New Xubuntu website taster

As we are approaching the Oneiric Ocelot release date, the Shimmer team has worked hard with the Xubuntu developers to create a new themes for Plymouth and LightDM as well as a new website.

As you might already know, Xubuntu is switching from Drupal to WordPress, at last. WordPress is a personal preference for quite many of us, and amongst others I’m very happy to be able to work with it. Without any further praises, I want to quickly show a taster of what we have accomplished this far with the new website theme:

What do you think? Is it looking as good as we think, or are we too subjective? How can we improve it?

Discussion

Jannis
August 9, 2011

Looks great, really. I like that everything is a tad bit smaller than on the current website. The important links are easy to spot and the detailed stuff is still available at the bottom. Good work.
Robin
August 9, 2011

Hey, awesome! This is me clapping and cheering!

Nice up-to-date design, tastefully done. It looks less like “a dying distro whose time has come and gone” and more like “an up-and-coming alternative Ubuntu flavor with all the goodness of Ubuntu combined with the simplicity, elegance, and versatility of Xfce!”

Sweetly done!
Tm_T
August 9, 2011

Looking good. (yay knome!) (:)
Simon
August 9, 2011

I like the new layout a lot and it’s a great step ahead from the current website.
One thing I’m not sure about is the logo on the striped background. It’s a good thing you decided to use the white, glowing logo, but I guess it could use some visual separation from the stripes (maybe a dark drop-shadow? :D ).
Pasi Lallinaho
August 9, 2011

Thanks for the praise everybody!

Jannis, that was exactly what I was after. The current website is too clumsy, and has things that go “old” too quickly. With this style the website is way easier to keep looking current.

Simon, I don’t know how that would visually look since we already have the white glow under the logo, but I’ll definitely check if I can improve the visibility and the clarity of the logo with a dark shadow/background element.
Vincent
August 9, 2011

Yep, looks good. One thing I do find a bit awkward is that the Get Xubuntu/Help and Support/Involved links attract a lot of attention with their size for something that is in the bottom left-hand corner.
Jim Campbell
August 11, 2011

Nice work, Pasi.

Here are a couple of suggestions – I’m not sure if it is just your forward-thinking European style, but the textured background behind Xubuntu seems a bit dated. Maybe it is coming back around, though?

Also, The description of the screenshot says, “Xubuntu Natty.” I doubt most people would know what “Natty,” means in this context, so “Xubuntu 11.10” would probably be better.

Keep up the good work!
Pasi Lallinaho
August 14, 2011

Vincent, are you referring to the big links on the bottom right-hand corner, or the ones in the footer? The ones on the right-hand side are meant to draw attention, the ones on the left-hand side… My eye personally doesn’t get catched by them too much.

What do others think?

Jim, I don’t know about textured background being “in” or “out”, but it definitely improve the look over a plain gradient. The content itself is still more WIP than the theme itself, but we’ll make sure it says 11.10.

Thanks again for the input!

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New Xubuntu website taster