Nice work. I prefer the clean style, but I’m not so shure on the logos.

I WANT A DUCK ;)

Regards,

Brian

The little box with a ruby snippet is pure genious. I definitely think we should run with this idea no matter what layout is chosen as it communicates more than thousand words about the language on first sight. The idea can be expanded to load a different snippet by random and let people submit new ones. ( 5.times { puts “quack” } .... )

I much prefer Michael’s Clean 1.0. It’s, well, cleaner, crisp, more modern; the header wastes less space, logo is not the routine, semi-realistic Ruby gem. The Clean logo scales well, and lends itself better to T-shirts, business cards, and other re-use.

The information on the page is also more focused on practical usage. For example, there is no need to publish recent blog headlines; better to have a link to a list of blogs and use the saved space more effectively (as Michael has done).

Overall, the Clean design does more with a better use of space. Like Ruby itself.

(On a side note, I can see possible problems with encouraging discussion here, and on ruby-talk, and as well as on the vit-discuss list. There are likely to be duplicate discussions, with people missing good points unless they are actively following all sources.)

I prefer the “cleanliness” of this design, the code snippet box and the high visibility of the download links at the upper right, but I really like the ruby image from the other logo ;-) ... maybe size it down a bit to fit this one?

Great job on this so far…

The clean one is great, although the example code isn’t that entertaining. I think that the example code-block should contain random samples of code that make some actual sense, are funny, and show of niceties of Ruby. By random I mean that each time you load the site, one snippet is picked at random from a set of snippets that match the criteria outlined in the previous sentence. Also, the Search button feels a litte too Windows XPish for my liking.

James: We aren’t encouraging discussion on ruby-talk. Specific discussion of the designs is best placed here on the blog. Vit-discuss seems appropriate for organizing our wider team effort (deadlines, help wanted, very focused issues, organizational).

Xal, Nikolai: The random Ruby snippet idea is great. Duly noted.

From a professional design stand point, the logo for the actual redesign blog looks the most current and seems to land on target for all of your logo goals.

http://redhanded.hobix.com/redesign2005/images/redesign2005.png

Who made this logo? I would like to know what they think.

I think the Ruby Red logo is gorgeous, but as a logo not such a hot idea, for some of the reasons you mentioned (embroidering/printing such a logo would require it being greatly simplified—or paying a very high expense).

As for the web designs themselves, the Ruby Red layout is better, but the actual “design style” of the Clean layout is better. So take the great content-related/information-architecture stuff such as the “download/learn/build” and “ruby on rails” blobs, and get Michael to do the colors and aesthetics…

The key thing that Ruby Red addresses that Clean does not is encompassed by those two blobs. You give your visitors an obvious springboard that lets them know instantly what they can do with the site, and how/where. There’s no hunting, and there’s less need for intro text, which almost nobody reads anyway. It’s a great idea to feature RoR on the front page, since that is one of the big driving forces behind Ruby’s growing fame at this point, and people who visit the site are probably going to want to know about it (or see it mentioned, if they are coming because of RoR).

Oh, and I totally second Xal on having a box with some Ruby code in it as well. :)

NVRS : The redesign blog logo is my remix of one of Michel’s designs. We’re still tossing around some variations of it.

_why: Looks great. There are aspects of each design I really enjoy. But i think your remix takes the cake for logo work so far.

Are you accepting open submissions for redesigns? Do I have to be a memeber of the redesign group to do that? If so I would like to try my hand using your remix logo.

NVRS : We’re totally open to suggestions in the form of graphical mockups. Especially with the logo.

More is better. How about multiple choices through CSS . Wouldn’t that be cool.

• Multiple choices through CSS would be nice.
• I prefer why’s remixed logo. Simple & shows Ruby as cornerstone to clean design.
• I prefer Michael’s 37signal-ish design.
• I do like intro text. If I hear “Ruby”, go to their website, I want immediate gratification to my question: What is Ruby? The combination of “Ruby is..” and the code box calms my inner beast.
• Things that were good in Ruby Red design:
  • I’d like to see Rails and other great projects listed in order of user base. People considering Ruby want to see the “libraries.”
  • Show the primo documentation (videos, Pickaxe & Rails book links, etc). Use Amazon affiliation to get some money for Ruby org through linked books (or work deal out with Thomas et al).

This page is totally about the newcomer, right? (I’m assuming a different home page would be provided for Ruby developers, so maybe a link off home page to the clued area.) Screen real estate should be based on importance to a newcomer. For that reason, I’d lose the code grants or news not pertinent to recruitment.

I agree with Amy Hoy—content-wise “Ruby Red” is very good. I especially like the “Download/Learn/Build” block at the top that gives you pointers to all the important information. And I like “Latest News” right there at the top. You get the big picture at one glance and “ready” for the details that follow. Brings order to the experience. The information on the “Clean” design is spread all over the page but the design is … cleaner.

I have to disagree with the people pushing the download learn build block, the information is good, but I think the presentation is too heavy. I really like the download links on the clean design. This is important and nicely made up.

