# What is good design? (Was: ruby-lang.org redesign?) **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [June 24, 2006, 1:37am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/what-is-good-design-was-ruby-lang-org-redesign/64308 "2006-06-24T01:37:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Josef\_SJuppS\_SCHUGT](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/f6c823/32.png) [@Josef\_SJuppS\_SCHUGT](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Josef_SJuppS_SCHUGT)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2006, 1:37am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/what-is-good-design-was-ruby-lang-org-redesign/64308/1 "2006-06-24T01:37:20Z")
Hi! At Wed, 21 Jun 2006 01:37:03 +0900, Kyrre N. wrote: > Please, DO NOT PUBLISH THE NEW RUBY WEBSITE! > > PLEASE DON’T — I REPEAT PLEASE DON’T, AGAIN, PLEASE DON’T! > > The website is a joke to the trained eye. Please let me workt out the question what this statement actually means: Obviously to _your_ trained eye the web site is a joke. I further assume that other people with equally trained eyes agree with you. Nevertheless you make two implicit assumptions: 1. Your training did not fundamentally change your perception so that your perception is still representative for the majority of users of the site. Watching “CSI” has fundamentally changed my perception of reality. I often suprise people with conclusions that make them think of ESP. 2. There is only _one_ correct training and one correct concept of good design. I were not too sure that this is so. Once the artwork of Picasso, Matisse, Klee, Kandinsky, Renoir, Degas, Cézanne, Van Gogh und Marc Chagall was called “entartete Kunst” (degenerate art) in Germany. Nobody can imagine this nowadays, can anybody? Not only depends the concept of good design on time but also on culture. People with a Zen background tend to prefer minimalism, people with an islamic background tend to prefer complex patterns and people from China tend to prefer designs that follow the principles of Feng Shui. I added the last example to illustrate that the dependence is not necessarily on religion and that the preference also is not necessarily for traits obvious at first sight. I do not say that your assumptions are wrong. I only want to point out that these assumptison _are_ made and to raise the question if all agree with them. I would go even a step further and ask: Should there be one fixed layout for all? What about having the user decide what he actually wants? One single page can have a huge multitude of looks as can e.g. be seen at > **[CSS Zen Garden: The Beauty of CSS Design](http://www.csszengarden.com/)** > > A demonstration of what can be accomplished visually through CSS-based design. Besides that I support a kaizen approach to the problem i.e. not to restart from scratch but to start with what we have and improve it step by step. It is of course positive that you point out the problem because that is the necessary first step towards solving it. Anyway, without taking actual steps to solve it (or at least suggesting them) the issue will remain unsolved so that the only result of your contribution is dissatisfaction. Having said this let me point out what I find the most annyoing issue of the new design. It is the code example. 1. I encounter a line breaks in the code (occurs both in Firefox and Opera). This should not be the fact. 2. There is a space for at least three lines after the final. Depending on the code that is displayed (modifying it permanently IMHO is not a good idea) there is a rather huge empty space below the last line of code. 3. The dark blue background of the code crosses the boundary between the light blue background of the “Ruby is…” region and the white background of “The future of Ruby” and ends slightly below it. It results in the impression that the area at the boundary of blue and white is flickering. Making the area larger or smaller so that it either extends further into the white area or remains in the blue one would remove this effect. 4. The edges. the NW and SE edge are curved while the NE and SW one are real edges. I think that this is the worst of all possible arrangements. I think that one should change the arrangement (even interchanging edges and curves would do). But that is only one possible solution. It were also possible to give the dark blue field a shape like a hysteresis (i.e. add opposite curves where edges are at the moment): [Hysteresis - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteresis) Additional remark: “say” is the output command of REXX. This can lead to confusion. These were just my 2 Euro cent. Josef ‘Jupp’ Schugt