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Hi Hugo,

Just wanted to add a little comment to my vote on the poll (I voted "ok, but could be better") :
The orange text on the blueish grey background offers too little contrast and the captions are therefore somewhat hard to read.

As for the rest : definitely refreshing!

I added shadow to the text. Better?

Hi!

Why did you remove the little Indian (on the homepage)? I think he fits nicely into the new design: http://schoelhorn.eu/files/hiawatha_proposal.png
Personally I don't like the font (century). Especially in italic it is very hard to read. But that could be a matter of taste. (besides the italic-thing)
I think a direct link to the forum would be nice since the new design no longer has drop-down menus.

Altogether it looks great to me!

So long!

PS: The favicon isn't the final one, right?

The reason why don't show the logo on the homepage is because I want all the visitor's attention go to the three key features. That's what should trigger them to further investigate what Hiawatha has to offer. More images could be too much distracting.

Sorry you don't like the font. But it's going to stay, because I really like it!

I copied the favicon from the current website. Thanks.

Hi Hugo,

The shadow improved legibility a lot.
Still not great, but good enough.

Keep up the good work!

Hi Hugo,

I have been a long time Hiawatha user and i'm also an amature web developer. Just a couple of points from me:

- Font isn't great, you should use a nice basic serif so it's supported throughout. (http://i.imgur.com/diU4R.png)
- Margins are wrong, and you also need some extra padding in places.
- Hiawatha text on front page isn't legible enough
- The image is too generic - I thought I had been forwarded to "temporary hosting/spam site' (until I finally noticed the Hiawatha logo)
- it looks very corporate, not necessarily a bad thing but it looks generically corparate - maybe it's the colours - I like the current brown/orange theme - but maybe lighten them up a bit to make it look 'fresher'.

There are a few more points but they're more nit picky - I would be happy to knock up some ideas if I get time and post them here for a slightly different take.

Just my 2p, please don't take any offence in what I have said - just trying to be honest!

Regards,
Jack.

-- What the hell do I know?

http://www.pimpmypi.com
http://www.mantismarket.co.uk
http://www.embed.me.uk

The font is jagged - I don't know if it is because I don't have the font installed or it has smoothing problems, take a careful look at the support section in my image link, and you will see the blue links there look especially jagged. The only other time I see this is when viewing websites where I don't have the supported font.

Again, on my image link the margins are right up against the side of the screen, this may be just personal taste but I like a bit of breathing room when reading.

As for the image I'm not even sure if one is appropriate, maybe the little indian boy picture with a logo to the right of him, I'll have to have a think.

I'll have a mull and see if any more bright ideas come to me!

You don't need the font, the website offers it to the browser via @font-face. And I'm afraid I can't do much about Linux making the font a bit jagged. On Windows and MacOS X, it looks fine. Font-support on Linux has always been a bit poor. But although it might be a bit jagged, it still looks fine to me.

If you want more breathing room, try making your browser window more wide.

Hi Hugo,

I spent a couple of hours having a stab at an alternative design.

I'm not happy with the logo part and it definitely needs more doing to it but I thought I would throw it up to try and generate some ideas.

The CSS is sketchy at best and it hasn't been tested in anything other than Firefox, I can pretty much guarantee that IE will make a mess of it.

Points I would make:

- The logo needs improving - new font and maybe join it to the top of the page in a darker orange colour - needs some playing with
- Add gradients to the boxes and footer to make it look more modern and less 1970's
- It needs a paragraph of text on the front page or something extra to pad it out a little bit (a comparison table would be nice...?)
- Many other things but this is just how far I got this afternoon

I tried to mix qualities of your old site with qualities of the new site you designed.

http://media.communistcode.co.uk/hiawatha

Regards,
Jack.

Hi Jack. Thanks for your feedback, but I don't think your design is what I'm looking for. It looks a bit 'empty' and simple. Sorry.

That's fine, I have no issue with that. However I do believe goals are clashing, a light efficient webserver with a heavy website isn't shouting the same message. I'm sure you've seen other web server sites but as a reminder:

http://nginx.org/
http://www.lighttpd.net/
http://httpd.apache.org/

What I think your new design is currently more resembling:

http://www.donhost.co.uk/dedicated-servers/linux-dedicated-hosting/

I'm really not having a go, just trying to make a point.

Have fun with it, and I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product!

Regards,
Jack.

Overall I think the proposed look is clean and looks nice, but it appears a bit too generic IMO. At first glance, it looks a lot like a shake & bake webhosting company, primarily because of the header graphic I suspect.

-C

How about the new picture?

Hi Hugo. I'm one of the supporters who miss the Hiawatha boy so much for the new design. Maybe it would be better to make him smaller in size and put him at the bottom of the homepage?

I changed the homepage. Better now?

I'm not sure myself. For me it's too much graphics on the homepage. I want the visitors to read the three key features and not to be distracted too much by all the graphics. I'll think about it.

You could put the three key features in the middle and move the background image to the bottom, because human focuses on the middle of the screen first and somewhat ignores the bottom of the page at a glance. Too much graphics wouldn't be distracting if to be put in the non-focus place.

So here is my suggestion(top to bottom) :
First - "Homepage About Download Support Weblog"
Second - "An advanced and secure webserver for Unix"
Third - the three key features
Fourth - the background image & Hiawatha logo

Definitely liking the new image a lot better. As for the Hiawatha mascot, I think re-adding that might be a good idea. It's really the branding for Hiawatha, the familiar icon that stirs your synapses, much in the same way that the eagle feather is for Apache. Whether you add him to the banner image to make it one flat image or floating (as it is on the 'old' site) is an open question. If you're concerned about one extra GET request for the image, it might be worth it to go flat. If you're more worried about superfluous bandwidth usage, I've noticed that the current banner image compresses quite nicely to an indexed PNG; about 1/2 the filesize without visible degradation. In fact, you lose the jpeg compression artifacts along the way. Food for thought.

-C

A postscript on the last message. The more I look at the beta site, the more I'm starting to get what you're going for. Maybe you're right about the Hiawatha guy, I'm not sure; he might be a little too much if you're trying to keep the message uncluttered. I still think new banner image still makes a great case for indexed PNG though.

Regards,
-C

Hugo,

The new design does not include this page or this stuff http://www.hiawatha-webserver.org/contribute. Please includes this as my blog uses this links.

Samiux

I removed the contribute page, since I never got any serious response from it. It has been replaced with a banners page.