I dislike the corporate feel strongly. The polish (ahem) of the ruby at the top makes it look professional enough, while this one is flat and boring, and presenting an intentionally boring look, rather than the current ruby-lang.org page’s utilitarian boring.

I Ruby Red better, mainly because it feels less corporate than the Clean demo.

Still, I think sans-serif and serif type don’t go together well in Ruby Red.

I’m aware of how difficult it can be for designers to predict how browsers will render type and that finding the right balance is a difficult task.

I’d rather go for an all sans-serif font type usage.

The Clean demo makes better use of type, and Ruby Red looks better overall, probably because its use of colour.

Why not fusing both picking the best qualities of each ?

The clean is my favourite. I think the minimal look of it reflects the lightweight nature of ruby – good use of CRAP – in the Robin Williams design sense of the word :)

I think I prefer clean (please use Why’s remixed logo), especially the design elements.

Ruby Red’s logo is stunning though, someone ought to use it!

Perhaps some link to gems/rubyforge showing top downloads/gems. People like to know they are in a big community.

I made some comments on vit-discuss, but I want to strongly discourage the use of “popular” applications on a list by any measure. No, people who are coming to the Ruby home page aren’t necessarily looking for libarires. That’s the RAA . Despite what DHH said on vit-discuss, the RAA is and should be the primary place for people to go to look at the status of projects. The RAA team should perhaps be a bit more vigorous in enforcing maintenance of details and makring broken downloads as such, but don’t make the Ruby home page about Rails. It already has its own home page, and the strong pushing of Rails can obscure many of the other wonderful libraries out there.

Why’s remixed logo works best when the bottom part is faceted (i.e. has colour variance). Without the separation, the implication may not be clear enough (for either the ‘r’ or the gem), particularly for scaled/embroidered/printed variants.

I’m a big fan of the middle extra logo; it retains the gem shape clearly enough but implements it in less lines than the Why-modified one, rendering it more visually pleasing and versatile. It really is ingenious design.

http://redhanded.hobix.com/redesign2005/images/redesign2005.png

That logo with this layout would be great!

I’ve seen much more complicated things embroidered than this – it is only 3 colours for a start.

Even if you don’t want to use the logo itself, the font used in the redesign2005 logo is much nicer than the one put in the layout. The ‘b’ looks less bloated for example.

Douglas

Think black-on-white. Inverted angles tend to appear visually displeasing although this one is by no means bad :)

Austin, one of the main things people want to know about a new computer language is the availability of libraries and tools. The list can be small, off to the side, and unadorned by any description of each package, but it would be nice for newcomers to see that Ruby is further along than just base language + few utilities. Even one link like “100 packages and growing…” would be better than nothing.

How would the Ruby Red logo font look with the Clean looks icon? I really like the pickaxe font for the site, and I also like the more abstract icon. I also like that on the Ruby Red design, the logo font is not the same as the system font.

Bill, I’m sorry, but the Python home page (http://python.org) doesn’t contain this (but I don’t think that’s a great home page). Nor does http://perl.com or http://groovy.codehaus.org/. People are going to typically come to the Ruby home page from a different location—it could be RubyForge, it could be the RAA , it could be the Ruby on Rails homepage. People are coming to the Ruby home page to learn more about Ruby, the language.

Links to the RAA and RubyForge would be good, but saying “100 packages and growing…” is misleading; there are 200 separate gems available, and that figure means exactly diddly-squat.

Better to indicate what Ruby can be used to do; the packages are rather implicit from that. Ruby’s packages should not be a popularity contest. Ruby on Rails is a fine framework, but so are IOWA , Nitro, and Wee.

“Better to indicate what Ruby can be used to do; the packages are rather implicit from that. Ruby’s packages should not be a popularity contest. Ruby on Rails is a fine framework, but so are IOWA , Nitro, and Wee.”

I quite agree. The language home page should focuse on the language itself, without putting special emphasis on particular projects (whatever is overhyped at the moment) or people (e.g., bloggers certain people happen to prefer).

+1 Austin and James

+1 vruz ;)

I mailed about creating a specific “How do I [thing] in Ruby” section on the page somewhere. I think that’s the best way to introduce people to Ruby (in contrast to direct language comparisons).

Austin & James, I’ll agree with you that we shouldn’t hype particular packages on the front page for Ruby. I think, though, this is very different than saying we shouldn’t give the visitor a clue about available packages/tools. I don’t think the availability of packages is implicit in what Ruby can do. If I’m a total newbie, I have no clue how much support this language has in the general community relative to Smalltalk, Forth, or Python, and this does factor into some people’s selection of a language.

Python.org has a “Python Pacakge Index” link right under the Python versions on left. Perl.org has two prominent links, Get Perl and Application Programming, to pages that show/explain CPAN and the huge number of available packages. There’s value in having at least one explicit link to a “package” area or page dedicated to Ruby apps, tools, and libraries.

