I agree with you. All these bits are already there on the old Scriptographer site, just not in the most obvious way. But I guess it all makes sense... On thing I would like to add is a proper script repository that can be accessed through the site and through Scriptographer directly as well, in the Illustrator interface. Imagine broswing through the new scripts from Illustrator and installing them just by one click...
im in
at least with ideas.
all i could contribute would be layout/graphics.
about the site:
at the moment, i think the website is very nice to look at. also the main navigation is easy and understandable. i wouldn't change that. first thing to get rid of would the startup-movement of the layers, since they slow down the site on some computers like mad.
also, i would change the navigation in the script window, so every category remains on top (like here in the forum | Scriptographer Forum Index - Collaboration - Post a Reply)
besides that, i like the script window.
a suggestion: you could change the scructure of the scriptwindow. since people wan't to see pictures, you could make it more picture based. so you browse the pictures instead of the scriptnames/descriptions. i guess a lot of them are swamped with only the description of the script and give up to fast since they don't know what you can do with all the stuff on scriptographer.com. (imagine you're looking for illustrator-plugins, the first thing you browse for is the examples section with pictures of how they look.)
but on the other hand, i don't know if you want the people to try out the scripts themselve, so they can do it their own way instead of showing them an example and giving them the script afterwards so they can recreate.
back...
the forum is also quite nice i guess. maybe change the color (blue) to green, so it fits with the rest of the site.
if you think about going into some cms-system or php-board solution, i would keep as much of the simplicity of the current website. i've seen several completely complex and unusable community-websites based on either a php-board or a cms.
btw. http://drupal.org/ i like that one. is it used on http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ ?
one that might would fit your needs would be something like http://www.customize.org/
you got the scripts on the left side, and if you klick on it, you get some more infos incl. pictures..
ideas for implementing scripts into scriptographer:
i like the idea with the script going directly into scriptographer when clicking it on the website. but how about some kind of autoupdate, which gets the newest scripts from the website at scriptographer startup and puts them directly into the script library?
or some kind of button which lets you get the newest scripts. (for example if your on dial-up)
wouldn't be that much of a bandwith problem i guess :)
ok, thats my 2 cents :)
Thank you Pedro for all the input. I agree with you on most of the points.
The forum right now is not designed at all. I just headed for the most simple phpBB skin I could find and tried to make it even simpler without spending too much time on it.
I'm not sure on keeping the old looks of the site so far. I like the interface but I think it's too silly to be seriously used...
I think we could have some design ping pong going on for finding a nice simple interface. If you feel like it you could maybe submit a screen-design proposition, e.g. as a series of jpeg files...
Due to lack of time I cannot take care of all these things myself, that's why I'm trying to find a way of integrating other people in the process as well.
Once we have some screens to base the discussion on, things will become more concrete I guess.
http://www.spreadfirefox.com/ is built with Drupal, and it looks exactly like http://www.mozilla.org/, so I guess it's in use there as well, although there is no link to it...
Tipptopp! I'm looking forward to see some your proposals. I really appreciate your input from your last post.
I just tested drupal yesterday, and while it seems to be very nice programmed and thought through, I think it's not the right thing for us. It's too strongly centered around the idea of a user / blog / forum based publishing system.
I guess I will end up buidling something homegrown again, this time based on helma.org...
BTW: Would you like to receive a beta of the new version? It's available for CS and CS2.
i can also really only help in the form of suggestions, layout and design.
if i come up with any unique, helpful suggestion i will be sure to post them. at this time i would just like to second pedro's suggestion of keeping things clean and simple.
I currate a small online gallery and free downloadable .pdf journal called n'fold. perhaps if it would be helpful, sometime after v2 is released i would be happy to include an article on scriptographer and a collection of images produced using scriptographer. if enough people are interested in submitting work they have done with scriptographer perhaps a full issue dedicated to it.
