Since maemo-community (and the other maemo-* mailing lists) is down, the IRC meeting helped clarify the use cases and confirmed that maemo.nokia.com will be the primary end-user and developer reference site, with maemo.org being the community and for more adventurous end-users.

I outlined my ideas from the meeting here:

http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/mae...er/000955.html

...and have produced a mockup. Key features:

Small links
And I mean pervasive. The overall outline and top-bar should be present on *.maemo.org sites. I've used the term 'Add-ons' rather than 'Downloads', because things added to the tablet'll be coming through Application Manager rather than directly downloaded. "Extras" is nice, but too general at the top-level.

Big links
These are to guide people who end-up here from Google or maemo.nokia.com. High-level, simple English. They'll go to the level 1 pages the same as the pervasive links at the top.

Swarming
The formatting of the portlets capturing this swarm information is sub-optimal, but Inkscape ain't the best for doing DTP. Hopefully, you can get the gist and look past the over-simplified detail.

The portlets correspond to the easy-to-use buttons above, + an about box + news & events. Content is syndicated from a VARIETY of sources, weighted by activity/newness/etc. and sorted into the buckets. For example, the "latest community activity" is showing threads from maemo-users, maemo-community and pages which have been recently changed a few times in Category: Users and Category: Community in the wiki.

Similarly, latest developer activity aggregates content from -developers and Category: Development in the wiki.

These lists should be better styled, possibly including dates - and maybe even mini-icons as bullet points to represent the source of the information.

Anyway, this is close to what's in my head at the moment. If nothing else, hopefully it'll inspire some discussion.

I really would appreciate a design that can be viewed at 800 pixels wide without horizontal scrolling!

Yes, a fluid layout is the plan.

Absolutely. Any implementation which isn't fluid should be binned. But we're at the information architecture & mock-up stage; implementation comes later :-)

IMHO:

We need to stay away from "business"-oriented designs and designs that lean towards the development side of things... The most recent mock-up that Jaffa linked to has much promise, but the top (secondary header area?) needs a little work.

We really do need to stew on Jaffa's wonderful summary of the IRC meeting for a while longer before submitting a bunch of mock-up ideas:

http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/mae...er/000955.html

Think simple. Think non-technical. Think intuitive.

People need to be surprised by the new site, I think.

Tim

Followup:

http://samoff.maemobox.org/maemo_redesign/

Comments? Suggestions?

Tim

Another approach:

http://samoff.maemobox.org/maemo_red..._idea_0007.png

-T.

This will not look well on a tablet. In fact, it does not look well on the desktop: it wastes a lot of screen estate on the right side.

Actually, the main content is made to fit within the 700px of a non-maximized browser... The content on the right is less important and can be scrolled to -- and, the design is meant to be fluid. But, in any case, it's just a mockup, so thanks for the feedback!

Here's a third idea (it's getting closer):

http://samoff.maemobox.org/maemo_red...idea_0008b.png

-T.

Same thing: avoid the long column + short column layout. It wastes space. Instead, break your page into 2-3 equal-sized columns and make them resize fluidly. Also, I would avoid shadows, fancy corners, and other similar stuff: a lot of people are likely to load this page on their tablets connected via GPRS, EDGE, or 3G. A lot of them pay per-MB rates. The above visual elements are pretty useless and just add to the traffic.

Now, as far as content is concerned: I see that you have following content at the page:
1. Two featured applications ("pearls")
2. Menu of important links
3. About Maemo blurb
4. Announcements at the bottom
5. Bad photo of some guy with a number
6. Some inline ads

Of these 6, only #2 and #4 are of any use to a regular maemo.org visitor. The rest is as good as decorations. Furthermore, #4 is at the very bottom and #2 links are named in such a way that only a geek will understand what they mean (Bugzilla, Wiki, Garage). At this point, you can probably guess where I am leading this...

Anyway, I do not see how this page is useful for a regular maemo.org visitor. I also do not see myself using it on the tablet.