oh is also known as Jason Libsch, Daily Kos' new head of technology. Below are his notes on the launch of the new design and help desk -- kos
This release is largely a behind the scenes infrastructure push. We now have a foundation for development in Ruby on Rails- a software platform for quick web application development. This should allow us to get features up more quickly. We also bring a new look to the site, and a help desk where you can file feature suggestions and bug reports and search the knowledge base.
Design Changes
Overall, the goal was to push the design back a bit, and bring the content forward- for example, bringing a substantial part of the first article into view on page load of the front page. Orange is now mostly a highlight color- headers, links, etc- iconic and emphatic. Also, we tried hard to clean up the side bar and other layout elements- there is now consistent whitespace between elements and consistent alignment of the items in the column. We've pulled a lot out of the graphic frills- all the letterpress-style elements we could, extra horizontal rules, etc.
We've moved the Community Spotlight to the sidebar, but we've removed the feature box, and pulled out the top ad from the home page, so this feature is still very much in view on page load. I hope the constant placement of links to community content in the sidebar will help direct traffic to this much beloved feature.
The header is now consistent across the whole site, hopefully a better experience for new users, and users who aren't regulars. Because of this, group content now generally has a ribbon just below the header which operates as group header and nav. We worked hard to get all the important links into the header, while trying hard to keep it from feeling cramped. To this end, we've put the click back to the homepage behind the big 'Daily Kos' logo at top left- a change which brings us much more inline with the web at large, but breaks with the explicit 'home' link previously on the site.
Help Desk
Up at the top right of every page is the "Help" link which will take you to the help desk. Filing tickets through this system makes the support process more transparent- you can browse existing issues to see discussion around the problem you are having, the length of time a ticket has been open, if we're currently working on the issue, and if other people are running into the same problem and how they have worked around it. If you don't care about any of this, once you file your ticket through the helpdesk, you can still track it through email as you always have. The help desk is an external system, but your DailyKos account info is encrypted passed to the help desk when you click the "help" link. So, if you are logged in to DailyKos, you won't have to log in again to the helpdesk.
Look forward to more frequent releases, and please put that helpdesk to work. Thanks to Kosbusters for their great work sweeping the beta for bugs.