[Solved] Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

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[Solved] Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

Post by DrewJensen »

Howdy,

Well, being rather slow about it, but to the update of the landing page

Put together a page based on the Apache OpenOffice theme elements.

So please take a look, I'd like your OK to have Raphael Bircher move this onto the live site.
The new page again is here: http://baseanswers.com/temp/index_test.html

Thanks
Last edited by Hagar Delest on Tue May 08, 2012 3:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

Post by floris v »

Eh - the font size is too small (the font size in the old page was on the large side but this is too much to the other extreme); the line spacing is too large, what's the search box in column 2 doing there, and if the AOO logo at the bottom of the window doesn't feature the feather, then what is the feather doing in the logo of a set of forums that are kindly hosted by Apache but that claim to be independent?
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Re: Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

Post by Hagar Delest »

Hi Drew,

Looks less aesthetic than the current one but I guess there is some graphical template to follow.
Can the font be improved? Like the current one for example.
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Re: Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

Post by rudolfo »

For me the font has nearly the same size as the current (Oracle) one. But right, the spacing between the national forums is too large. The Google search box is a good thing because this way we don't need to send people to google if they want to search for some phrase like OSX or XLS that has only 3 letters and is not supported by the MySQL search algorithm of the forum. But I would rather put it somewhere in the header line (maybe below the apache incubator logo) to have it at the same place where the standard search box of the forum is located, as well.
The smaller font for the footer notes is well justified. The notes there are twice or even three times the size of the current text in the footer. To be clearly recognized as a footer, a footer should not take more space then a fifth part of the browser page/window.
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Re: Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

Post by floris v »

No problem with the text at the bottom.
For me the font size and color in the Oracle page is 14 pt or bigger and grey; in the test one it's 12 pt or less and blue, underlined, like a regular hyperlink. I tested that in Opera, Chrome and Firefox, all the same. The line spacing in the second is close to double and the nice effect with the lines and demi arrows is gone. Definitely a change for the worse.
I'd suggest to stick to the old design but make the font size for the NL links a bit smaller, that'd make it perfect.
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Re: Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

Post by DrewJensen »

Thanks for the feed back.

Hmm - no there was no plan, on my part, to change the graphical feel of the page I proposed from what it is now.

I do not have access to the files, directly today, to recreate the old one, which is to say that the current page is constructed from files on the going away Oracle infrastructure - neither the going forward site at http://www.openoffice.org nor the separate virtual machine image that the forums now reside on will to the best of my knowledge use that old style branding elements. I makes sense to me, since the landing page needs update, to put this one page into the new overall look.

I am not suggesting that the forums must now switch to match, if that is what you are thinking.

Regarding the Google CSE -
I, again, suggest that the purpose of the forums is to service the users, not simply to build the registration count at each of the forum site.
Useful support information, for the users', is available from a larger number of sites and services then just the 8 active forums here.
Indeed the legacy OpenOffice.org project generated a great many pages of information on the internet. Helping triage this archive for OpenOffice users going forward I believe is something worth working to do.

One way to help then, IMO, is with the use of a customized search engine
- I have mentioned this before, have pointed to this one and even earlier ones before this one, and most certainly want to the specific configuration for this CSE to be a Apache OpenOffice community resource, in reality..

- it seems to me that the best way to make it such is by getting some others involved with maintaining the search index configuration
-- meaning to add others to the account with admin rights, particularly for help with non-english sites.

- it is possible also to leverage the search engine further by using smart tagging in the forums and I think that is worth looking at.

Even just propose sites that should be included in the index, as I say I'm sure it's lacking quickly past En sites, would be a great help, anyone could do that with an email here (or to me direct, I don't mind).

The Current CSE indexed settings are:
Only listed sites are indexed
All pages containing URL are indxed
External links are not followed, so not indexed

URL <tags>
http://openoffice.org
incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg OpenOfice.org
http://www.openoffice.org OpenOfice.org
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki Wikis
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/dis ... /Wiki+Home Wikis
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/dis ... /Wiki+Home Wikis
http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/Main_Page OOo-4-Kids Wikis
http://eric.bachard.org/news/index.php? ... y/OOo4Kids OOo-4-Kids
http://eric.bachard.org/news/index.php? ... /Education OOo-4-Kids
http://education.openoffice.org/ OOo-4-Kids
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wik ... on_Project OOo-4-Kids
educoo.be OOo-4-Kids
educoo.no OOo-4-Kids
educoo.org OOo-4-Kids
http://www.openofficeorg.no/Forumsider Forums
http://www.8daysaweek.co.uk/forums Forums
http://www.oooforum.dk/ Forums
http://www.oooforum.org Forums
user.services.openoffice.org Forums
http://www.neooffice.org
http://ooo-portal.de/
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Re: Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

