New Design of R Homepage

• More modern looks (the current design is from 1997+).
• Elegant spartan design (the art is to leave things out ...).
• No frames.
• Reduce number of steps necessary to get from homepage to actually downloading R.
• Usability first (for users and for web admins).
• All valid (X)HTML and CSS.
• A good user interface that works with as many browsers as possible should be the primary design criteria. We don't need eye candy.
• Pages should load fast even on older hardware (R is very popular in developing countries).
• Pages should be friendly to those with visual impairment.
• No usage of a real content management system, we want to check the homepage into SVN. Creation of HTML files via scripts/translations/... from other source format is fine (Rscripts are of course preferred).
• Use a graphic on the front page that was rendered using new R graphics features like anti-aliasing etc. A good set of candidates may be found in the R Graph Gallery.
• It should be easy to create design-compliant pages from within R (important for various listings on CRAN).
• Javascript should be avoided, but may be allowed for extra parts that adds optional features (like a daily changing figure on the front page or zooming into screenshots).
• We need static HTML that can easily be mirrored (or burned to a DVD) for CRAN. It should work on most servers out of the box, such that admins of mirrors do not have to change too much of their usual setup.