[ubuntu-art] Main page discussion

[Michiel Sikma]

Hey everybody, I recently had another look at the main page design of 
Ubuntu.com, which I don't really do often, and realized that it went 
through a bit of a redesign since I last checked there. I think that 
some of the things that are different should be changed, however. I'm 
not sure who's maintaining it, but maybe he could consider some of the 
changes that I'd like to propose:

http://thingmajig.org/tmp/ubuntuhomepage_proposal.png

First of all, I didn't really like the mini navigation at the top of the 
page. It's usually a good way of giving the user some basic navigation, 
but the current page design wasn't really created with that sort of 
navigation in mind, and as a result, it makes the page look a little 
awkward. I've omitted that part of the design altogether until we figure 
out a better way to put such basic navigation available on the page.

Secondly, I think that it's not really a good idea to use the 
Ubuntu-title font for anything other than official product names. This 
is because the font shouldn't become too commonplace and because it's 
still got a few problems such as the numbers that totally dwarf the 
undercase letters and the inability to use capitals (such as for the "LTS").

Lastly, I've done some minor fixes on some parts of the layout, such as 
the "related projects" logos not being perfectly lined up, the edges of 
the grey background of the navigation at the top-right not being 
anti-aliased, the typography being stretched/squished (which is a pretty 
bad thing to do), and the main page text not having any kind of an intro 
(I added the part in bold, the text for it comes from the Dapper CD design).

Personally, I think that this looks okay. I do agree that we need to add 
a different kind of navigation into this site in the future to make 
people be able to get to the core part easily. It doesn't need to be the 
same kind of thing that's on there right now at the top of the page, though.

Let it be known if you agree or disagree with these propositions. I 
think that these changes are a good start in any case.

Michiel