Subject: Re: Darwin Day Celebration design opportunities

From: David Harris <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 06 Jul 2006 01:24:18 +0000

Dear Arun,

I did some exploring on the Web sites you've worked on, and the visual 
elements are very attractive.  Your study of graphic communication is 
apparent.  And it appears that you enjoy the field you're in.

If you're able to help the Darwin Day project with some volunteer Web 
work, we'd be quite grateful.  I suspect we can learn from you about the 
best use of Cascading Style Sheets and Dreamweaver Templates, which you 
seem to understand.

There is a particular need for some Web graphic work that you might do 
sometime soon, which would help us a great deal.  The particulars follow:

I have organized the DarwinDay.org remote Web site with a prototype 
developmental area called NEWlang, where I do public testing of new or 
revised pages, using English.  For our new effort to have the pages 
available in many languages, I copy the NEWlang  (most recent version) 
into a parallel trees of pages under a SECRET name that is only to be 
used by a translator, but one of these secret trees would also work as a 
place for you to design and develop improved Web pages.  I thought that 
the tools available to EVERYONE, no matter how economically limited, are 
(1) the old File Transfer Protocol (FTP), (2) a basic text editor, and 
(3) a browser like Firefox.  The suggested mode of work is to copy a 
page from the secret area using FTP, make edits on it to translate or 
develop,  put a copy back onto the DarwinDay.org site by use of the FTP 
program, and test the result by browsing to that page with Firefox.  If 
you have better tools, such as Dreamweaver, you could  work on a local 
version of a page before using the Dreamweaver PUT command to return the 
page to the secret tree of pages.  When a translator is satisfied with 
the way the page looks, he or she can place it in a special directory of 
the secret tree, where a Linux program on the remote Web hosting machine 
(HostRocket.com) will execute every 5 minutes, looking for any files in 
the special directory and moving them to a PUBLIC version of the tree 
which gradually will have its English pages replaced by translated pages.

I am still working on the directions for the translators, but you 
probably understand what I am proposing.

If you are willing, I'd like you to work on the fundamental main 
Template page to "take apart" the template WORDS from the template 
GRAPHIC elements.  That is, we currently have graphic elements that for 
reasons of efficiency have colors like deep red and deep blue and 
embedded in the same element as some English text, such as "DNA IS AT 
THE HEART OF EVOLUTION".  Similarly the Navigation bar (navbar) probably 
has the English embedded into the navbar buttons.  Indeed the navbar may 
be an area where the location of the click has to be treated as a number 
and the right jump taken.  And the navbar is sort of automatically 
duplicated twice more going down the home page.  And the "Darwin Day 
Celebration" in large letters is part of a graphic with two lines of 
English.  It would  help greatly if you would make the graphic parts act 
as background, and have the English be overlaid as opaque characters.  
This separation would allow the translators to change only the English 
text, but their translated words would overlay the same background 
elements.  Could you do that?

Another thing that would be nice is a way of displaying the languages as 
flags, since people who hit our home page but don't read English might 
not recognize the significance of the word "Languages" nor happen to 
click on the spinning earth image.  Any ideas on that?

Feel free to ask questions if my intent isn't clear.  And thank you 
again for your willingness to work with us on the Darwin Day Web site.

  - David Harris, System Developer at DarwinDay.org
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

[email-masked] wrote:
>  
>   
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Subject:
> Re: Darwin Day Celebration
> From:
> [email-masked]
> Date:
> Fri, 23 Jun 2006 20:00:20 EDT
> To:
> [email-masked]
>
> To:
> [email-masked]
> CC:
> [email-masked]
>
>
> Dear Arun:
>
> I'm pleased with your reply and the person you will be working with is 
> David Harris who is our tech person. He will understand more about all 
> aspects of our website than I do -- I'm an old guy who had the dream 
> of a Darwin Day Celebration but I'm not a tech guy!
>
> The next step that I'd like take however, is to see some of your work 
> -- would you be kind enough to send us some samples or refer us to 
> things on the net that we can go to that are representative of your 
> work? People who have commented on our website have been very 
> complimentary about its appearance so I'm eager to have you explain or 
> demonstrate what it is that you would like to change. Perhaps you 
> could redo something that is on our website that you would regard as a 
> significant improvement?
>
> I'm very interested in moving ahead because we can use the type of 
> assistance you are offering and we look forward to working with you.
>
> Best Wishes;
> Bob
>
>
>
> In a message dated 6/23/06 10:38:44 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
> [email-masked] writes:
>
>> Dear Bob,
>>
>> Thank you for your prompt reply. I am pleased to know that I can be 
>> of help.
>>
>> I live at India so I may not be able to come personally to your 
>> premises and work. But I can work from here, and we could communicate 
>> via email and voice chat. I am familiar with Dreamweaver and the 
>> following softwares as well: Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, Maya, 
>> InDesign, and more.
>>
>> Although I'm from India, I'm not really good enough at Hindi or other 
>> Indian languages to be able to translate the website. However, I can 
>> refer you to people who will be able to do that.
>>
>> I can also help you with designing things like posters, banners, 
>> stickers, newsletters, advertisements, business cards, envelopes, 
>> letterheads, etc besides designing websites. I'm also involved in 
>> film-making (documentaries and short films) and I could provide you 
>> with consultancy in this area.
>>
>> Personally, I feel that the look and feel of the website can be 
>> improved a lot. Perhaps we could discuss about it.
>>
>> I might as well be able to join you there for the 200th Darwin Day 
>> celebrations!
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Arun
>>
>>
>
>