Freepascal new site design!

[Legolas]

YAY! It rocks!!! Finally freepascal has got a very professional looking web site :shock:

http://www.freepascal.org

[WILL]

Very nice! :) I think we all have been waiting for this.

[JSoftware]

Wow! that just looks so nice! :shock:

[savage]

If that site was a woman, I'd be asking it out ;). Don't tell my wife though.

[JernejL]

wohoo, nice! still, they could do something about the mspaintish logo...

[dmantione]

The running cheetah functions as a brand and is a very strong one. Finding a proper replacement is very hard.

[Robert Kosek]

A strong brand? It animates too fast and is a little choppy with it's pixel based animation. I would say it's due a makeover too. Hard or not.

But the redesign is very nice.

[dmantione]

Lazarus has a cheetah on a pilar, the Free Pascal book has a cheetah on the cover and so on. The cheetah is the symbol of Free Pascal and it is being used to make subtile visual links to the Free Pascal project. It has to be a running cheetah, much of the strong effect he has comes from the fact that he is moving. If somebody can design a better one, we'll take a look, but otherwise we're happy with him as he is.

[jdarling]

A quick search of the standard model sites returns quite a few cheetah images. I'm no modeler, but it shouldn't be that difficult to take of the of ones in existance, animate it and cap it to a new file. Course then again, the existing one could simply be antialiased and it would look better.

The only problem I see with the current one is that its used all over by other sites and "artists" that claim they did it. You can even find it as an IM glyph.

[WILL]

Well as many of you have probably read my article,
'Free Pascal As A Popular Brand (http://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com/forums/viewarticle.php?a=61&p=1#article)', I mention the Cheeta in my critique on the branding that we all know as Free Pascal.

There definately does need to be an upgrade or a revamp of the cheeta, though animated it's not a very daynamic mascott. He has not changed pose, or purpose in ages. That can kill most of the effectiveness of a good mascott, I'd recommend updating him and putting him in everyones face! :)

Make t-shirts, mugs, mousepads, little stuffed animals to hand out at those fairs and booths that Florian and Mr. Mathis go to. (Expensive, but can be subsidized by all the money you guys make on professional support programs you sell, --*ahem* Apache, MySQL and PHP Teams do this and support such promotion and careers developing the AMP in LAMP by it.) Alternatively you can also just make him in different poses in different parts of the site. Have him sitting looking onward to the left or right (a common cat-like pose), laying down mawling a Pengiun and/or a toaster (popular 90's Windows screensaver), etc... He's the attitude in Free Pascal use it! :P No guts, no glory I say.

As for the particular cheeta logo of them all. Why does it have to be animated? You can't animate him on a T-Shirt can you? :P Running yes, that is the popular logo that Free Pascal is known to have, but I'd say that you need a more stylized logo than an animated one. Stick him in a running pose at the least see how he looks as a still then try the animated aswell.

[dmantione]

What people use on mousepads and t-shirts is up to their imagination. Compare it like Linux. Tux is stable for more than a decade, however, because of this, people can use their imagination, and if you look at for example the LWN penguin gallery you see the strangest of Tuxes.

It was decided from the start of the FPC web site that we did need something to symbolize speed. A running cheetah fits this. A static one much less.

Lastly, because we can do Shrek-style animations today it does not mean every animated film has to be done in such a way. It is the same with a logo: It is not because we can do 3D rendered cheetahs that we should get rid of hand drawn graphics.

Of course, as said, the largest reason why we keep the cheetah is because it is too difficult to draw a new one.

[jdarling]

What people use on mousepads and t-shirts is up to their imagination. Compare it like Linux. Tux is stable for more than a decade, however, because of this, people can use their imagination, and if you look at for example the LWN penguin gallery you see the strangest of Tuxes.

What version of *nix have you been looking at? Tux has changed significantly over the past 12 years. Origionally he was a black and white drawing (inverted), the colorized, stylized, anti-aliased, glassed, gleamed, and cleaned. Christ just in the 6 versions of Mandrake, 5 versions of Debian, and many other versions of other *nix I have lying around I can find more versions of Tux then I care to count.

Yes, he has stayed the same Tux, but he has recieved many re-vamps to make him look better as hardware allowed. Do the same with the Cheetah.

Lets also look at the Windows logo, one could argue that its the same as its always been. Well it is, but its been updated as the hardware and marketing teams got better. How about the apple or mac symbol (if you think it hasn't changed think again). Hmm... Maybe we should look at proctor and gamble, nope they updated too. What about... Screw it you get the point: Time for FPC to do the same, give the Cheetah a re-vamp. Hold a contest on the FPC page, not to select a new mascott (I'll never argue for that) but to bring him up to speed.

Sorry, I got on a rant there. I'm no graphics artist, but plenty of people out there are, and I'm betting that if you throw down the gauntlet that the knights will arise to the challenge.

[dmantione]

What version of *nix have you been looking at? Tux has changed significantly over the past 12 years.

Take a look at Documentation/logo.gif in your Linux kernel tarball. It has been the same ever since it is there. Nor am I aware of any other official updates. The black & white Tux was never distributed.

[Sly]

I like how it is in large print for the senior citizens of the programming world. :shock:

[JernejL]

honestly, the cheetah logo is showing its age, and needs to be refreshed for new redesign, i'd suggest a madagascar-style 3d model with fur ;)

[Legolas]

Eg. GNU logo is the same since the start. BTW maybe the cheetah needs a little smoothing. A good place where find pixel artists and graphic wizards is DeviantArt (http://www.deviantart.com)... I guess that this one (http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/18411530/) could be a better fpc logo replacement :mrgreen: :pig:

Or thake a look at this other (http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/15319028/)

[jdarling]

Eg. GNU logo is the same since the start. BTW maybe the cheetah needs a little smoothing. A good place where find pixel artists and graphic wizards is DeviantArt (http://www.deviantart.com)... I guess that this one (http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/18411530/) could be a better fpc logo replacement :mrgreen: :pig:

Or thake a look at this other (http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/15319028/)

Umm... Well my 3 yr old, 7 week old, and I all agree that the first one is great as long as mom (wife) don't catch us voting :)

[marmin]

Good design.
However, there are some 'bugs' , like in the forums, the posts, you have to scroll all the way down to see the posts.

[dmantione]

Huh? Normally not, i.e. this is what you should get, no scrolling at all should be necessary:

http://www.freepascal.org/~daniel/fpccomm2.png

[marmin]

It's not the case with me, I need to scroll all the way down ( alot) to read the posts. I'm now on a Windows XP machine with 1280x800 pixels (using IE), I'll check if the same problem occurs on my Linux box.. :)

[JSoftware]

It happens to me too when using the danish version but not the english one

[marmin]

Ah. This may be a IE problem, on Linux with Firefox (haven't firefox on XP) no problem occurs.