rajawali3d.org

[ToxicBakery]

DECISIONS WILL BE MADE SOON ON A SITE, MAKE SURE YOU CHECK OUT THE MOCKUPS AS THE WEEK GOES ON AND LEAVE YOUR FEEDBACK Mockups for new site

As you may know we are moving to put the project in a more organized state. Part of this organization effort is to create a website that better supports all of the useful documentation for the Engine. As such we need a plan on what the site should look like and what functions it will serve.

Status

• What features must the site have, we need to answer this before we can move forward at all. Requirements requirements requirements!
• How do we edit pages, what limitations are we bound to? I am guessing that the site is limited to HTML only so we can not run any server side goodness.
• How should the site look? This will likely be a process of finding some candidates and slowly narrowing it down to something we can all, or just Dennis, agree on.

Requirements

• A list of features, particularly those that make Rajawali stand out. For me being 4.0+ and no NDK makes Rajawali immensely attractive now.
• A general breakdown of how the rendering process in Rajawali is intended to work
• Host the wiki? Or should this stay put?

Overall

• A simple, uncluttered layout. Responsive (mobile/desktop friendly).
• Small Rajawali logo (top left)
• Menu at the top (top right) (Gallery, Tutorials, Documentation, Issues, Team)
• Light colours
• Google AdSense integration

Homepage

• Short description of the framework with some of the key features (4.0+, no NDK, ES 2.0, etc)
• 6 or 8 square images of the most beautiful Rajawali apps/wallpapers. With a link to the complete gallery.
• "Start building 3D content now" with a link to Github (tags & unstable version w/ disclaimer)
• Icons w/ short description + links to same items as menu (Gallery, Tutorials, Documentation, Issues)

Gallery

• Square tiles with links to Google Play. Clean, simple layout

Documentation

• JavaDoc but sexier than it currently is, well integrated with the site

Issues

• Basically just links to the Github Issues page

Team

• Team profiles. Avatar, short description, role + social media links.

Mods, feel free to edit this post as needed to add clarity or update as progress is made.

[MasDennis]

They're all plain old HTML pages. It is a regular Github repository as well: https://github.com/MasDennis/masdennis.github.com
@ToxicBakery @jayschwa @AndrewJo are added as collaborators on this project.
I'll think about site structure when I find the time.
I also come from a web background so I'll certainly do my share.

[ToxicBakery]

The HTML only was expected. That should not be an issue though. I think the requirements of the site are really the biggest concern as we can not move forward without know exactly what it needs to support.

[jwoolston]

Wow I missed a lot while I was sleeping. My background is much more bare metal than web so I'm afraid I've got nothing to offer for help here other than aesthetic opinion. Perhaps its a bit obvious, but I have consistently found the android developer site to be very efficient for my needs. http://developer.android.com/develop/index.html

[jwoolston]

Do we want to have the tutorials on this site rather than the wiki?

Some obvious requirements:

• A list of features, particularly those that make Rajawali stand out. For me being 4.0+ and no NDK makes Rajawali immensely attractive now.
• A general breakdown of how the rendering process in Rajawali is intended to work

[jwoolston]

As far as what it should look like, I vote initially that we not mimic libGDX on this one, or any other graphics library...we should set ourselves apart that much more.

[ToxicBakery]

I'm down for whatever but this is going to be some work for sure.

[jwoolston]

I agree. I know only enough about web dev to get myself into serious trouble remarkably fast.

[jwoolston]

What about a description of how our release method works now (tags, master unstable, etc.). Also, a change log for the tags.

[jwoolston]

Given the immensity of the undertaking, I certainly don't mind writing content to help take some load off.

[peterskeetero]

I see Dennis already registered the domain...very cool. If anyone wants a hand here or there just ask..I do a bit of web/php site stuff in various ways...happy to help if needed..
Pete

[MasDennis]

@peterskeetero thanks! Your help is very much appreciated. We're all very busy at the moment developing new features for the engine so help with the web stuff is more than welcome.

I'll have a think about the structure of the site over the weekend. If you have any ideas yourself then please share 👍

[alenko]

Well my programing started at WEB as well, after then i went onto java and sql. If need help, i am here for it;)

[ToxicBakery]

Yep, we have plenty of talent available for building a site including myself. My main concerns are still standing though, until we know exactly what the site needs to contain we will just be building a site and figuring out the content later. This rarely ever produces a good result in my experience.

