ReactOS Forum

Is there really no skilled graphic designer in our community ? We need a complete design guys. Good looking one. Amateur mashups are pretty useless you know.

Hi! Thanks for your comments, I can provide PSD file or prepared HTML+CSS layout. I'm on vacation next week. After that I will try to improve it (to loose its blog feeling ).

d0g wrote:Is there really no skilled graphic designer in our community ? We need a complete design guys. Good looking one. Amateur mashups are pretty useless you know.

Well, real, good artists, they kinda like to be paid, you know

That's like sitting in the house and shouting out the window:
"Are there any good dentists around here? Good, skilled dentists? Anyone? I need my teeth fixed and it must be done well. Plumber John tried, but I am sick of his amateur mashups."

care2debug wrote:

d0g wrote:Is there really no skilled graphic designer in our community ? We need a complete design guys. Good looking one. Amateur mashups are pretty useless you know.

Well, real, good artists, they kinda like to be paid, you know

That's like sitting in the house and shouting out the window:
"Are there any good dentists around here? Good, skilled dentists? Anyone? I need my teeth fixed and it must be done well. Plumber John tried, but I am sick of his amateur mashups."

Counter: ReactOS is coded by skilled programmers who work for free.

GoBusto wrote:Counter: ReactOS is coded by skilled programmers who work for free.

Riiiight... That's why after only 15 years and borrowing a hell of a lot code from Wine it's ready and polished and everybody on earth uses it...


But that's not my point. My point is: if there were some good skilled artists here willing to work for free, they'd be doing some great stuff already.

In the absence of such guys, non-professional artists (AKA amateurs) try to do something.

d0g's attitude brings nothing good. It's pathetic to sit and shout - "hey, is there any good artists here? Come on, come and do some work for free for us. Because our amateurs suck."

The only thing it does - it demotivates people who are trying their best to actually _do_ something.


That's what's driving me nuts.

Could you all please get back to topic and try to only submit submissions for the contest instead of discussion about related things ?

Thanks !

After one week of seeing a lot of other GPL projects sites, and reading some "How to create a good Webdesign", i´m glad to see our webpage design isnt as bad as we thought, but there are some points that we should improve:

1)Catching the visitor sight.
Right now there are some points to improve the "Catching the visitor sight".
*Our Website is too much "Static": Static because using Plain Colors, Static because using Rectangles, Static because using just 3 Colours(Dark blue,Light Blue,Orange) plus the 2 basics(Black and White).
*Also the Not-Rounded Rectangles are considered agressive,so they are almost deprecated in new designs. They are just used to trap the users attention in a specific area of the website.They cant be used as the basic form in a Website design.

2)Talking to the Visitor.
We dont have to forget that most of the website sights comes from Normal visitors. Normal visitors arent skilled visitors, so the main page has to be easy to read for(at least) my grandma. The text in the Main page is easy to read for us,but not for most of the users.Words as: "binaries","unix architecture","from the hardware level right through to the application level" have easier words communly used which can be understood better by the Visitors. Btw, i miss some strategic words in the Main Page as GPL.

3)Answering Visitor questions.
When looking the Sourceforge Finalists Websites, I discovered asking myself the following questions:
*What is the Sofware about?
*How does it look like?
*Where can I download it?
*How can I install it?
*Are there videos/images of the App/OS?
*How can I contact with the project? (Contact as a Company/as an User/as a Developer.)
So these questions must be answered(at least basically)in the Main Page without forcing the Visitor to navigate through the entire website.
If they want deeper answers,then they will need to go deeper navigating in the website.

4)Cleaning links from the Home Page.

A lot of links doesnt help the Visitor, but confuse them. Right now we have a duplicated menu, which bloats but doesnt help the Visitor. And links spreading here and there. A full clean is needed.

5)Ordering the Webpages.