Post by DrewJensen »

floris v wrote:No problem with the text at the bottom.
For me the font size and color in the Oracle page is 14 pt or bigger and grey; in the test one it's 12 pt or less and blue, underlined, like a regular hyperlink. I tested that in Opera, Chrome and Firefox, all the same. The line spacing in the second is close to double and the nice effect with the lines and demi arrows is gone. Definitely a change for the worse.
I'd suggest to stick to the old design but make the font size for the NL links a bit smaller, that'd make it perfect.
Hi Floris,

Used a copy of (new) main sites css file for this, so we could certainly change the format on the list of forum links
- larger, darker and demi arrows back..
I'd be happy to give that another going over - but I do think its worth it to use this page to work towards a look that fits with the updated project theme changes.
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Re: Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

Post by DrewJensen »

rudolfo wrote:The Google search box is a good thing because this way we don't need to send people to google if they want to search for some phrase like OSX or XLS that has only 3 letters and is not supported by the MySQL search algorithm of the forum. But I would rather put it somewhere in the header line (maybe below the apache incubator logo) to have it at the same place where the standard search box of the forum is located, as well.
Hi rudolfo,

well, your comments on fonts are such seem to mirror others and I'll not break that out in the message.

Did want to do so on the search box - to be clear, the search here is not being limited to any single forum on the site, nor all forums on the site - however it does offer the ability to limit the results to the only web forums.. ( see the previous message for the current list of sites)

Ok just wanted to be sure everyone is clear on what I'm proposing on that.

Layout wise
- yeah, it could be changed so the input box is upper right, and the results be the first line in the body of content. This could then even be a single column page again. I'll look at putting up an example of that change..and post back when it's there.
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Re: Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

Post by DrewJensen »

DrewJensen wrote:
floris v wrote: The line spacing in the second is close to double and the nice effect with the lines and demi arrows is gone. Definitely a change for the worse.
I'd be happy to give that another going over - but I do think its worth it to use this page to work towards a look that fits with the updated project theme changes.
OK updated the page at: http://baseanswers.com/temp/index_test.html

How is that?
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Re: Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

Post by RoryOF »

Could an intercolumn spacing be inserted, to move the Search box to the right? More colour on the page would be good, perhaps by reversing every second line of the Forum list, using the OOo blue as the background colour.
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Re: Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

Post by kingfisher »

Should the Vietnamese forums be listed?
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Re: Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

Post by RoryOF »

kingfisher wrote:Should the Vietnamese forums be listed?
I think that is the second last entry on the list, kingfisher.
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Re: Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

Post by kingfisher »

Sorry, I should have been more explicit. I know the Vietnamese forum IS on the list. I intended to question the validity of such inclusion in view of the fact that the Vietnamese forum, as I understand it, has been closed down.
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Re: Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

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OK: sorry for misunderstanding, kingfisher.
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Re: Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

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kingfisher wrote:Sorry, I should have been more explicit. I know the Vietnamese forum IS on the list. I intended to question the validity of such inclusion in view of the fact that the Vietnamese forum, as I understand it, has been closed down.
Right - same thought here.. I suppose there are pros and cons either way, listed on this page or not. So, I'd leave it until and if the space is needed to list a new language forum, but either way is fine with me.
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Re: Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

Post by DrewJensen »

RoryOF wrote:Could an intercolumn spacing be inserted, to move the Search box to the right? More colour on the page would be good, perhaps by reversing every second line of the Forum list, using the OOo blue as the background colour.
OK - made some changes, all against the display of the forums list items, working on the spacing. Didn't change anything on background colors, yet.
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Re: Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

Post by RoryOF »

One thing I've just noticed; the column width may need to be widened slightly (at expense of the margins?), as the last character (right-most char) in the Japanese line wraps to the next line on my laptop (1280x800) screen; I've just tested also on 1024x68 and 800x600 - all well in display but for that one char on the Japanese line. (a little triangle shaped char)
Last edited by RoryOF on Mon Mar 19, 2012 9:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

Post by Hagar Delest »

Hi Drew,

I like your last proposal much better!

I also agree the CSE is really great! especially to narrow the search to the forums (have tried it and rather good). Could it index the mailing lists too? Could we add a notice too saying the main search areas so that users know the benefits of this CSE?

