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Haeri

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OK. This is my very last post about this topic. If I did annoy anyone, I do apologize. just close this thread and I will never ever talk about it.

Now that that is out of the way, here the main post:

 

I think that Paint.net 4.0 is a milestone, which should be treated accordingly. I was waiting for it about 2-3 years now? Yes it was scheduled for 2012. So I thought what could I do to honor this great piece of software.. Obviously the best thing that can happen is Paint.net to get more downloads, which would increase the chance of donations, to repay the hard work of the devs( not sure is there anyone else than Rick working on this?). I am not famous on YouTube so the next best thing I thought was to give Paint.NET a better presentation platform. Meaning the website. Again I don't want to assault anyone involved in making the website. It is a very solid site, but it just does not fit the new generation style of websites. 

Why does that even bother me? It is just a site where you download it. - And that's the point. The Loyal Paint.net user doesn't care how the site looks, but every single new user, who visits the site to download it just gets greeted by a elderly looking site. And there goes the first impression. 

The exact same thing happened to me with audacity. I am sure everyone knows the great free audio editing software Audacity. It is a great software, but the website did not represent that. I barely used it a second time... I don't know why.. I always associated old things with it..

 

Complaining without solutions is a bad thing so I started learning HTML. And this is what it looks so far. 

Click

(Obviously the page is mostly lorem impsum content and some things are not finished yet.

Oh and a little off topic question:

The content of the page gets loaded in with jQuery. Therefor I had to do some pushState to generate a history, but I still can't figure out how to forward the right subpage ex: paint.net/features to show the right content, since that sub directory does not really exist because the content "features" gets loaded into the index.php.. If anyone knows the answer pls tell me! I am going nuts because of that)

 

So are you trying to get your design to be the main paint.net website? - Of course not. any leaving creature with a brain bigger than a nut, would slap me in the face after looking at the source code. I am just trying to visually present some ideas I hat to be featured in the website:

- Obviously: a new design

- A header, which contains a slideshow with the best forum creations of the month/year(to give people some motivation to make high quality content and therefor to get featured on the main page)(In my version there is a folder where those images can be placed in and the site does automatically update according to the number of images)

- A place where one can download any version you like sorted by alpha/beta/current and older versions

- A news page as the index page

 

If there is any interest, feel free to copy what you like. It is all handwritten by me and therefor crappy :P

 

I think that's all. thank you for reading.

sincerely 

Haeri

 

 

 

UPDATE=================================================================================================================================================================

 

Since this thread got moved into GToE, I can basically talk about anything right?  So I present to you paint.net web-page v1.5.

I had some spare time and I thought why not finish this project. Even though this is only a mock-up page and won't be needed for anything, I personally gained a great bit of experience in web development and with javaScript. Further more I tried to write in a modular fashion, meaning every functional module can be stripped out and put into another site.

 

Now to the changes:

- The once empty blog box, is now fully functional and feeds the new posts right from Ricks blog-site

- The header-image-slider got a upgrade in functionality. By clicking on the image it will expand and display information about the image and the artist and will provide a link to the artist.

- The download section got updated with a simple tab design. The version can be chosen by: "Final release", "Alpha Release", "Older versions". (The links are obviously fake xD)

- The page was running with Ajax. Now I wrote a "plugin" which allows all load functions to be smoothly loaded and displayed. (Everything that is sliding around is handled by my smoothAjax.js)

- The site will react as expected when reloading, going back and going forward(Can't demonstrate since I have no rights to manipulate .htaccess on my university server  :/ but it works. trust me. Took me a long time to figure out how to pass url from .htaccess to php and than to javaScript)

 

If you are too lazy to scroll up here is the link

 

Hope you like it

Haeri ;D

Edited by Haeri
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Wow, for being a new HTML user, that's a particularly good job!

 

For what it's worth, I agree with you.  I think PdN v4 would be a great time for a website rework.  :-)  Maybe we'll see it happen eventually.

 

This thread needs to be in the GTE, though.  I've moved it.

 

The Doctor: There was a goblin, or a trickster, or a warrior... A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world.
Amy: But how did it end up in there?
The Doctor: You know fairy tales. A good wizard tricked it.
River Song: I hate good wizards in fairy tales; they always turn out to be him.

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That's a neat-looking website! It is a bit generic, but for its purpose it's good enough. I agree with you that a new design might be in order; hopefully there won't be confusing download ads right next to PDN links when or if a new design is decided on.

Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.
|fb(page)|portfolio|blog|

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That's exactly what I was trying to achieve: Get people excited to see their creations, featured on the official site. Furthermore I implemented a little banner under the Header to provide more information and a link to the artist.(I had to hide it till I find a better placement. It was not fitting as it was.)

