What's funny is how much money Canadian taxpayers are spending on proprietary software. You have to have big profits to make donations to political parties, or to IT managers' favourite charities.
This example has been deleted. When the federal government stops contributing to the daily killing of a dozen Canadians with undiagnosed sensitivities in health care, it may be restored.
I didn't take a close look at it, but on first glance can see it doesn't scale to increased font sizes.
If you look at http://canada.gc.ca/main_e.html, you can change to very large fonts and the design still works. Yours does not. ;)
You could also "help the cause" at least as much by providing a page which is an analysis of the requirements and design of a typical government of Canada page, outside of Drupal's transitory requirements.
This is meant to encourage by the way, as what you're doing is a good idea.
but you may want to use scaled rather than fixed sizes for elements such as the "menu boxes." The layout at http://canada.gc.ca/main_e.html scales very well even to very large font sizes.
Also, I wonder if there are any l18n (vs i18n) issues for the french translations, they may be France rather than Quebec french.
I haven't dabbled in i18n (much). Can polls not be multilingual as well? That seems like quite a problem if not.
I think its abit hard to judge without some content to bring out the real design, but its clean and loads fast :) I think the dynamic menu is sort of overkill when overlapping the already 'massive' menu structure, but thats a question of preference I suppose.
Small error in your source (English logo section):
There now is a document circulating called "Common Look and Feel Standards for Internet 2.0: Proposed Changes" that was published in June 2006. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to circulate it, but here are few changes:
640x480 was changed to 800x600, looks more spaced out.
Three-column layout (150/406/195 px) for main pages.
sub-pages can have two column layouts (150/605 px.)
Single column layout is acceptable for application pages (760 px.)
Graphical buttons are not allowed. Menus must use scalable text.
Layout must be horizontally centered.
CSS use.
One common black menu bar with six buttons :"Francais", "Home", "Contact US", "Help", Search", and "canada.gc.ca" .
Use of institutional menu bar(s) is discontinued ( no more 2,3 or 4 levels of ugly buttons.)
Breadcrumb trails are added.
Default font for all content, menus and breadcrumbs is Verdana.
I believe that the proposed changes will be accepted. I'm not sure if there's a theme that accomodates these upcoming requirements. I'll create an example theme shortly, I need one for my work anyways.
CLF specs also require use of DublinCore metadata. I have seen several good attemps of making Government of Canada Common Look and Feel compatible theme, but none of them have DC.
I'm writing a dublincore module, here are the features I'm currently aiming at:
Compatible with any theme.
No modification to the theme is needed to output DC.* tags into the HEAD section.
Multilingual support (my test site has 3 languages, so not just bilingual).
Support for manaditory tags (5).
Configuarable list of aditional tags to enable (about 30 or so).
Easy interface to translate tags between languages.
Support for common tags (language independent tags such as date or strings that must be present in many languages regardless which language is currently enabled.)
Tags override(presedence) system.
Per tag per language: allows different languages to have different number of tags, also to override common tags.
Although $node has information that can be extracted and used for DC tags, editboxes can be added to the node entry/edit form; if filled out, they will override the information that is extracted from $node.
I'm also thinking that perhaps it will be needed for different content types to have different tags, but no plans on coding this right now.
Works with and without localization module. (without localization module, only English settings are presented.)
It will be great to have this theme/instructions set up to allow folks to set up more Government of Canada (GoC) sites using Drupal. I do know that the Department of Defense is looking into this now, but do not know how far along they have gone.
I would love to see more adoption of Drupal within the GoC.
Also, please let us know if you can publish the text (or a link) for the "Common Look and Feel Standards for Internet 2.0: Proposed Changes" document that you mentioned. If this is just a draft, it would be great to see if Drupal and this CL&F Theme could be mentioned in the finalized version of this document.
Your input is fabulous. Thank you! Of course, I was so impressed by Nice Menus and improvements in multilingualism, I jumped to a conclusion in announcing a theme. The rest of the problems are child's play except, as I have been thinking for months, the meta tags for the all important classification of Treasury Board's CLF (and other) pages. (How many times I have searched drupal.org for "meta tag" etc.)
Thank you for addressing that, Oleg Mitsura.
If you are planing a clf2 theme, maybe we could share themes and allow visitors to see different iterations. I suspect there are a lot of people with far more CLF CSS experience than I have who can use Nice Menus and the Translation block to create the top menu. What is truly impressive, the enablers of all this, are i18n and locale, Nice Menus, and peoples' commitment to po files. The general interface of 4.7 is so much clearer.
The translation block will not be needed, but for now it makes things easy.
The functionality of the translation block will be moved into the CLF theme (en/fr toggle.)
The above is true for the old CLF standard and the proposed updated one.
Here's a directory of work relating to Government of Canada.
This will includes CLF, internationalization issues, and tutorials, when they will be marked from my notes.
Chris - Man this is an awesome idea! I was the web manager at the Firearms Centre and I spent over 3 months designing a system that would satisfy all the CL&F requirements; I wish I would have had this available then!
Comments
Is this a joke?
??????
What's funny?
What's funny is how much money Canadian taxpayers are spending on proprietary software. You have to have big profits to make donations to political parties, or to IT managers' favourite charities.
Check out the Mooney's Bay Webcam, at http://liquidvisual.ca
.
.
ummm.........
Are you saying that this theme is going to be available for download ?
or are you just showing off a design ?
If its to be used only by the government... then i think its great.
Theme available
This example has been deleted. When the federal government stops contributing to the daily killing of a dozen Canadians with undiagnosed sensitivities in health care, it may be restored.
Check out the Mooney's Bay Webcam, at http://liquidvisual.ca
is this designed for accessibility?
