New Celestia Website Web Design

[nielsulrikreinwald]

Hi,

The last design for http://www.celestiaproject.net/celestia/ was done in 2005 and nicely.

I thought it was time for a remake so I made this: http://nur.homelinux.com/celestia/

I tried emailed Chris but email bounces back.

If the admins like it I will email you a ZIP with all the site files ready to upload. Using PHP template files so easy to make new pages and update existing.

Let me know what you think.

The web design is free no charge. I am a web and graphics designer.

Contact me at nureinwald@gmail.com

Celestia (20100701).jpg

Kindest
Niels Ulrik Reinwald
Fan of Celestia

[t00fri]

Niels,

thanks for the work! Incidentally, Celestia's longstanding webdesign was also done by a graphics designer (Runar Thorvaldsen).

Here are some personal impressions about your new design proposal:

• Why is the link http://nur.homelinux.com/celestia/ so slow in building up your new pages ? Your machine?
  
  
• I think the top image is far too crowded, notably as to the interference of Hubble with the left-hand part of the textual Celestia heading. The latter clearly deserves big emphasis
  
  
  
  
• The screenshot gallery should largely be redone. It's really overdue. (not your fault )
  
  
• Personally, I would enjoy a somewhat more scientific touch as to the entire image decoration. The present one reminds me more of the intro for some SciFi space saga (e.g. bottom background image)...
  
  To be more precise: what is entirely missing in your design proposal --unlike the present design-- is a graphical allusion to Celestia's outstanding accuracy in celestial mechanics etc. (note the antique coordinate grid in the present design's background). The scientific-level accuracy, however, forms a major design aspect of Celestia...
  
  
• Why did you modify the Copyright statement as compared to the present one? Chris Laurel is a member of Celestia's Development Team. Hence writing "Copyright Chris Laurel and the Celestia Development Team" reads strange...

Fridger

[selden]

The proposed Web design itself should be copyright by Niels, unless it is explicitly reassigned to someone else.

[selden]

It looks to me like part of the slowness is caused by having several separate graphical elements drawn in the header of the front page. Presumably it would be drawn much more quickly if a single image were used..

[John Van Vliet]

--- edit ---

[nielsulrikreinwald]

Hi

I am hosting Celestia nur.homelinux.com/celestia on my iMac with an outbound speed of only 512kb per second. That makes it slow.

Thank you for your comments. I will have a closer look and think over your good ideas and incorporate some of them. Very difficult to do it all right in a mockup. Great to get feedback.

Let us see what Chris has to say.

I will for sure make some new screenshots as it is overdue also.

More later and please give comments to the design etc. so we can get it rocking. I would like to just transfer the copyright to Chris or someone else and I would only like to display that I made it perhaps with a link to my own website. Minimal that is. I want focus on Celestia not me.

Neil

[nielsulrikreinwald]

"Why did you modify the Copyright statement as compared to the present one? Chris Laurel is a member of Celestia's Development Team. Hence writing "Copyright Chris Laurel and the Celestia Development Team" reads strange..."

I noticed that on the frontpage he has "Celestia is Copyright (C) 2001-2008, Celestia Development Team"
http://www.celestiaproject.net/celestia/

Then on http://www.celestiaproject.net/celestia/download.html he has "Celestia is Copyright (C) 2001-2005, Chris Laurel"

They both link to his email.

So the one I made is just a merge. Can change if Chris wants that.

Neil

[nielsulrikreinwald]

I would also suggest loading the new web site into Wordpress CMS so some could be assigned as Admins and write new content on a regular basis.

In fact I would do this for free for Celestia. Very easy and once set up we create some Admins and content managers etc. so the new website would be updated nicely once in a while.

Once and if you decide a new web site design is needed and a design has been chosen I would be more than happy to load Wordpress and all the files to make the new web site function better for users and Admins.

Neil

[t00fri]

Neil,

since Chris is running the shatters.net site, its appearance or possible modification is largely his decision.

But as concerns myself (a longstanding Celestia co-author and developer), I am afraid I can't see any elements in your present design proposal that I would so far consider superior to Runar's proven design. Here is another significant example:

From the antique celestial grid background of the original design, you copied these four constellation names ,

Cassiopea Cepheus URSA Minor DRACO,

right underneath the main Celestia title line. In this form that line makes no sense whatsoever. This clearly indicates that your "relation" to Celestia must (still) be rather "superficial"... A good design, however, will significantly profit from a thorough understanding of what Celestia is all about.