Popular packages are popular for a reason. And if it helps draw people into Ruby further, well, it may end up being used.

I see your point, though. If I was a Python user, I might be bugged by Zope stuff on the Python page.

Still, I’m leaving it in our options. Now, enough of the “should” and “should not” stuff. No one needs schooling here. We’ve got a lot of people to please. Henceforth, open your minds and be help-giving.

_why: I don’t buy what you just said (“popular packages are popular for a reason”). Sometimes things are popular just because they are well marketed. Sometimes, as with Rails, there’s substance behind the hype. That said, by making a choice based on popularity, one ends up strangling other frameworks that may be a better fit for other projects. The VIT has a responsibility to not favour any project in Ruby; the responsibility is to favour Ruby itself.

Bill: I am not against one or multiple links to packages and applications. I think that links to the RAA and RubyForge are important. I think that links to ruby-doc.org, rubygarden, and other places are also important. What I don’t want to do is give any particular application, framework, or package a permanent place on the Ruby home page. Even if that thing were to be one of my own packages, applications, or libraries, I’d be against it.

I’m all for a rotating set of highlighted packages as is demonstrated in the RubyRed design. I just don’t think that a permanent space should be allocated to a single package.

+1 Austin, again

Clear design uses space sparingly and well. Information is central. The abstract logos are ok too and could work.

But don’t you feel that general design might be a even bit too simple and uninspiring? A bit too much like a thesis paper front page? Does it reflect that the subject is the sexiest programming language ever…? :)

Why not, for example, use various non-disturbing shades of red more (background, links, text boxes,..?) as red is the ruby color. The front page design also looks practically 100 % text now, and the overly simplified logos may not make the front page design look much more lively.

As to content, I think that a lot of people would be interested in seeing news from the Ruby 2 / Roadmap front, so a link like “Future” or “Roadmap” might be a good idea to be added to the main links on the front page.

This is something I’ve made using the (IMHO) best features of the proposed designs:

http://vworkers.com/vruz/stuff/screenshots/ruby-home.png

Reflecting on vruz’s attempt, as well as RubyRed and Clean.

It’s too busy, imho. You’re trying to do everything in one page. RubyRed and Clean also suffer from that. And each of those things looks slightly different from the others (that’s better in Clean). Do one thing on each page and do it well.

Codefest Grant and Book Series are ‘just’ news. Maybe on a Contribute-To page?

Random snippet can be code or project, not both. On reload the other may occur, maybe (could be hard to do the layout nicely when both have to fit).

We are proud of our community, why is there no “Community” in the top navigation bar? Clean has it. Blogs are part of that; news may even be a part of that.

NB: all belongs on the site, just not in one page.

Something to add: Books are part of learning and documentation, but I don’t see them mentioned (a few lines review per book might be nice, too).

PS: I prefer why’s logo as shown here: http://redhanded.hobix.com/redesign2005/images/redesign2005.png

Well for what it’s worthm I prefer the clean style. In fact they’re all good, but one key factor for me is colour—I find that light colours on dark colours are hard for my eyes, and this theme just doesn’t have that. The logo is lovely, and the contrast the colours give make it look most professional.

2.0 is flawless. Well done to everyone involved.

Hello

It’s nice that Ruby is getting a new home page. Good work!

I must say that to the contrary to others preferences I do not like white background. It produces too much light and stresses both the screen that has to emit it and the eye receiving it.

There has been plenty said about content and I would not say much more about it. I’s clear that links to RAA , documentation, mailing lists, and other resources are important but some stuff that is only amusing could be what differentiates the Ruby web page from others.

Leaving content aside, the red design is way too red, and the clean design looks much like a piece of communist newspaper but without the dividers between articles – boring black and red, very crowded and confusing.

The dark blue stripes along the sides in the second design are cool, but they waste space and people tend to have window border at that place anyway.

The first one looks best to me. The page is clearly divided into different sections so that the reader does not have to figure out where one thing ends and another starts.

I also like the gem logo most, though it could be polished a bit to get rid of most of the white parts that form a weird circle on the gem.

The issue that the gem icon is possibly too complex for business cards is moot. It is not for anyone’s business cards, it is for a web page. For your business cards you can simplify it, or use another one, or even try how it actually comes out. And almost anything can be printed on T-shirts.

Another question is readability. For one there are 12” screens out there with resolutions ranging from 800×600 to 1440xsomething so the text and all page should scale to all, and even future higher-resolution screens.

Also some colors aren’t exactly easy to read. For one, all the designs use lightgray on white (for dates, the search button, even text). Another thing is relatively light blue link color on white. And third, the text in the lightblue column is not very contrasting, especially the blue one.

Thanks

Sorry, I now noticed the clean look does contain dividers, they are just nearly invisible and I did not notice them without longer inpection of the picture.

So, light it up already! ... the proposed look is great.

Er, sorry, navigation got me … this isn’t the design I meant to post that for…

I really like this one – nothing fancy but pure and clean.