Also working government contracts, requirements always come first. Until you know exactly what you are making you can not start making it. This is why I am so bent on it. It is an annoying process but it does work.

[MasDennis]

I finally found some time to come up with some requirements for the site. I've added them to the original post. Please give your feedback and additions.

I would prefer a simple & clean website with light colours. There should be eye candy on the homepage but not an explosion of eye candy. Just a nice overview that gives the right amount of information. It should express ease of use, should look friendly and modern.

[jwoolston]

@MasDennis 👍 I like it. Pretty javadoc gets my vote as well. I love the android javadoc site. When you say a link to GitHub, do you want it to go to the main page, or separate links for tags, and master?

[ToxicBakery]

I think this is a good start, thank you for making the list Dennis. From here, I believe we should move to create a few mockups. A mockup can be a functioning page or just an image. How about we permit everyone 7 days from today to propose ideas at which time we will decide on the most ideal and critique it from there until we feel it can meet all of the requirements.

[jwoolston]

How about we permit everyone 7 days from today to propose ideas

I'll start a timer ⌚

[MasDennis]

Sweet. Lets get this party started.

I've created a quick mock up to show you what I had in my mind. Relentless criticism is more than welcome.

[jwoolston]

Much as I would love to give relentless criticism, I have no complaints. No slide show animation on the cards though huh? Where would the see more link go?

[fselvatici]

Looks nice!
I would add a Roadmap and release plan in some place.
Maybe the images could be showed with a component like http://www.blendercookie.com/ or in http://www.blendtuts.com/ (images + text) or in http://www.zkoss.org/

[MasDennis]

@jwoolston good idea, maybe the whole grid could slide to the left to show the next 8 tiles. "See more" would go to the complete list of apps & wallpapers that are made with Rajawali.

@fselvatici a Roadmap is a good idea. Also, the blendtuts.com component is actually quite nice. I like that I gives a bit more information.
The reason why I chose the grid however was to give a feeling of "many apps have been created using Rajawali". That type of thing.
Maybe some information could be shown when rolling over a tile. Just a thought.

[jwoolston]

The reason why I chose the grid however was to give a feeling of "many apps have been created using Rajawali". That type of thing.

I can understand that. I feel like something dynamic there might be a nice touch though. What if it was just a 'random' replacement of individual tiles to cycle through all the images we have?

I also feel like a roadmap would be good to have. Perhaps this can go with a page for details as well?

[fselvatici]

Ok. I agree with the idea.
Maybe you can show the best points of Rajawali in the "blendtuts" way. And a mosaic with the "made with Rajawali".
But not in the same screen i think.

Just ideas....

[Davhed]

This has a pleasant roll-over effect on each image tile.

[MasDennis]

@Davhed I like that effect.

[ToxicBakery]

https://github.com/MasDennis/Rajawali/wiki/Mockups-for-new-site

This may be easier than filling up this thread with images. Only downside is the images have to be hosted somewhere so your mileage may vary. If anyone is unable to host an image just shoot me an email and I'll throw it on my server for you.

[jwoolston]

Hmmm, I really like the dark theming of B.

[AndrewJo]

That's why I sorta added in the Nexus 7 and Nexus 4 in the mock-up. Also the text "The most comprehensive OpenGL ES 2.0 Framework for Android"

[androidder]

I d like the D version mobil site and the E version with nexus mobil.
I am a web developer too about 8 years so when I have some time I will help in this.

[MasDennis]

That's why I sorta added in the Nexus 7 and Nexus 4 in the mock-up.

I was thinking about this and despite what I said before I actually think it is a good idea to put in some devices. Just not that big. A couple of small ones like a tablet, regular phone, maybe even an Ouya.

I think most love goes out to version E. Maybe we should start concentrating on this one and start refining it.

So who is actually interested in designing it and/or building it?

[androidder]

I just made a clone from D, and E:) G

[ToxicBakery]

=P

Jokes aside, that one is pretty good.

[jwoolston]

Jokes aside, that one is pretty good.

I agree, it takes some of the best elements of each I think. @ToxicBakery can we replace all the mockups on this page with links? I dont know how image storage with github works. People weren't paying attention to your suggestion 😉

After thinking about it and reading other changing opinions, we should have a device. The size I feel should be reasonably large to catch attention but not so large as to compete with our tag line of Pure Java, etc.

