- Search bar has to be well integrated with the primary navigation.
- Alignment of the search text field & the search button.
- Search text field has sharp edges while the button is slightly bigger and has rounded edges.
- I think increase/decrease your text size is redundant. Your target audience is programmers or people who want to learn programming. They already know how to zoom in/zoom out.
- Instead of showing an image of how to create an array. Wouldn't it be awesome, if we create a simple interactive shell where-in you show how to manipulate strings (reverse, capitalize etc. It will get user's who are new to Python excited about the language and its simplicity.
As for contributing: we'll be releasing the code when we launch the site for real (i.e. actually replace python.org), and we'll certainly be taking pull requests. I'll also have some contributor guidlines written up by that point.
We've got some serious work to do first, though :)
All these books are great but they are theoretical in their approach. It's good to be knowledgeable about Golden Ration or Fitts Law but it wouldn't be of immediate help on your next project. The books for Hackers should be pragmatic in their approach and not very theoretical.
The books I recommend are:
Non-Designers Design Book by Robin Williams. It focuses on topics like Consistency, Alignment, Proximity, and Contrast. With these four rules, you can make 90% of your designs look good. It also explains briefly on what colors and typography to use. When you've firm grasp of the fundamentals, it would make sense to arm yourself with more theory.
Don't make me Think by Steve Krug. It teaches you to simplify and focus on the end-user.
"All these books are great but they are theoretical in their approach."
You've never read them then, as they all use real world examples. Don Norman's has 3 Mile Island for example.
"It's good to be knowledgeable about Golden Ration or Fitts Law but it wouldn't be of immediate help on your next project."
The Golden Ratio is one ratio, there are many. Some more, some less, aesthetically pleasing.
Fitt's Law is basically about the metrics of completing any action involving your hand and a target, say a button or a link.
Consider an HTML pag with no graphical embellishments beyond a white body colour and a dark gray text colour, the proportions and spacing allocated to each bit of content will decide if people find it beautiful or not, and the ease with which they can interact with buttons and links will decide if they find it usable.
Actually, Universal Principles of Design is a somewhat misleading title. I was excepting a book deeply theory-driven, with few principles derived from even fewer concepts, but it turned out to be a compilation of 210 notions loosely categorized. It contains the topics you suggested, and many more. I think his purpose was pragmatic, but I'm not sure it suceeded.
Indeed, statements like "four rules cover 90% of design", as you said, are both theoretical and practical: they strive to simplify and unify a conceptual landscape, which in turns helps you in your work, because you don't have to remember and apply many vague heuristics.
Of course, whether a true and satisfying theory of design exists, is another matter.
Major problem is responsive design, its not scalable for content heavy sites. Same code scaling for different screens, makes sense in theory but is nightmare in practice. I've been part of couple of projects where-in we learnt the hard way. Hence, you don't see any big site use responsive design in major way. Almost all sites (Facebook, Amazon, Flipkart) go with a different sites for mobile & desktop.
Also the use of white text on dark background is extremely hard to read. Hence you see pretty much every content-rich site uses white or light background with dark/grey text. An exception might be Myspace which went with dark background approach and failed miserably in engagement.
When using any site, we like consistency. By incorporating panels which open up from both left and right side, it provides an inconsistent feel while using the site. My usage might be completely different from yours. It is important to keep the overall layout consistent with content personalized based on users needs.
This is exactly the reasoning that pisses me off. If MS pulled the same shit, we would be out with pitchforks ready to bury them. Have some consistency. Any corporation using their monopoly product to provide a bad experience for competitive products is evil.
Google went out of their way to prevent MS phones from using Google maps. MS did not go out of their way to allow Linux to use Office. There is a big difference.
Some Microsoft software was supported on other Unix platforms through Wabi and similar tools, and IIRC there may also have been native ports. Microsoft rather pointedly has avoided supporting the Linux market, with the exception of tools which allow interoperability with Windows systems (notably kernel contributions most of which relate to Azure).
> Microsoft rather pointedly has avoided supporting the Linux market.
Please. Wake up and smell the coffee.
EVERY major software company has avoided the Linux market. It's because of the questionable market opportunity that is the reason not any competition issues.
As noted: there was specific end-user software supported on Unix platforms, which could be, but never was, trivially ported to Linux.