Oh and I have a beard ;)

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That's exactly what I was trying to achieve: Get people excited to see their creations, featured on the official site. Furthermore I implemented a little banner under the Header to provide more information and a link to the artist.(I had to hide it till I find a better placement. It was not fitting as it was.)

Oh and I have a beard ;)

a he then

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  • 7 months later...

Since this thread got moved into GToE, I can basically talk about anything right?  So I present to you paint.net web-page v1.5.

I had some spare time and I thought why not finish this project. Even though this is only a mock-up page and won't be needed for anything, I personally gained a great bit of experience in web development and with javaScript. Further more I tried to write in a modular fashion, meaning every functional module can be stripped out and put into another site.

 

Now to the changes:

- The once empty blog box, is now fully functional and feeds the new posts right from Ricks blog-site

- The header-image-slider got a upgrade in functionality. By clicking on the image it will expand and display information about the image and the artist and will provide a link to the artist.

- The download section got updated with a simple tab design. The version can be chosen by: "Final release", "Alpha Release", "Older versions". (The links are obviously fake xD)

- The page was running with Ajax. Now I wrote a "plugin" which allows all load functions to be smoothly loaded and displayed. (Everything that is sliding around is handled by my smoothAjax.js)

- The site will react as expected when reloading, going back and going forward(Can't demonstrate since I have no rights to manipulate .htaccess on my university server :/ but it works. trust me. Took me a long time to figure out how to pass url from .htaccess to php and than to javaScript)

 

If you are too lazy to scroll up here is the link

 

Hope you like it

Haeri ;D

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The website is slated for an overhaul.  Rick has approved a team to work first on the PDN4 documentation - then the website.  The project is well underway.

 

David Attwell is doing the design work.  I'm sure he will look at your mock-up with interest.

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Yep, I'm working on it.  A lot of your design concepts are good, and ones that I've been actively looking at.  I have a couple designs that I'm going back and forth on, but it's a busy time of year so it's kind of slow going.

 

Incidentally, I'm not looking at an AJAX-heavy site.  Since there's not a lot of dynamic content, it just doesn't make sense to add the complication.

 

The Doctor: There was a goblin, or a trickster, or a warrior... A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world.
Amy: But how did it end up in there?
The Doctor: You know fairy tales. A good wizard tricked it.
River Song: I hate good wizards in fairy tales; they always turn out to be him.

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I am glad to hear that the development has begun, so no pressure. Take your time. With the update-post I just wanted to showcase my work and I thought grand theory of everything wouldn't mind me posting here xD.

But it is nice to hear that some design concepts were interesting for you.

PS: Yeah I know the Ajax seems unnecessary for 4 pages, but I needed it for the image-slider to be continuous (and it is faster). So was all that work worth a gimmicky slider? - Hell yeah!

PSPS: If you had a chance to take a glance at my smoothAjax function, let me know what you think. Would it be any good to "publish" it as a plugin? - I have seen other plugins doing the same except with an unnecessary animation step:

-fade out

-delete content

-collapse holder(unnecesary)

-load content

-extend

-fade in

ex: (height: 30px -> 0px -> 46px)

(demo)

 

My approach was to:

-get and set dimension

-fade out

-delete content

-container doesn't collapse since dimensions set

-load content

-get dimensions from new content

-animate from set dimension to new dimension

-fade in

ex: (height: 30px -> 46px)

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My design features convenient spots for the ads.  Actually, that's been one of the biggest challenges.

 

The Doctor: There was a goblin, or a trickster, or a warrior... A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world.
Amy: But how did it end up in there?
The Doctor: You know fairy tales. A good wizard tricked it.
River Song: I hate good wizards in fairy tales; they always turn out to be him.

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I am a "newbie" here, and want to download Paint, but each "Download" button I click on takes me away to something strange sounding, and I don't want to download a virus...Can anyone direct me to the "real" download Paint button so I won't pick up something I don't want??  I just finished re-doing two laptops, and don't want to have to go through that again. Would appreciate any help you can give me.

As the button at the top of my entry says "Download", but in small pale print beside it, it says "Download from our site, advertisement"....I suspect that is not Paint.net.

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The real button is in the top right hand corner. It looks like this: attachicon.gifCapture.PNG Basically, if it's big and flashy, it's not the real download. PDN doesn't need big flashy banners. The product speaks for itself :)

Once you've clicked that link, make sure you hit the button that looks like this to download:

dotPDN_DlNow.png

 

The Doctor: There was a goblin, or a trickster, or a warrior... A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world.
Amy: But how did it end up in there?
The Doctor: You know fairy tales. A good wizard tricked it.
River Song: I hate good wizards in fairy tales; they always turn out to be him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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