launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Martin Pilkington <pilky@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 22 Dec 2009, at 3:15 am, Jonathan Lange wrote:
> You say "obviously", but it might go down better than you think.
> 
> FWIW, we'd love to have a more dashboard-oriented view for almost
> every part of Launchpad. I think we could improve a great deal without
> providing the level of configurability that you & Ian are talking
> about.
> 
> jml

Well, to give an example of the level of different I'd suggesting, here's a quick mockup I made (that actually led me onto thinking about doing a cappuccino interface): http://dropbox.mcubedsw.com/skitchpics/overview.png Excuse some of the naff icons, I'm not really a graphic designer. But it's basically changing the overview page from being an overview of the project status to more of a "marketing" page for the project. You just give the absolute essentials: description, screenshots (if relevant), announcements and how to get built versions and source code.

This is only a half finished mockup, but typical of what the theme would be, which is that a large chunk of what is on most pages isn't relevant to most people, so should really be moved away. It's basically redesigning it with the philosophy that is used all over the Mac for interface design: "Put only what is absolutely essential on the screen by default, and hide any advanced stuff away (but within easy reach) until needed".

What I hope is that doing this project from scratch as a completely separate thing, it will offer some interesting ideas for features and designs which could potentially be transferred back to the main site.

Martin