Last not least: Since a long time, the plan exists to aim for a stylish, newly designed "facelift" of this phpbb forum, integrated into the shatters.net site. Like e.g. it was done already in case of our own CelestialMatters (CM) site and forum that were also designed by our Celestia friend Runar Thorvaldsen (Runar and myself are the hosts of the CM site).

http://www.celestialmatters.org/
http://forum.celestialmatters.org/

Fridger

[nielsulrikreinwald]

Quote:

"Neil,

since Chris is running the shatters.net site, its appearance or possible modification is largely his decision.

But as concerns myself (a longstanding Celestia co-author and developer), I am afraid I can't see any elements in your present design proposal that I would so far consider superior to Runar's proven design. Here is another significant example:

From the antique celestial grid background of the original design, you copied these four constellation names ,

Cassiopea Cepheus URSA Minor DRACO,

right underneath the main Celestia title line. In this form that line makes no sense whatsoever. This clearly indicates that your "relation" to Celestia must (still) be rather "superficial"... A good design, however, will significantly profit from a thorough understanding of what Celestia is all about.

Last not least: Since a long time, the plan exists to aim for a stylish, newly designed "facelift" of this phpbb forum, integrated into the shatters.net site. Like e.g. it was done already in case of our own CelestialMatters (CM) site and forum that were also designed by our Celestia friend Runar Thorvaldsen (Runar and myself are the hosts of the CM site).

http://www.celestialmatters.org/
http://forum.celestialmatters.org/

Fridger"


As they say - keep something old to make them happy. So I left that tagline and if you don't like it why is it still on the current website that Runar made after 5 years of no updating etc etc. Some links are dead and the design is nice that is all - nice.

Let me see if I get this right; Runar used an old map with the headline and tagline "Cassiopea Cepheus URSA Minor DRACO" which you tell me has no significance to Celestia. Why in the World did he put it there in the first place?

I like this one: "A good design, however, will significantly profit from a thorough understanding of what Celestia is all about.". A kid might like Celestia and would "understand" Celestia from his/her viewpoint - not the right viewpoint since there is absolutely no right viewpoint. An old man 110 years old would understand it differently. A science person would understand it differently. The web design can be made in any number of ways and to satisfy all we might need to do at least 10 different styles.

The current website is nice - as said. Not updated 5+ years which makes it not nice in itself.

I take criticism very serious and your critic is near no critic so I don't take it professionally serious. However to blow away some dust I need to reply and make a few points clear:

a) I understand Celestia as:
".. The free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions. Celestia runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

Unlike most planetarium software, Celestia doesn't confine you to the surface of the Earth. You can travel throughout the solar system, to any of over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy.
All movement in Celestia is seamless; the exponential zoom feature lets you explore space across a huge range of scales, from galaxy clusters down to spacecraft only a few meters across. A 'point-and-goto' interface makes it simple to navigate through the universe to the object you want to visit.
Celestia is expandable. Celestia comes with a large catalog of stars, galaxies, planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and spacecraft. If that's not enough, you can download dozens of easy to install add-ons with more objects."

b) A web design can never - I repeat never - satisfy all. Some like it hot - some like it not hot. But that is not wrong.

c) Keeping old elements are good like some of the stuff I left in there like the Hubble telescope and that old map. History, future and present depicted is a nice touch. Not necessary but nice.

d) Keeping the design looking fresh and "game"-like makes it accessible to most. Making it scientific... well, make it like Fracint - http://spanky.triumf.ca/www/fractint/fractint.html - nice, yes? Boring, yes? I do not personally believe making it only scientific would appeal to most and I believe the "science" way is good but what is a scientific looking web site design?

e) I like this one: "Runar's proven design". Right, proven for 5 years non updated. It has proven its point as being standing there with no updates which is perhaps a record in Internet history. Might write to Guinness Book Of Records on this one.

f) I believe in competition but so far I see non. If Runar or you can provide some updates and/or better design I would love to see it.

g) http://www.celestialmatters.org/. What has "Mona Lisa" (Painting by Leonardo da Vinci) got to do with Celestia and Space? Was Leonardo an astronomer? Was leonardo an artist? Almost any reference to Space can be made from any item or symbol. Space/Universe is everything hence even an ant could be depicted and give meaning.

h) I shall remove that old map which Runar probably copied from http://www.lindahall.org/services/digit ... 20017w.jpg

Is Fridger a name or an alias?

Kindest
Niels Ulrik Reinwald

[t00fri]

Neil,

just a few short replying remarks.

• Updating the current Celestia site here and there after 5 years of running, is an entirely different task from a completely new design, as you propose. By comparing with your new proposal, I don't see much motivation for giving up Runar's nice graphical layout. This may change, of course, with other proposals...
  
  Above, I already gave some arguments why your new design-proposal does not impress me much in terms of originality, graphics layout and style etc. Perhaps others will disagree. That's perfectly fine with me.
  