I didn't take a close look at it, but on first glance can see it doesn't scale to increased font sizes.
If you look at http://canada.gc.ca/main_e.html, you can change to very large fonts and the design still works. Yours does not. ;)
You could also "help the cause" at least as much by providing a page which is an analysis of the requirements and design of a typical government of Canada page, outside of Drupal's transitory requirements.
This is meant to encourage by the way, as what you're doing is a good idea.
David
Government Common Look and Feel requirements
The requirements for layout and identity for Canadian government websites are at http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/clf-nsi/index_e.asp . Yes. There is still lots to do.
Check out the Mooney's Bay Webcam, at http://liquidvisual.ca
getting better
but you may want to use scaled rather than fixed sizes for elements such as the "menu boxes." The layout at http://canada.gc.ca/main_e.html scales very well even to very large font sizes.
Also, I wonder if there are any l18n (vs i18n) issues for the french translations, they may be France rather than Quebec french.
I haven't dabbled in i18n (much). Can polls not be multilingual as well? That seems like quite a problem if not.
Feedback inc
I think its abit hard to judge without some content to bring out the real design, but its clean and loads fast :) I think the dynamic menu is sort of overkill when overlapping the already 'massive' menu structure, but thats a question of preference I suppose.
Small error in your source (English logo section):
<img src="http://liquidvisual.ca/clf1gcca/themes/clf1gcca/clf.png">should be:
<img src="http://liquidvisual.ca/clf1gcca/themes/clf1gcca/clf.png" alt="myalttext" />At least if you want it to validate ;)
_______________
"Opportunity is missed by alot of people because its dressed in overalls and looks like hard work" -- Thomas Edison
Congrats! Excellent work! few comments
Great work Chris!
There now is a document circulating called "Common Look and Feel Standards for Internet 2.0: Proposed Changes" that was published in June 2006. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to circulate it, but here are few changes:
I believe that the proposed changes will be accepted. I'm not sure if there's a theme that accomodates these upcoming requirements. I'll create an example theme shortly, I need one for my work anyways.
CLF specs also require use of DublinCore metadata. I have seen several good attemps of making Government of Canada Common Look and Feel compatible theme, but none of them have DC.
I'm writing a dublincore module, here are the features I'm currently aiming at:
Stay tuned for more updates.
Best Regards,
Oleg Mitsura
CL&F for Drupal
Sounds great Oleg,
It will be great to have this theme/instructions set up to allow folks to set up more Government of Canada (GoC) sites using Drupal. I do know that the Department of Defense is looking into this now, but do not know how far along they have gone.
I would love to see more adoption of Drupal within the GoC.
Oleg, have you contacted Robert Douglass to see what progress he has made here:
http://drupal.org/node/30937
Also, please let us know if you can publish the text (or a link) for the "Common Look and Feel Standards for Internet 2.0: Proposed Changes" document that you mentioned. If this is just a draft, it would be great to see if Drupal and this CL&F Theme could be mentioned in the finalized version of this document.
Mike
--
Mike Gifford, OpenConcept Consulting
Free Software for Social Change -> http://openconcept.ca
http://learningpartnership.org http://fairvotecanada.org/
http://ox.ca http://poped.org http://openoffice.ca
Oleg's input
Your input is fabulous. Thank you! Of course, I was so impressed by Nice Menus and improvements in multilingualism, I jumped to a conclusion in announcing a theme. The rest of the problems are child's play except, as I have been thinking for months, the meta tags for the all important classification of Treasury Board's CLF (and other) pages. (How many times I have searched drupal.org for "meta tag" etc.)
Thank you for addressing that, Oleg Mitsura.
If you are planing a clf2 theme, maybe we could share themes and allow visitors to see different iterations. I suspect there are a lot of people with far more CLF CSS experience than I have who can use Nice Menus and the Translation block to create the top menu. What is truly impressive, the enablers of all this, are i18n and locale, Nice Menus, and peoples' commitment to po files. The general interface of 4.7 is so much clearer.
Check out the Mooney's Bay Webcam, at http://liquidvisual.ca
No translation block.
The translation block will not be needed, but for now it makes things easy.
The functionality of the translation block will be moved into the CLF theme (en/fr toggle.)
The above is true for the old CLF standard and the proposed updated one.
Best Regards,
Oleg Mitsura
Small multilingual tutorial
May be relevant to the theme of the discussion, here's a small tutorial on creating a multilingual site (with screenshots)
http://stuffopedia.net/?q=node/9
Please ignore the rest of the site, it is not done.
Best Regards,
Oleg Mitsura
Government of Canada Drupal related materials.
Here's a directory of work relating to Government of Canada.
This will includes CLF, internationalization issues, and tutorials, when they will be marked from my notes.
http://stuffopedia.net/?q=goc
Best Regards,
Oleg Mitsura
Comments & CL&F 2.0 Link
Chris - Man this is an awesome idea! I was the web manager at the Firearms Centre and I spent over 3 months designing a system that would satisfy all the CL&F requirements; I wish I would have had this available then!
As for the CL&F 2.0 changes, i found the info posted by Treasury Board here: www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/clf-nsi/np/change/page01_e.asp
Proposed Changes
Any sense on when the CLF might be final? The Firearms Centre didn't do a Drupal install did they?
--
OpenConcept | WLP | FVC | OX
OO
Just to follow up from 2007
The CLF 2.0 standards are finalized:
http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/clf2-nsi2/
Scoring system is still being developed by the CLF Office.
We've got a reasonable CLF 2.0 theme we've developed and are providing snapshots on request.
Mike
--
OpenConcept | SEO | Tech | Screencasts
.
.