Even if the Vietnamese forum is locked, it may contain relevant answers for future users and may attract some users willing to participate. So I'm for keeping it in the list.
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Re: Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

Post by floris v »

I'm all for user support by including a customized Google search bar, but here it's taking up a lot of vertical space and the area for the forum links is - on my screen - quite narrow. So narrow in fact that the Japanese text wraps to a second line by default and the Spanish does when I mouse over it. And then I'm not zooming in. Because of the fixed width of the table you'd get some ugly results if you do zoom in. I suggest that you use two - and wider - columns to list all NL forums, then you have a lot of space farther up or down the page for the search bar and possibly a (link to a) list of external resources. I wasn't thinking; forget the two columns, but make the links column a bit wider.
Re the Vietnamese forum: you can add a note that it's been archived. Removing the link here is rather drastic as you might then as well take down the forums too. And, with Hagar here, maybe some Vietnamese will want to remove the stain by signing up as volunteers.
Last edited by floris v on Mon Mar 19, 2012 10:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

Post by Hagar Delest »

+1 for the column width increase! Had not tried to hover the entries, it doesn't play nice.
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Re: Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

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I'm wondering about the navigation links bar at the top - it's not very useful as it is now. It might be useful in its own frame if it stays at the top when you scroll down, and to make it more user friendly, maybe a clarification can be added at the left, something like "Native language forums: EN ES FR ..."
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Re: Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

Post by floris v »

When you actually use the search bar, the table width jumps to 100 % - so maybe all you have to do is add width=100% (or a slightly lower number) as an attribute of the table.
And maybe less space between the abbreviations and full names would be better too - with this proportional font the titles don't align after a set of spaces.
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Re: Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

Post by floris v »

And let me add that the search bar is cool. :super:
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Re: Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

Post by DrewJensen »

Well, thanks for the feedback - as always it's making this much better.

Did not have any time to put to this yesterday but do today
- I'll see what I did that brought the proportional font to the forums list, and undo that.
- some said the search result box is taking up 100% width, which it shouldn't be
-- am working in Linux/Chromium and it is staying in the right column, if that is not the case for other browsers then I need to address that.

so - I'll poke, prod and generally tweak a bit and post back here a little later.

Given that the live page is still flying Oracle colors and including the Oracle Google analytic js snippet I would like to put this new page up quickly and then make further changes against that, if possible.

Back in a bit then,

//drew
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Re: Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

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DrewJensen wrote:- some said the search result box is taking up 100% width, which it shouldn't be
-- am working in Linux/Chromium and it is staying in the right column, if that is not the case for other browsers then I need to address that.
No problem on:
- Konqueror 4.7.4 (khtml)
- rekonq 0.8.1 (WebKit)
Almost no problem on:
- firefox 10
- Opera 11.61
On both the page starts with narrow columns that get a wider when search results are shown.
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Re: Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

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DrewJensen wrote:I would like to put this new page up quickly and then make further changes against that, if possible.
+1.

I just tried again the CSE and it is really really cool!
NB: the [Solved] tags at the beginning of the titles say it all, it makes a rather good impression!

It stays in the right column for me also with Firefox 11 under Vista and Ubuntu 11.10 (FF 64bit from Mozilla, not from Ubuntu repository).
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Re: Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

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RGB wrote: Almost no problem on:
- firefox 10
- Opera 11.61
On both the page starts with narrow columns that get a wider when search results are shown.
hmm - OK ... gees aren't these things supposed to all support the same standard (evil grin)

thanks
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Re: Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

Post by floris v »

Ahem, I commented that when you actually search for something, the whole table grows to 100 % width to accommodate the search results, but the columns still take 50 % each. Please add a width attribute to the table, set to 90 % or so - that should be enough and it allows you to have a larger font size for the links.
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Re: Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

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Hagar Delest wrote:Could it index the mailing lists too? Could we add a notice too saying the main search areas so that users know the benefits of this CSE?

Even if the Vietnamese forum is locked, it may contain relevant answers for future users and may attract some users willing to participate. So I'm for keeping it in the list.
Ok
- index emails, yes that can added and I agree it should be, will see about adding that today.
- some text about what is being indexed by the CSE, yes.. I wouldn't mind any suggestions on some text for that.

Also, and I suppose again, the CSE ui is English, but the results are not limited to English and the input box should take a search string in any language.
Looking at the list of sites you will see a few non-English sites, but there are definitely more that should be added (for instance I notice that somehow I dropped the Norwegian forum, or maybe I just forgot to add it)..still that can be worked on and evolve over time without requiring any changes to the page itself.

thanks
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Re: Update to the user services.oo.o landing page

Post by DrewJensen »

floris v wrote:Ahem, I commented that when you actually search for something, the whole table grows to 100 % width to accommodate the search results, but the columns still take 50 % each. Please add a width attribute to the table, set to 90 % or so - that should be enough and it allows you to have a larger font size for the links.
Right - so you want the results to take 90% of the screen, is that it?
_or_ maybe you see the page, as RGB mentioned, first with small columns - it should start out with the table taking 95% of the page width and each column with 50% of that - is that what you see?
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