to print pages (people 
print web pages all the time).   Having a dark background and design colors 
leaning towards the darker tones means that viewers are going to be using up 
more toner on their printers to print them, and I'm all for being 
considerate of toner use of viewers' printers. The purple and green designs 
are in that category, and so I wish they could be toned down a whole lot for 
that reason.   Additionally, although purple is a color I love, I suspect it 
is going to clash with some photography that may be exhibited with the AIS 
website.

    You'll note that Tim Fehr has specifically chosen a base neutral color 
(gray, which will not contrast with other colors), and has his tones of gray 
to be on the lighter side as well.  (He has toned down his background color 
from a previous version he did which was darker)

     It is exciting to see progress towards a new design; thank you and 
everyone for the efforts to get this far.

Kitty Loberg

Calif.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John I Jones" <jijones@usjoneses.com>
To: <aisdiscuss@aisboard.org>
Sent: Saturday, January 31, 2009 1:00 PM
Subject: [AISdiscuss] Website Candidates


Below are some links to possible designs for the new home page for
the AIS website. Try not to be concerned about the particular irises
that were used for the various graphic elements. They can be easily
changes according to what we want. We just grabbed some to use as
representative placeholders.

The center section will be a window into a changing list of irises
that will change everytime someone selects "Reload" or comes back to
the page. There will also be "Next" and "Previous" buttons to srcoll
through the library of pictures. I do not want to have an automatic
slide show because that can load up a slow internet connection when
people don't want that.

The section at the bottom of the page is meant to be an "Article/
Story of the Month" and we will need lots of authors and ideas for
this area.

What is important is the top level division of information. Are the
categories the right ones? Is the wording right? What about the fonts
we used? The graphics and shapes? The background?

The categories are:

Growing Irises: Cultural information on all the various
classifications (lots of content to create here), links to local
Regions\Societies. Links to sources  (What else?)

About the AIS: Some of our history, what we do, mission, benefits
(What else?) Conventions, meetings

AIS Members: Links to a page that has some public information and a
button to go the Members Only section (when we have one). News and
announcements, Information central, Conventions, meetings  (What else?)

AIS Board: AIS board contacts, related files, minutes etc  (What else?)

There will be duplicated links in several of the categories because
multiple constituencies need the same information and there is no
sense in having the same information in multiple places when the same
page can be referenced from multiple places.

http://www.mchalecreates.com/AIS/AIS-home-page-comp-A.4.html

http://www.mchalecreates.com/AIS/AIS-home-page-comp-B.4.html

http://www.mchalecreates.com/AIS/AIS-home-page-comp-D.2.html




So what thoughts do you have?

Thanks

John

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