CyberArmy University | Open Source Institute | CyberArmy Intelligence & Security | CyberArmy Services & Projects

[Main Index] [Completed Projects]

The CyberArmy

Dinah Design

This project is charged with redesigning the current CyberArmy website (codenamed Dinah) with the goal to make it more user friendly and to better organise all the information on the website, this will hopefully make the use of the site better and facilitate our members in doing their work, as well as make the website more inviting to new members that join. The current file repository for this project is located at http://dinah.chillbox.net/

Leader : Ret. Lambda Gen Fu
Admin : Lambda CinC scanjack
Members : Lambda Mar booto, Ret. Lambda Mar icklenewt, Ret. Lambda Gen Fu, Alpha Maj PrincesSoha, Alpha Cpt Auzzie

Project information
  • Access : Public
  • Category : Multimedia Design Projects
  • Status : Complete
  • Start Date : 2006-01-07
  • Estimated Completion Date: Ongoing
  • Invite List : Completed projects are closed to joins
Project updates
 
Fu - Preview 2: MyCA & My Profile
Update at 2006-08-28 18:09:54
This was posted on the multimedia forum but keeping it here for project record sake.

On 2006-08-28 18:00:53, Fu wrote
>After some work and tweaking, finally got /my/ settled down into a 'near final' version. As of yet, each box can be minimized and then maximized, you can see in the images below how that works. Also some boxes can be minimized by default when the page loads, this will be more improved later on when each user can define which boxes they wish to have maximized/minimized, so it would save it by cookies etc.
>
>Now on to /my/profile. I HATE the current way it works, things are all over the place, so I did the exact opposite of that, and brought everything together on one page. The current things editable from profile are:
>
>Login Options
>Password
>Private Email
>Public Email
>Show Name
>Away Status
>Signature
>Public Plan
>Public PGP Key
>
>The only thing left to add here is Skills.
>
>This essentially makes /my/ work in 3 sections.
>
>/my/profile - everything to do with your account and plan and passwords etc.
>/my/messages - cMS and messaging system for CA
>/my/todo - ToDo list
>
>I think this simplifies things A LOT. Thanks to booto who made a JS for us to make all the boxes minimizable and then extendable once minimized. We're scrapping the option to close a box.
>
>

>MyCA (HeadQuarters)
>
>
>My Profile
>
>

>
>More to come soon such as signature and public plan previews client-side using JS/AJAX whatever you want to call it. Also Previous and Next options on the fly with AJAX on the headlines.

Fu - HTML/CSS + Dev Server
Update at 2006-08-27 04:47:13
Would like to announce that I have completed an "almost complete" version of the HTML/CSS mockup for the HeadQuarters (myCA) page. It can be viewed at http://dinah.chillbox.net/ca-2.0/ca20.html. Please feel free to copy the files to your hard disk, have a play or whatever, and submit to me anything you have done. Currently PrincesSoha is working on a new look for the header alltogether.

This page I've done gives a bit of insight into what the goals of this project are, to 'revolutionize' CA. In essence, those boxes with the [-][x] at the top right corner should be closeable, and minimizable, and then extendable (- becomes +). We are hoping to build a customizable page so that each member can add whatever feeds they are interested in, and we will have a list of elements they can put on their homepage.

As for the server, I've been given access to a dev server used by some folks who test their patches out and some that do sered dev, so can't grant many people this access. So the way I see this working is that if you are working on HTML/CSS/graphics you submit those to me, and ill work on integrating whatever into the dev server dinah's templates. otherwise if you have dinah patches you wish to submit, then contact Phishy.

Also, some members have been contacted via cMS asked how they can participate etc. Please reply letting me know if you are interested or not, because if you're not then you're just filling empty space, and you're no good to us.

Fu - Quick update
Update at 2006-08-25 15:54:54
The file respository is now at http://dinah.chillbox.net/ as I've moved the entire chillbox.net site over to the new server, so figured a subdomain for these files was appropriate as I hope to keep everything there while we dev stuff.

I did not get a lot of responses regarding my planning post, and hope to hear from more folks soon. Right now we're waiting on a branch to be setup so we can start working, and for the current commits to be done so that when nearly everything is templatized, we can start work.

More to come...

Fu - Planning & Development
Update at 2006-08-04 07:53:44
Introduction
Hi everyone, thank you for joining the Dinah Design project. I am very sorry for leaving this project dead as it really never begun, I see that a lot of people have joined the project and hope that you are all enthusiastic to get working on this. I will try to dedicate as much time as I can if you are all willing to work with me here. As you should already know our goal is to redesign the CA site and make it more user friendly and such. I am hoping that soon enough, DigitalDemon will start granting me and others in the staff or dinah coders group access to commit to the live branch of the CA site, which means we will be able to start making edits to the live site immediately.

