I have this as a working template for drupal.

In terms of usability I'd suggest that we don't have the top menu bar containing anything non imperative. It forces the user to scroll down to the see the content.

I'd also suggest from an SEO point of view that the underlying html is structured in a way so that the content is at the top of the page. I you need help with this I can help. You can see an example by viewing the source code here of how I achieve it: http://www.wallgraphics.com.au/index.php This is a site developed with Qcubed.

Hello people

I'm totally agree with jason I don't the download banner in the home, I implement because was in the original proposal
beautiful the proposal of scottux is my favourite.

cu

enzi

I would actually have to disagree with jasonx on the banner issue, as the banner is one of the biggest way's to represent branding, and to catch the user's eye. As far as scrolling to see the content, that is never an issue (unless the user has to scroll "sideways" then that becomes an issue). Personally I think a banner on the main page is implied, if you don't have one its because your design doesn't call for one. What I usually do is look at the competition's sites, and if I see the competition has overall design/usability over you, your going to lose purely based on that for most users. Now I know we are talking developers are the viewers in this case, but even then they are more so to look for a site that represents themselves professionally. Anyhow I will continue to work on concepts (its what I do in my spare time) and maybe find something people in this community could latch onto.

Here's my latest version of the concept (with the new logo) and I spiced the logo up (specifically for this use).

Very clean and fresh design.

Sorry I thought when the template was designed it was intended to be used for every page. If the banner is only displayed on the front page then that's a different story.

From looking at the source code on this web site it appears that we have Google Analytic's installed.

The site overlay feature will give us a good insight to which menu items that users currently use and the ones that are rather redundant. If someone could provide some screen shots who has access to this account it could help the design of the new interface.

For a working version: http://dev.simplisticstudios.com/drupal/
Critiques welcome.

Sweet, love the main logo with the sun/star behind it.

This is probably somewhat unrelated, but wouldn't it be great to have a couple simple, slimmed down, proof-of-concept examples within 1 click of the home page? Currently, from the main menu, new users navigate either to http://trac.qcu.be/projects/qcubed/wiki/Tutorials (bleh!) or http://examples.qcu.be/ (better, but still overwhelming) We could have a better landing page for the examples site, with 4 basic tutorials that demonstrate Form State Handling, the QQuery ORM, QControls/QActions, and finally one called tying-it-all-together that shows the full power of QCubed when these 3 concepts are combined. The examples landing page being the page new users are most likely to click("forget the documentation - just show me an example of how it works!"), it makes sense for it to be an all out demonstration of QCubed's abilities.

Scott - the latest iteration is just beautiful. HOT HOT HOT! I love it.

I agree!

Scott - first of I like your transitions. It looks fine.
It is a design but it is not jet a concept of what we'd like to communicate and that is the most important
For example you are loosing space on top (most valuabe) like on our current site.

Lets try to have a startsite like Zend with lots of news and RSS feeds (more then currently)! http://framework.zend.com/
And to have detailssites with a different more pragmatic layout: http://framework.zend.com/docs/overview

The zend startsite is great because it features stuff-> 3 different categories of news all presented very fortunate

My take on this -> it is a mashup.. but you see maximum content maximum space:

Regards,
tronics

I am fine with keeping the layout similar to what it is now. My main concern is that is it cleaned up and easy to navigate. That is not to say that Zend is hard to navigate. But I do not think we need to entirely redesign everything.

Tronics - I actually like the idea of leveraging the zend layout for the front page. One thing to note is that it'd be good to integrate a snippet of the blog + latest forum threads.

Hmm, it would be cool to :

1) get the logo on the website for the 1.1 launch. Probably make the header using less height would not be bad either.

2) Plus this CSS rule corrected, to get the contact feature in the forum finally working:
style.css line 637
#edit-subject-wrapper {
display:none
}
TO
#edit-subject-wrapper {

}

What do you think? This goes really fast.

Regards,
tronics

We should really push the layout forward. Tronics, can you work with Mike to get you access to the server, so that you can make changes like this?

I have a new theme designed with the new logo and layout installed here at qcu.be if you have access, you can change your theme to qcubednew. Otherwise, the development is publicly available to view at http://qcubed.piranhamethod.com

I would love to have some assistance with the tweaks that still need to be made. I have gotten this far with it, but I have been swamped with work and my recent marriage/honeymoon. My goal is to have it ready for the 1.1 launch.

Wow scottux, this looks great! Where can I activate this? ;)

One thing to add. I would prefer floating layouts. I made the css-suggestions to make the current website not fixed on the maxwidth and I would like to see this on the new layout too.
In my view a modern website with a fixed maxwidth of around 800px on a 1920x1280 looks not good. The user should decide how big he wants his page/browser and the layout should fit to that. What do you think?

From the look and style it's really great!

We'll be enabling this theme when we launch 1.1, which is VERY SOON!!! Thanks scottux for all your work!

Thanks, and I have to make sure that Biohaz4rd gets recognition too. He was responsible for the new logo design and helped push me to develop this theme. Since he works with us a lot at the Piranha Method, I just kind of put it all under that umbrella.

Please, notice the note on the bottom of the new theme that I only used open source software to develop the theme. I like to think that means something. Inkscape was used to vectorize the logo, the GIMP was used for the gradients and the nice explosion effect behind the intensely-colored logo on the homepage. Eclipse was used for all of the code writing. And I use the development version of Kubuntu Linux.

I am personally against completely fluid websites for a number of reasons, but I would really like to add some controls to make a narrow/wide option and to control font sizes. I think that would add a sense of professionalism to what is a very basic theme at the moment.

This theme is a major step forward.
Very well done. Let us launch this for 1.1
Floating layout is a goodie but low priority to me at this point.

Thanks all.

Regards,
tronics