For me,and after navigating really deeply, the Site is a full mess of contents.And this is really(for me) the main issue to solve.
There are ghosts pages,there are contents duplicated, there are licenses here and there,old screenshots,an old Tour,websites reachables with a minimun of 3 clicks(and without logical sense)
Just let´s look the 0.3.9 screenshot page. Instead using a Gallery of images, we are killing our visitors wheelmouse.

And now my fast mockup:

http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/8365/finalhome.jpg
[ external image ]

Some considerations about this layout:

1)The orange "Wellcome Guest" is permanently there, in every page.The idea is having always the "Search", "The Log In" and "The Quick Links" near.
It would be nice if the "Quick Links" are setable by the User in RosCMS instead showing Guests Defaults links. Also the "myRosCMS" link wouldb be inside this orange rectangle after LogIn.

2)The main menu is in the Banner.Also there are 2 new Categories: "The Project" and "Contact".
"The project" would contain Licenses, ReactOS Foundation presentation,ReactOS Foundation branchs, Legal statements, Press info, and other General project info.

3)There are a 2 Tabbed structures,you can change the tab clicking on the tab or clicking in the arrows.

4)There are 2 galleries in the Main Page. A Photo Gallery and a Video Gallery.

5)The download,compatibility,donate buttons are going to be changed. They arent the final ones.

6)At the left there is a short menu with the most relevant links ot the category. "Home" category is a little bit special since it doesnt own any webpage,so all its links redirects the User to the correct category. That is the way we "force"/"guide" the User to navigate deeply in our site.

7)Also it would be nice if these modules are all rearrangable,(you can see all the modules are more or less the same size/half size. So i could change the positions of the structures of the positions of the Newsletters with the Download/Compatibility/Donate module.Etc...

8 ) There is a blank space in the bottom left, we can put there anything (adsense-advertisements-anything)

And of course it tries to solve all the issues previously stated.

d0g's attitude brings nothing good. It's pathetic to sit and shout - "hey, is there any good artists here? Come on, come and do some work for free for us. Because our amateurs suck."

The only thing it does - it demotivates people who are trying their best to actually _do_ something.

That's what's driving me nuts.

Quality is more important than quantity. Even when one comes up with tens of designs, if they're not good enough, they are just a waste of time. I appreciate all the effort people are taking, but they need to face the fact that doing something you're not skilled in won't bring anything good.

There's too much stuff on our forums already and most of it is - well.. - worthless. ReactOS won't be a professional looking project if we continue to accept every contribution our young community members see fit to make. This is not a sandbox to come in, spend a few minutes and see what you'll come up with. Such attitude is destructive in the long run and I'm against it.

Just my 2 cents.

d0g wrote:ReactOS won't be a professional looking project if we continue to accept every contribution our young community members see fit to make. This is not a sandbox to come in, spend a few minutes and see what you'll come up with. Such attitude is destructive in the long run and I'm against it.

Yeah, the ReactOS will be magically made professionally looking by sitting and crying - "oh, aren't there any professional designers?!"

"continue to accept" - Is anyone accepted anything yet???

"young community members" - yeah, that's exactly the shitty attitude you bring to the table: "Everyone is a lame schoolboy, not capable of anything". Very good and very constructive, thank you very much. BTW, are you sure, everyone's here "young"? Are you sure everyone's here just spent "a few minutes"?

What _you_ did, exactly, for the improvement of design, instead of whining and demotivating others? Maybe you have found some professionals willing to work for free? To make you a great design for free?

What the hell is wrong with you???

P.S. And, btw, you are the final and only judge of what's good and what's not?

d0g actually contributed to our website/wiki, as well as was working on cleaning it up.

What about you care2debug?

vicmarcal - good analytical work!

Haos wrote:What about you care2debug?

Oh, yeah. Right. Caemyr.
I see you still have some grunge against me for whatever reason. I don't care.

My design : http://www.shamansite.yoyo.pl/latest.jpg

Are you always treating everything as personal insult aimed at your person? Please try to accept that YOUR behaviour may cause reactions, about whose you shouldn`t blame anyone bar yourself.

Follow dangerground's instructions, all of you.