IMSLP Forums

I couldn't find an appropriate forum for this, so please feel free to move it wherever you think it should be.

Can we not make the newly-added "Browse Musical Works" section on the main page look better? With a tiny little bit of CSS we can a) make the whole boxes a button, with a highlighted background, b) center the text, c) decrease the line spacing so it looks neater, d) style the box outline so it doesn't look so 90's.

Unfortunately I have neither access to the main page's code or any of the CSS files, but I feel it is quite annoying that the rest of the site looks so neat and we have this clunky bit on our main page.. :S

Well now you do have access to the Main Page and CSS (google Mediawiki CSS; the important ones are Common.css and Mediawiki.css I think).

Incidentally you are also the first user with the "sitedesigner" permissions that I put in a long time ago.

It's userbox time!

fantastic (that was easy!) - ok, I'll give it a try in a bit and see what I can do.

thanks a lot!

cool, that's what I came up with: http://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page - any suggestions are more than welcome.

I personally don't like the formatting of "Scores" and "Recordings" - I think they look too crude. Also, I understand if people don't like the rounded edges (should work on firefox, opera, safari and chrome - not sure about IE8 but it definitely doesn't work in the older versions) as the rest of the website doesn't have a rounded-edge look to it, but that's easy to remove.

I was thinking maybe a half-transparent background image on each of the buttons with a little indication of the link (e.g. a clock or calendar for "time period", a flag for "nationality", a lot of names for "name", a few instruments for "instrumentation" etc.)

also I would like feedback on whether this works on other browsers and platforms - so far it seems to work on firefox and safari on macs.

On Google Chrome the new table turns into an unformatted list.

On IE8 the table is there, but no rounded corners in sight.

These are the only two browsers I use, so I'm not sure how it's supposed to look

@Jujimufu: Very cool! I agree with the background image idea.

By too crude, do you mean the recent additions list? I'm actually in the process of improving it. If you want it to look different, simply send me the wiki markup code (or even HTML if wiki markup is impossible) that you want, and I will implement it. Do note that it is possible (and probably a good idea) to show the performer name for the recordings.

Keep up the good work! Ask me if you need anything.

@Davydov: Try forcing an uncached version of the page by reloading the page, or if that doesn't work, removing all cached pages in the preferences.

@feldmahler: no no, I meant my own text on top of the boxes - maybe use a different shade of grey or something?

@davydov: it's sad how after 15 years of IE they still haven't implemented support for elementary web design principles and features. apparently IE9 will be fully compatible with css3, but there are still lots of people (and libraries, schools, office computers) out there which use earlier versions of IE. bah.


Talking about the main page content - maybe we should have less data and more information. at the moment there are a lot of statistics (how many works, scores, recordings, composers, performers there are), plus featured music, plus recent score additions, plus recent recording additions, plus the news with all the milestones and everything, and when it comes to some actual information about the site, there is very little written on the front page..

On one hand, not having too much on the first page is good (gives a quick impression and is succinct) but on the other hand I imagine it might be a bit frustrating for people who want to get to know a bit more about IMSLP without having to browse through tens of different pages. I guess I can't put myself in their shoes because I know much about imslp already so to me (or any of you, I guess) a lack of information on the front page doesn't strike me as there isn't anything I'd like to know about imslp when visiting the front page.

Maybe we could shorten the News section (why do we need the last 10 milestones on the front page anyway? let's keep it to 4-5 news items or something), and we can add something like a "did you know?" section, with little-known facts about particular compositions, relations between compositions ("did you know that the second movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto No.23 uses very similar material to Bach's 25th variation from the Goldberg Variations?" - with links to the respective recordings and scores, so people can actually see this, etc).

I also think it would be better to have fewer items in the Featured Scores section, but change them more often, than the other way around. We could also have a "buffer" page, with a queue for Featured Scores, so people could add scores on that list to be featured soon (mainly for editors, not for the general audience). 2 or 3 featured scores would be fantastic, I think.

I generally think we should make IMSLP a more interesting/fun place to visit in the first place, not just a reference space of an entirely dry and librarean nature.

imslp wrote:@Davydov: Try forcing an uncached version of the page by reloading the page, or if that doesn't work, removing all cached pages in the preferences.

Yes, that cleared it in Chrome, and I can now see the table with the rounded corners.

I agree with much of what you said.

I'll just chime in and give my 2c. As I mentioned in my journal entry, I think the key to designing high-traffic pages like the Main Page is simplicity and intuitiveness. I think the shortcoming of the current main page is that 1) it is still too cluttered with stuff that doesn't need to be there (even after I cut out the entire contributing section), and 2) as a result it is not immediately intuitive.