  
• Runar has been an active member of the Celestia community since many years. Thus clearly, he had a far more concise view than a newcomer about how e.g. the Celestia authors/developers might want Celestia to present itself towards the outside world. I thought you understand this point right away...
  
  
• Mona Lisa is the "boss" of our CM site with a very complex "personality", though . She also stands for the fact that our CM site is not just another Celestia site, but is also open to various forms of art, for example. See here:
  
  http://www.celestialmatters.org/?q=node/70
  
  Anyhow, be assured that we spent a few thoughts before "employing" her...
  
  
• Yes, Fridger is a (rare) firstname

Fridger

[nielsulrikreinwald]

Hi Fridger,

I always like a good toss with the ball and get some new pointers. Let us see...

1) A new design would need something totally new and original. "Mona Lisa" is very original - that be the original - that is. And the current web design by Runar with a copy+paste backdrop is very original I must say. No original thinking there. Now, on the other hand, I have incorporated some overlays and different "lights" using color dodge to enhance - not improve Celestia - graphics.

2) Newcomers. Right, what is a newcomer? http://www.thefreedictionary.com/newcomer.
So, you are absolutely wrong. Well, I came to celestiaproject.net/celestia about 5+ years ago and have participated on the board a few times since then. I forget now - was it before the current web design I got to know Celestia, yes. I believe it was as far back as before year 2000 but unfortunately I have forgotten this apparent now vital information.

3) Quote: "completely new design, as you propose". Where the f... have I proposed that may I ask? Are you a blind man - sorry then. If you must quote me can you then interpret right and not wrong.

4) Humbug - here I am making a suggestion free of charge and then jealous men pops out of the bushes.

5) Speak of a bloody turn off and go make your own darn web design.

So, there be it. I will leave it with this and forget about it. No need to fiddle around with this when people get personal and don't stay on track.

I really do hope the next update or bloody new web design will really, REALLY, satisfy your soul wherever it might have been forgotten.

Oh, and can you list just 3 thoughts you might have had employing "Mona Lisa" on your own website (http://www.celestialmatters.org/). Did you steal that graphics from somewhere as well. "Mona Lisa" you can copy but not the photo. And can you please let me know why you put "employing" in quotes - are you unsure of what other word to use? Then I might - just might - be assured. But you need to document that indeed they where "employed" at the time of creative creation and not in heinseit - otherwise keep your thought for yourself.

"We do, however, welcome criticism, opinions and feedback in general from our visitors." This is a copy/paste quote from: http://www.celestialmatters.org/?q=node/70. See, now we are getting far, far away and I believe this has nothing to do with the current topic. So let me be clear about one thing that if indeed you want the current web design to stay there untouched or whatever just say so.

G God almighty.

[t00fri]

Neil,

I have written what I had to say. You seem to be out for confrontation with me. So it's better I stop here.

I am sure others -- perhaps our native English speakers -- can express their impressions in a "smoother" manner than me. Sorry.

Fridger

• PS: According to the logfile, you joined this forum yesterday, Thu Jul 01, 2010 8:29 ,
  Hence, calling you a "newcomer" in the Celestia community doesn't sound too incorrect.
  Celestia did not exist before 2000. I joined the community in spring 2001. If you were
  already a shatters.net member 5+ years ago, why did you pick a new user name
  yesterday?? What was your old user name? I will certainly remember it.
  
  
• PPS: We made sure of course that Mona Lisa's photo was in the PD. There are a number of
  copyright exempts for images of historical art of public interest. Same for the historical
  celestial grid that forms the background of Runar's Celestia-site design. It's from this
  famous source: The John Flamsteed Celestial Atlas of 1776, which bears a close
  relation to Celestia's scientific standing ...
  
  http://www.lindahall.org/services/digit ... 6_07.shtml
  
  Be assured that nothing was stolen from anywhere.

[Guckytos]

Sighhhh!!

Adminmode OFF

Now just my couple of thoughts as normal user on this now ended thread as it seems.

A) I basically like Runar's design. Only thing is that the content boxes are too small for 2010.

B) the header of the new design was way too crowded. The hubble on it was overkill.

C) "Cassipoeia ..." had definitely something to do with the design and Celestia, as this line describes what is found on the background image. And the are these four constellations in a beautiful drawing. Whereas in the proposed new design they were just standing around without any connection to anything.

Adminmode ON

But I think it would be a good idea to think about moving the official Celestia site to another software and have some people that can change/update parts of it. So it would be more up to date on the information side.

Regards,

Guckytos

[t00fri]

Hi Christian,

your three points A) B) and C) are identical to mine above ...

Fridger

[Boux]

Love this thread.
Go on guys...