New Homepage Suggestions

[Cheyenne]

One comment... the "Join the Forum, Join the Team" looks like an out right job posting.  Maybe a much better wording would be "Join the Forum, Join the Community"

[Niall Saunders]

Hi Cheyenne,

Point taken - community DOES sound better

[Simon Hicks]

Yes....community sounds better! Done.

[Simon Hicks]

Here's the two links together so you can flick between them...

http://pteam.pixinsight.com/betasite/simon/
http://pteam.pixinsight.com/betasite/simon2/

I wanted to suggest that 'Cutting Edge' on the page header would be better 'hyphenated', becoming "Cutting-Edge"

Good point...will do.

I suspect the font size is too large for the resulting column width

I think I know what you mean....it starts wrapping the text. I think I need to hard fix that column width to fix that. I'll look at smaller fonts as well.

is it possible to fully-justify the text to both the left and right margins of the table

Yup...next version.

HTML editor (what are you using Simon?)

I'm using Dreamweaver MX which dates from about 2002. Its quite an out of date package but its fine for simple pages. Don't ask me to do animations or anything fancy like that. It won't even handle drop down menus! BUT the actual PI website will be done with something much more up to date and flash. I see our job as just getting the look, feel and content sorted for consideration by the PI team. If they like what they see then someone in the PI team will need to translate the whole thing into whatever package they use...which hopefully won't be too long a job if they have all the content in front of them to be copied and pasted. I'd be more than happy to do it, but they would need to supply me with the latest software and a big manual on how to use it. 

Version 3 on its way...

Cheers
         Simon

[Carlos Milovic]

Here are all the sites:
http://pteam.pixinsight.com/betasite/simon/
http://pteam.pixinsight.com/betasite/simon2/
http://pteam.pixinsight.com/betasite/simon3/
(use the tabs or new windows to quickly change between them)

[Cheyenne]

New algorithms and processes are being created continuously by a rapidly growing community. Users are encouraged to use either the sophisticated PixInsight Class Library (PCL) or the unique PixInsight Java Script Runtime engine (PJSR) – two freely available, powerful, integrated development environments for those who wish to write their own algorithms.

Try this instead

PixInsight provides two integrated development environments for those who wish to write their own algorithms. 
     o The PixInsight Class Library (PCL) allows users to write modules using ISO C++.  Modules  using PCL can be directly integrated into PixInsight.  PCL is freely available,  mutlti-platform (Windows, Mac OS X and Linux) and supports both 32 and 64 development. 
     o The PixInsight Java Script Runtime (PJSR), a unique innovative scripting engine built in to PixInsight.  PJSR is a quick and easy facility to extend the power of PixInsight.
The rapidly growing PixInsight community has been sharing new ideas and building new algorithms and processes using these two powerful and sophisticated features.

[Niall Saunders]

I think that this 'detailed' description would be better placed 'next level down' - the wording is fine, ready for expansion when more screen space is available on lower level pages.

Open to suggestions.

[mmirot]

Me likes much better

I would focus more on adding in some key features on the intro page.

It should start to answer the question how is the program going to improve my image processing.

I think achitecture, platforms, program, bits , image file formats need to take a back seat to this concept.


Max

[Cheyenne]

I guess my comment was, focus on the features and what they provide first, then bring in the "community" factor.

So I guess what I would suggest is the following "formula"

PixInsight has this neat nifty feature
  o it allows you to do this really cool thing
  o and there are a whole bunch of people out there doing this that you can talk to as well to help you along the way.

Make links to secondary pages for: "neat nifty feature" that goes into the gory details for the feature, and the "really cool thing" that points to an example example

[Harry page]

Hi

I am no good at this designing thing, but the front page seems to busy for my liking 

Its like the screenshot at the bottom , a newbie would say  "what the hell is going on there looks far to complicated for me "

Also I know its only a mock up , but it does not want to be full of professional images, It want to show real world images so they now what it might do for them 

I am sorry if I sound negative , ignore me if you like   

Harry

[Niall Saunders]

Hi Harry,

No - I don't think you are wrong. I am beginning to think that it IS too busy. I am happy with the information that I pieced together, building on Simon's excellent foundation, but I think that the information now needs to be trimmed back. A lot.

Nice, and punchy. Maybe some clever before/after transition image of a well known object - not too stunning, rather something more 'achievable'.

Combined with key facts, each leading a visitor to want to know more, with a nice navigation system to get them where they need to be, to where they will find the information that they are after.

Does someone want to have a go? I'll stand aside for a while, and let others mix things up a bit - that way we keep things 'dynamic'. How about some of us who DON'T have English as a first language - maybe things are better developed in your language, and then translated to English - I don't know.

Maybe Juan will come on line and just tell us all to leave his poor site alone 

Cheers,

[Harry page]

Hi Niall

I like that word   "Achievalble"   

People want something  that they can achieve!  , Forgive me but most users will not be programing and doing fancy scripts and would not be of prime concern to 95% of users , ( please I am not decrying the great work that people do and is important to Pixinsight)
Show what a average user can Achieve ( Nice word ) tempt them in , get them addicted   then we can go for the throat   ( Ie page 2)

Harry

[Simon Hicks]

Hi all,

I've just posted version 4 to Carlos....so it should be up soon.

I tried to accommodate all the comments above by going back to the idea of a "Welcome to PixInsight" as the homepage, and a more detailed texty "What is PixInsight" page as the second page. This has the result of uncluttering the homepage, but keeping all the texty description....and would even allow us to put Cheyenne's descriptive text in (which I liked).

Note that in the lefthand menu column you can now click on the "Home" and "What is PixInsight" items to flick back and forth.

On the homepage I stuck the screenshot at the bottom of the page. I thought it would be great if this was actually a smoothly changing slide show of a mixture of APODs and screenshots (with more 'normal' images by us mere mortals!  ). But I can't do that...so you will have to imagine it.

I haven't really worked on the 'grab-your-attention' text on the homepage....my brain hurts!...I just wanted to get a feel for the new layout. It looks like it should just be a few main message points....nothing more.

Carlos....is there a way for people to download my HTML files so they can play with them in their own editors and resubmit ideas that way?

Cheerrs
           Simon

[Cheyenne]

I still think that a couple of show-off images, including a couple images done with "amateur" setups would be nice.  You could click on the image and it would have the steps from integration to finish spelled out.  No need to go into great detail, these would not be tutorials, but would show what PI can do.  For example:

<initial image all dark>
   apply STF
<image that shows gradient, etc>
   apply DBE
<next image>
  color calibrate
<color calibrated image>
  apply histogram
....

You could probably even do this with a set of mouse roll-over images.

The point would be to just show someone quickly what you can do with an image from start to finish without even explaining the details.

Anyway ... just my 2 cents worth...

[Simon Hicks]

Hi Cheyenne,

I think its a great idea....but which page would you put it on? It doesn't sound like a homepage item.....but could it go on the "What is PixInsight" page maybe under the heading "See what PI can do for you"?

Cheers
          Simon