I think two things can be done to solve this problem: 1) remove the unnecessary stuff, and 2) design the page (by adding graphics, making it prettier, etc) such that people will easily understand the page without having to read everything.

Regarding information about IMSLP, I would do a few things: 1) word-smith the introduction such that it conveys the most amount of information about IMSLP in as few words as possible, 2) put the details on a separate page linked to by the Main Page. That way we don't have to clutter the Main Page, plus people who are curious about the details can find everything on a single separate page.

I like the "Did you know?" idea, but am a little concerned that there aren't enough items to fill the spot while still being fresh...

I think a big priority would just be to have as little unformatted text on the page as possible, e.g. to use design to convey the same information. Sort of like what happened with the browse section. E.g. perhaps we can even format the news or recent additions sections to make them prettier.

Please do feel free to ignore any part of this rambling if it is not helpful!

I completely agree with what you said I was actually quite impressed with the trimming of the Contributing section on the main page. Although it feels a bit frustrating that there is a whole section on the main page dedicated to one line of text!

I really like the idea of using design to convey information to visitors instead of plain text. I think we should take a look at main pages of popular wikisites to see how they've done it and get some ideas. How about a poll/survey? We could ask questions like "which of the following features would you like to see on the IMSLP main page?" and/or get them to suggest their own. Or things like, ask them if they think there is too much/too little information on the main page, stuff like that. Is it possible to set up a questionnaire/survey through wiki, or would we have to use an external site like surveymonkey?

With the "Did you know?" we don't necessarily have to get into such detail as my previous example - it could be something as simple as "did you know that today Brahms would turn 177?" or "Today was the day Mozart married his first wife", or "Did you know that Mozart never finished his Requiem, and it was his student yada yada". There's lots of little bits like that we can add daily, or every few days. I can be responsible for it for the first few months, if you want, until we get more people interested/active in it.

Opinionated rambling:
As regards the introduction, I think the second paragraph should be removed entirely as it doesn't seem amazingly relevant to what the site really is. It could go in a subpage somewhere, I suppose. The 'Contributing' section should also be removed entirely, as it's too far down for a supposedly important part of the page, and the remaining introductory paragraph could include the link at the end ('Learn More' or some such). After that, there should be a (fairly prominent) link 'Contact us' (or something like that), resulting in the obsolescence and removal of the bottom section of the page ('Copyright' - which doesn't seem to serve any purpose as no one who visits us understands copyright anyway ). I agree that the 'News' section should be compacted as well. Also, the title (IMSLP / Petrucci Music Library) should a) be made to look nicer (i.e., not just plain text IMHO), and b) should be simplified to
IMSLP
(Petrucci Music Library)
This would result in less confusion as to what the name of the site is (cf. Jim's thread on the subject a while ago). In summary, the vertical structure of the Main Page would then look like this:
TITLE
(little intro with LINKS)
BROWSE
NEWS
As for the right side of the page, FS should be reduced to 2-3, leaving a bit more room for the recent additions. The top part of the page should see the title moved a bit to the left, and all the languages on the right (where they are on most sites) - easier to see that way. The general objective should be to put just enough relevant stuff on the page, so that no one has to scroll down to find something important.
Actually, now that I'm thinking of it, perhaps we should consider a totally different layout. We could take out the darker colors in the center of the page, move the intro higher, and put the 'Browse' section very prominently to the right of it (it would be the biggest thing on the page). FS would go over to the left, where Browse used to be, probably. I'm not certain where we would put News and Recent Additions, but even so, I think having the Browse section up high is something to seriously consider. What do you think?
(also, have you seen the other thread about a hypothetical tabbed structure?)

FS is now 5 because I would have to structure it to make certain scores more "important" because they last longer (over the weekends) if it were fewer (I made Mondays less important for a while, but gave up).

@KGill: I agree with pretty much all that you said. I do want to point out one thing though: the copyright notice on the Main Page actually serves a legal function, so it is probably wise not to remove it. But we can certainly dress it up (or maybe put it in the right column?).

@Jujimufu: I would go ahead and design/change the Main Page first. I'd avoid polling users more than, for example, this thread itself, because at this moment I don't think there will be much return on the time you invest into it. I trust you with designing the Main Page, so feel free to go ahead and change it without having to wait for opinions. You're the "composer" of the Main Page at this moment

I have some ideas up my sleeve for the main page design as well.