Debian website redesign proposal openlogo-50.png

A resource for documenting, developing and discussing the design proposal.

TODO

FAQ

Comments

Please feel free to add your ideas, comments and bugs below.

Many thanks for the work so far. It is really great that we will have a unified appearance for many of our web services. On the main website, I have two comments. The first is that with the increased space between lines, compared to the original design, the pages look a bit empty — although the decrease in content per page is not so high. The second is that on Iceweasel, the font that is picked by the new design looks thinner than the default one, and therefore less contrasted and slightly less comfortable to read. But I admit I only feel this when I switch back and forth between the two designs. -- CharlesPlessy

Architecture

Reusable Design Elements

The ambition is that classes id's and elements are re-usable and cover all required use-cases and formatting needs. If custom inline styles and page specific hacks are avoided the overall appearance of the site will be more coherent. For this to happen I guess I need to produce some serious documentation :( See KredesignManual for work in progress.

Files

The proposal works by having one global debian.css that should be the same for every subdomain and backend. Site specific tweaks and overrides are then added in a separate css file following the deb$(subdomain).css naming convention. The subdomains link to their css file which in turn includes the debian.css file via a @import line at the top of the css file.

Design

General

Top Navigation

The above elements are designed to fit together quite tightly. The textual part of the logo forms the first breadcrumb therefore a slash should be the first item in the breadcrumbs before any actual link. This can be achieved with the css content tag if changes to the backend are difficult.

div.breadcrumb:before {
                content: "/";
        }

replace "breadcrumb" above with the tag your backend provides

Typography

Font Size

After much consideration the font size is left at the browser default and uses em's to vary font size around the default body text. This means that font size as set by the user in the browser settings is respected.

Tabular, listed or otherwise heavily structured data should where appropriate use the smaller 0.75em font size. This is particularly useful for information intensive sites such as gitweb or the debian cd vendor page.

Sites in progess moving to kallesdesign

Site / Subdomain

Status

preview

by

Comment

dsa.debian.org

done

http://dsa.debian.org/

zobel

Regular Rebuild

git.debian.org

WiP

http://git.deb.at/

Rhonda

No regular updates

lists.debian.org

WiP

http://lists.deb.at/

zobel

No regular updates, needs bigger code-rewrite

planet.debian.org

WiP

http://planet.deb.at/

zobel

Regular Cronjob

www.debian.org

WiP

http://www.deb.at/

Rhonda

No regular updates

wiki.debian.org

WiP

http://wiki.debian.org/

Login, settings, change theme to debwiki. see comments below

Developments

Wiki Theme

I'm looking at a new MoinMoin (wiki) theme that solves a few issues I had with the previous proposal. you can test it locally following these instructions.

The new theme looks like this debwiki_100906_small.png

The main change from the previous theme is the treatment of the title, the edit tools and the login. The new proposal presents the title as a h1 heading which means that the content below is pushed 45 pixels down. The login link is sited next to the subdomain flag and the edit tools just below the title.