More tellingly: Linux's overarching success has been in the server space (and the platform is emerging as the mobile leader). Microsoft's server software, including most notably SQL Server (derived from Sybase, originally targeted at Unix systems) isn't available for Linux. Neither are Exchange, Active Directory, Sharepoint, IIS, or Windows File Sharing. Free Software (and proprietary) alternatives and work-alikes for each exist, and in many or most cases are more successful, though AD remains a market leader.
Microsoft conquered the desktop PC market by leveraging compulsory per-CPU OS license via bundled office software to create a self-reinforcing illegal monopoly, which it then attempted to extend into the small server space. It's fought every attempt to crack any part of that stranglehold, fighting OEMs providing other operating systems (DR DOS, Novell, BeOS, Linux), by not porting its Office products (except to Mac OS X, since discontinued), and by not porting/building its server products to other platforms.
Major companies which have not avoided the Linux market include IBM, Oracle (and acquired companies Sun and PeopleWare), and Informix. Yes, all server space. I'm making a point here.
Besides developing office on Linux means commiting resources to support that platform. In this case its a website and Google actually spent resources to break a site that was working previously.
Completely and utterly different, to the point that your assertion borders on the ridiculous. So much for the "open" and "choice" mantra's. However you look at it, this is a dick move.
Isn't it exactly what Google is refraining from? Since the Maps work crappily on non-WebKit mobile browsers, allowing them to be used is delivering bad experience.
I fail to see how this is different than e.g. not supporting Flash on iOS devices due to poor performance and battery drain - a then-controversial move which is now seen as reasonable even outside the circles of Apple fans.
In one case we are talking about the absence of software/support; the iPhone does not ship with Flash. Actively preventing software from running is another; Apple preventing jailbreaking. Now, who do I blame for my iPad mini's lack of an Android port?
First they block access to Youtube API. Now they decide to block access to Google Maps. Free and Open Web BS is just going too far. I don't think there is absolutely any part of the web which is free and open. It is conveniently used from time to time to convince people to contribute to their platforms.
"Free and open web" doesn't mean unfettered access to private parties' services, it means unfettered access to the internet itself. I.e. access to the services on the internet that private parties are willing to let you use.
Most everything on the internet is owned by someone, and the whole meaning of things being free and open is that putting something up is putting it up for everyone. Your interpretation is just "you can use the things I let you use", which is a tautology...
I'm not sure about tautology or whatever (it seems like you're confusing the network for the endpoints), but I'll give you a metaphor.
In the US you are a "free" citizen in an "open" country. You are free to go anywhere you want on open roads. This doesn't give you the right to trespass and go into anyone's private property. If they have a fence up, you have to stay out. If they're having a yard sale, you can come in.
If Alice wants to let Bob on her property and not Eve, that doesn't make the US any less of a "free and open" country.
This is what is meant by "free and open" web. You can attempt to reach any endpoint you want without restriction, but the endpoint itself has private control over whether you are allowed to its contents or not.
Anything less is not actually freedom, because then the endpoints' freedom to determine who can use its private property is being denied.
A web that is not "free and open" is one in which your attempts to reach endpoints are interrupted and allowed or denied by a third, censoring entity. (Usually the government.) It has nothing to do with how those endpoints would respond to you on their own.
The "Open Web" refers to the platform being open and accessible to anyone (which is why, for instance, royalty-free patent grants are essential for any enshrined web standard), but it does not refer to the content that is communicated by that platform
It's a nuanced (and sometimes nebulous) concept, and I don't really understand what the GP post was getting at, but here's a better attempt than mine to get a handle on it by Tantek Çelik:
http://tantek.com/2010/281/b1/what-is-the-open-web
I would like to disagree with Mr.Param who is either being a cynic or trying to be "me-too".
India is aggressively moving away from paper-ballot voting to EVM's. In our last general elections, a million electronic voting machines (EVM's) were used which reduces vote-rigging, ballot capture etc. In maybe 5 years, we will be completely rid of paper-ballots.
All right, I have been living in the US for a while, and didn't know about the move to electronic voting. However, my point about there being FAR more abuse in India stands. Here are some references:
Fatal attacks near polling booth - 2009 - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123985213176424031.html
