About Me

PBX My name is Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using as much open source software as possible. From September to June I teach web design and other important non-photographic professional skills to photographers. In the '90s I wrote technology commentary and reviews for magazines, newspapers, and web publications, including Wired, Salon.com, FamilyPC, the late lamented Web Review, and the Chicago Tribune. Feel free to email me.

Colophon

This runs on Django, served by Apache and mod_python. The database is SQLite. The operating system is FreeBSD, on a VPS hosted at Johncompanies.com. Comment-spam protection by Akismet. Vintage topo imagery from the Maptech archive. The markup engine is Markdown.

The Book

Book cover I'm co-author of "Python Web Development with Django", an excellent guide to my favorite web framework. Published by Addison-Wesley in October 2008, it is available from Amazon and your favorite technical bookstore as well. Click on the book title above to learn more.

Pile o'Tags

Stuff I Use

Akismet, del.icio.us, Django, dpaste.com, Emacs, FreeBSD, Freenode, jQuery, LaunchBar, MacPorts, Markdown, Mercurial, OS X, Postfix, Python, SQLite, Subversion, TextMate, Trac, Ubuntu Linux, wmii

Spam Report

At least 45541 pieces of comment spam killed since January 12th, mostly via Akismet.

SourceForge prettifying

A few days ago, Sourceforge got a makeover:

The SourceForge.net Engineering team has completed the implementation of a new look-and-feel for the SourceForge.net site. This is the first major change to the appearance of the SourceForge.net site in more than three years. This work is part of a planned incremental revamp to the SourceForge.net site. Initial focus has been placed on revamp of page header, footer, layout; and specific improvements to the SourceForge.net front page, project summary page, login page, file release page, and download page. Launched 2005-11-14.

Very nice, and long overdue. It's clearly an incremental update -- you can see how content boxes from the old layout have been shuffled into the new one without much internal change in some cases -- but it is a huge improvement. The first thing I noticed when I arrived at one of the new-style project pages this week was the CodeZoo-style big green "Download" button. Nice touch. I suspect that many novice users have come and gone from SF pages without ever figuring out how to download what they came for.

I've had my worries about Sourceforge. A post has been percolating in my head for a few months now where I look over the Sourcefore alternatives/competitors (there are many) and see where Sourceforge stands in relation to them. Maybe I'll put that off for a while longer.

There's lots more for them to do, of course -- it's a very complex site. The page layout is still pretty chaotic and the URLs are still crufty. But I give a lot of credit to the team that's undertaking these updates, and look forward to seeing the next steps.

Saturday, November 19th, 2005
design + open source + sourceforge
1 comment

Some related posts: SourceForge needs help • Sourcemorgue

• Comment from Joseph , 2 days later

From a usability perspective, it's a nightmare. There are so many gradients that your eye just rattles over the bumps of the first six rows in the grid, and keeps hitting new ones down the page. Things flicker and pop about as your mouse moves over the screen. No text wants to say "read me first". I must say I don't share your enthusiasm at all the old design had its faults, but not such glaring defects as these.