Also, Ian, when you create your bio, it needs to say something about being the chief of MEMEs for Rajawali.

[ToxicBakery]

Ian Thomas
Lead Meme Coordinator

[Davhed]

Executive Meme Coordinator in my opinion

[Davhed]

I noticed that you are all using Lorem Ipsum to greek up your sites... you are way behind the times... you really should be using this. =D

[ToxicBakery]

Pssh.. I make my own bullshit generators
https://plus.google.com/photos/117877053554468827150/albums/posts/5827916988363027426

[Davhed]

bows I'm not worthy

[ToxicBakery]

Two days left kids, if you're gonna bring out something awesome you need to get on it!

[alenko]

I vote for E, mybe cuz i saw @AndrewJo 's earth there? xD

But yeah, its nice colored web page, or mybe to much colors :)

[debryan]

I have been lurking around for few months, trying to get a feel of the engine and its associated community. I like what I see. I used Rajawali to get a taste of 3D wallpaper development but have shelved the idea temporarily since the engine seems to be in a rapid flux of development, which is a sign that many good things will come out of it.

A centralised site with news, discussion forums,release downloads, documentation, tutorials and showcase will do a lot to make Rajawali popular among developers.

Building such a site in pure HTML without any server side language such as PHP will be hard and almost impossible to maintain.

If we are taking votes, I vote for WordPress for maintaining the site and PHP bb or SMF for discussion forums.

This is something I have a plenty of experience with and I am willing to spend time on.

I am not being altruistic since a stable Rajawali engine with complete documentation and tutorials will help developers like me down the road.

BTW. I speak English as my third language so please excuse any grammatical errors or spelling mistake that may have crept in.

[debryan]

I will prepare a mockup in the morning and submit it.

[jwoolston]

@debryan looking forward to it. We havnt had any new mock ups for a while.

[ToxicBakery]

@debryan as the engine grows so will the site. Right now, static HTML will be sufficient. If and when that is outgrown , we will consider a migration to a proper CMS solution. Most of what we need to provide right now is static or auto generated (javadoc). We have no interest in a support forum currently, based on the lack of any suggestions for one, and honestly I would fight against a desire to create one. Stackoverflow is a considerably better platform than any forum system we could implement, manage, or maintain.

[MasDennis]

Hi @debryan

Thanks for your input. Good to hear that you like what you see. We've been working very hard to make the next version of Rajawali much better. So hearing your positive feedback is great.

We were considering a static html site because this is what Github pages offers. You get version controlled html pages and it makes it a lot easier to collaborate. It is nice to keep things in one place.

Your English is very good actually! Especially for a third language. Don't worry too much about that please :) English is not my first language either.

[ToxicBakery]

I suppose we can wait for @debryan to submit a mockup. Lets say tomorrow night we close this thread and make a vote thread unless we want to just go based on the votes already in this thread which seem like they would be hard to tally.

Assuming this is the direction you even want to go, its really up to you @MasDennis .

[jwoolston]

Works for me!

On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 2:16 PM, Ian Thomas notifications@github.comwrote:

I suppose we can wait for @debryan https://github.com/debryan to submit
a mockup. Lets say tomorrow night we close this thread and make a vote
thread unless we want to just go based on the votes already in this thread
which seem like they would be hard to tally.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/634#issuecomment-17905881
.

---

Jared Woolston
Tenkiv, LLC.
(916) 416-2357 (cell)
jwoolston@tenkiv.com

[MasDennis]

@ToxicBakery I'm perfectly happy with this.

[jwoolston]

@ToxicBakery since you are the one heading up this issue I say we leave it to you to close and create a voting thread.

[ToxicBakery]

Sounds like a plan.

[debryan]

Submitted a mock up https://github.com/MasDennis/Rajawali/wiki/Mockups-for-new-site#h . Based on Flexapp and Bootstrap framework. Easy to use and very extensible. Screenshots can be easily added. Template is jquery enabled. The phone and tablet image is something I have been using for some time and I tweaked it for this example.

[ToxicBakery]

Nice. I'll get the voting thread up in a bit.

[MasDennis]

Thanks for submitting your mock up @debryan I really like it! Nice & clean.

Let the voting begin!!