Step 1
Firstly I'd like a cMS from everyone who is still active and willing to get down and dirty into this. If you are not interested, also just cMS me telling me so I can remove you from the group. I would also like you to include what kind of skills you have, so I know how to organise the group and have everyone contribute, more on this below. I hope that most of you stick around because the more people we have the more variety of ideas and perspectives we get the more creative we can be in making the CA site better for everyone.

Step 2
So after you have cMSed me telling me "I'm alive" I'd like you all to get familiar with the dinah backend. I would recommend you start looking here: /about/DinahDevelopment. Now notice that we will only be working on the design part of the site, while some of the folks in this group are familiar with the actual backend itself they will do any of the dirty work we need done.

The Structure

The way this should work is that we will have 3 basic teams of skills. I do professional freelance web design work and these are how the teams I work in are comprised, you have a graphic designer, a web designer, and a web developer. Between the three skill sets, you cover, the creative flare of a website, the markup, and the functionality, so you have all your bases covered.

Graphic Designers: This group is for those into creating graphics for the CA website, and who know how to use such programs as Adobe Photoshop and TheGIMP quite well. You should also know a little about User Interfaces (UI). What I will basically ask of this group in the first stage, is to pop open photoshop, and throw together some ideas for me, make suggestions on how you think the CA site should look like. I have no limitations here as the key is creativity and innovation, so go crazy. With everyone's ideas we will come to some consensus on what is the best design for the site and we will move on from there. A few names I can see that I know already belong in this group are Penguin, Sorcerism, and PrincesSoha.

Web Designers: The skills required here are some photoshop skills for image slicing etc. but most importantly is w3 valid XHTML and excellent CSS skills, this will be the actual making of the templates, so you should get familiar with the way dinah makes use of its templating system. You will also need to work to make sure your XHTML/CSS works well on all browsers, so this group would take the creative ideas of the Graphic Designers, and then make adjustments as needed to make effective markup documents that work. I'm not sure who might fit in this category, I think Flixst, Goatrider and MaDvLaD would fit here.

Web Developers: This group will be dealing primarily with the inner workings of dinah, a lot of the redesign we will be proposing will require some changes in the dinah architecture and what functions we call from the dinah backend, this group will consist of some of the dinah-oriented developers we have on board such as Asmodai, Goldfish, DD, Hermes. These guys will watch our progress initially and check that we're not doing something too outrageous that dinah is not flexible enough to cope with.
File Repository
I have set up a temporary directory on chillbox.net where I have put up some files and things I have worked on recently, it's got some ideas some psd files of designs I have put together before. I will give you a little rundown on the directories and whats in them.

http://www.chillbox.net/dinahdesign/
  • ca-2.0: This has the latest design I worked on for the homepage, it is a web 2.0ish concept I developed, it has a png you can look at, as well as a psd source file for all of you to have a play with.
  • ca-camo: This has some html markup I had a go with (notice the infamous camo background :P) Yep thats where that came from. That is just there because the markup can be useful and the small header icons have already been done.
  • ca-see: This just has the CyberArmySEE (CA's search engine) graphic/source I did for Marshal Ikioi, I don't believe the search engine is still up since it was on Block-House, just there for any possible graphical value to what we will be working on.
  • ca-store: This is some graphics I did for the CA Store that eventually got put on T-shirts etc. This directory is also just for graphical value and inspiration.
  • ideas: This directory has a bunch of ideas I tried out when coming up with ideas on how to organise the header for the CA site. I would like you to have a good look through these and try to come up with ideas of your own. There is also a 'wires' file there which is the wire design of the site (simple dividing into sections) part of some information architecture former CinC snarkles requested at the time.
  • logo: fairly simple, a psd file of a the CA logo that Gisterogue did, he tried to replicate the current logo as there is no existing PSD of the current logo. I will try to find the font file for the CA logo and include it in here.
  • sered: The sered Icon, no real purpose just seemed reasonable to throw it in there.
Final notes
Thank you for your time everyone, please do not forget to reply to me as soon as you can so I can begin to organise and plan things. Feel free to make any suggestions or anything, do not hesitate at all. Thanks again, I will also be posting this on the project news for the rest of the community to have a look at and know what we are going to be doing soon. Thanks again.

Regards,

Kernel Fu
C/O Privacy Commission
CyberArmy Staff Member
Sered Administrator
Chillbox.net Administrator

Fu - Thank you for joining
Update at 2006-01-13 02:58:19
I would just like to say thank you to those who have joined the project so far, we will be getting right into the work very shortly. Right now Gisterogue is setting up his box with everything we need to install dinah and get a branch set up there, once we have a place to start testing and all, we'll need to begin working on (a) Documentation of Dinah, this I think will be important so that most of us who are not knowledgable in perl can have a good idea of how Dinah works exactly, with that we will move along to (b) Information Architecture, we need a consistent plan with what goes where so everything can be organised, and then finally we will get into the good stuff, such as the templates, doing some design, graphics, HTML, CSS and hell even AJAX!

About Us | Privacy Policy | Mission Statement | Help