Comments on: [RFC] Mozilla Community Theme

By: musingT» Blog Archive » Mozilla Community Theme

musingT» Blog Archive » Mozilla Community Theme — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:35:34 +0000

[...] functionality and supports the more complex, dense websites that larger communities have. We tested various layouts and documented our progress along the way, incorporating your feedback into the [...]

By: Mozilla Community Theme - revised at stream of bytes

Mozilla Community Theme - revised at stream of bytes — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:29:10 +0000

[...] weeks ago we asked you for feedback on an initial round of Mozilla Community Theme mockups and we received plenty! Then, we started [...]

By: Eduard Gamonal

Eduard Gamonal — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 20:17:43 +0000

It’s good news having this template available! I must agree with the others, though. I’d like it more Mozilla-like. Users will identify Mozilla colours and main style, and that would help giving the locales a more “official” look&feel.
On the other side, I think just providing a 3-column theme is OK. It’ll stimulate locale teams to show polls, which will be useful for the locales and for Mozilla.

By: zbraniecki

zbraniecki — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 19:55:40 +0000

Asrail: You will have a choice of course And regarding number of columns, you’ll choose it from admin panel in Drupal or Wordpress.

By: Asrail

Asrail — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 13:47:36 +0000

The themes look good. The second one is prettier.

I would prefer an wordpress based site than a Drupal one (drupal looks harder to use).

Also it would be nice to allow the communities to choose between two and three columns layouts, and easily customize what to show on the sidebar.

By: Mozilla Community Template progress at stream of bytes

Mozilla Community Template progress at stream of bytes — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 05:58:31 +0000

[...] A quick update on the status of MCT. Tara, Seth and I gathered a solid round of feedback from many of you. We scanned it, analyzed and built a profile of updates we want to make. We noted five main issues raised by you regarding the first proposition: [...]

By: Irina Sandu

Irina Sandu — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 00:19:11 +0000

Hi.

I’m really glad to see where you are going with this. The first comment I’d like to make is that I see many hard lines and sharp edges. I think more rounded buttons and corners and not so strong contrasts would be more eye-friendly.

Also, i see 2 login fields: one on the top right and one on the left. Isn’t one enough?

The two equal-sized side columns look a bit confusing to me. I think one should be thinner than the other, so the readers have a visual guidance regarding the relevance of the content: the links to be used more frequently are to be on the broader column and the least used and “unimportant” ones on the other one.

You could also provide a two-column theme, as some teams might prefer that and I’m also a fan of two-column themes.

And I think, too, that you need more Mozilla-related objects in there.

By: Staś Małolepszy

Staś Małolepszy — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 00:19:09 +0000

I think the pipes on mozilla.com are a terrific idea, and create a strong visual identity for the Mozilla project at this point. They don’t have to be in the main background, but featuring them somewhere would be a plus. Also, mozilla.com’s footer creates a very distinctive symbol that could be used here.

Speaking of the background: I think it should extend more downwards. Right now there is a very strict separation between header and main content, which together with two sidebars and top menu (come on, has anyone spent even 3 minutes to design this menu?!?) looks extremely similar to what phpnuke was like in… oh wait, it’s still that bad

It will be hard to create a universal theme if we don’t know what purposes each site will serve. We have to choose to focus on:
* connecting people (planet, forum), or
* download, or
* evang/support (links to MDC, SUMO), or
* creating the ‘About’ page for your team.
Of course, some of these can and will go together, but maybe we should try to think about 4 different types of themes?

By: marcoos

marcoos — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 17:33:58 +0000

Well, I have to agree with Tomer, Tim and Jasper. Apart from the logos and the use of FF Meta Bold in the header, there’s nothing really “mozillish” in this theme. It doesn’t look similar to Mozilla.com, AMO and MDC, and it doesn’t look like mozilla.org either.

I am not saying these mockups look bad, they just don’t have the Mozilla feel in them.

Also, you really can’t use the state ensign (the variant of the Polish flag with the coat of arms in the white part) here, this is illegal.

By: Tomer Cohen (he l10n team)

Tomer Cohen (he l10n team) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:48:27 +0000

I must agree with Tim, the design of mozilla.com/mozilla-europe.org looks very professional and eye-catching, while the concept of the community team looks more like a customized theme based on some free templates available on the net in no cost.

Big headers and graphic-heavy are great for small website with just few pages; for sites with more than five pages of content (such as a community forum or a wiki), I would prefer a theme similar to mozilla.org which will make it more functional – Less space reserved for header, and more space for content.

I know the open license permits use of that themes, maybe we should make it more official, but with some tweaks, such as a utility (based of imagemagick or gd) to let each community decide which colors they prefer in the theme, where CSS is not an option.