Re: Velocity Site - Preview
Some remarks / suggestions... Le dimanche 17 décembre 2006 à 14:10 +0100, Henning Schmiedehausen a écrit : New users need to know -- What the heck is Velocity? +1. So what is it? Is it a templating engine? A toolbox for a templating engine? What is the Velocity project. I'm struggling with that answer myself. ;-) Also (more pragmatic... ahum... not purely aesthetic) the project (in the title) vs projects (in the menu) - what about changing the title to sthing like the Velocity Umbrella or the Velocity Connection? -- What's the latest version? +1. Latest Version of what? We already have three sub projects. What about including validation/compatibility/voting steps for subprojects, so that a particular version of a subproject is officially linked with every engine release? Hence, there would be a Velocity package version, the same as the core, and newcomers can avoid dealing with subproject versions. Advanced users who want to mix versions can fetch infos on subprojects pages and use subversion. Claude - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Velocity Site - Preview
First, general thoughts I would like to see our web site reflect our charter in the sense that the Velocity Engine is always prominent and pre-eminent. It is a requirement that the other subprojects be dependent on that core center pole, otherwise the umbrella will become a mere sack. I'm not sure how best to represent this on our front page, but i think it is important that that be the case. Apart from this emphasis, i generally agree with Henning's thoughts on the front page. Regarding Velocity in a webapp... I like having a front page link to this guide. Like Will, it feels like there have been fewer simplistic questions on this since we added that page. I also think it would be good to have a link right above or below it that quickly tells how to use Velocity outside a webapp. The title of this would probably depend on the examples created for it. Which, by the way, i'm not sure we have any good, simple, easy-to-get-started-with, examples of this. Maybe i'll take a shot at that before 1.5 goes final... On 12/18/06, Claude Brisson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Some remarks / suggestions... Le dimanche 17 décembre 2006 à 14:10 +0100, Henning Schmiedehausen a écrit : New users need to know -- What the heck is Velocity? +1. So what is it? Is it a templating engine? A toolbox for a templating engine? What is the Velocity project. I'm struggling with that answer myself. ;-) Apache Velocity is the Velocity template engine and a set of complementary and closely-tied projects. Also (more pragmatic... ahum... not purely aesthetic) the project (in the title) vs projects (in the menu) - what about changing the title to sthing like the Velocity Umbrella or the Velocity Connection? i think we should generally refer to the Apache Velocity TLP as Apache Velocity and put no further nouns into it. If we need a generic noun as a synonym, i'd stick with project as that is how the ASF views us collectively. -- What's the latest version? +1. Latest Version of what? We already have three sub projects. What about including validation/compatibility/voting steps for subprojects, so that a particular version of a subproject is officially linked with every engine release? Hence, there would be a Velocity package version, the same as the core, and newcomers can avoid dealing with subproject versions. Advanced users who want to mix versions can fetch infos on subprojects pages and use subversion. I think this is a great idea. Not a high priority, but definitely something i'd like to work on once we get the TLP move completed and Velocity Engine 1.5 and VelocityTools 1.3 out the door. At this point, all VelocityTools releases are compatible with Velocity Engine 1.3+. Starting with VelocityTools 2.x, we'll probably require Velocity Engine 1.5+. It would be fantastic to have some simple way of expressing on overview of all these dependencies on our web site, especially as we bring in other subprojects and push Anakia and Texen out of the Engine. Claude - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Velocity Site - Preview
Great idea! I also think it would be good to have a link right above or below it that quickly tells how to use Velocity outside a webapp. The title of this would probably depend on the examples created for it. Which, by the way, i'm not sure we have any good, simple, easy-to-get-started-with, examples of this. Maybe i'll take a shot at that before 1.5 goes final. It's be nice to have a quick tutorial on... * sending email * generating arbitrary text files from an app * transforming an XML file with Anakia WILL On 12/18/06, Nathan Bubna [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: First, general thoughts I would like to see our web site reflect our charter in the sense that the Velocity Engine is always prominent and pre-eminent. It is a requirement that the other subprojects be dependent on that core center pole, otherwise the umbrella will become a mere sack. I'm not sure how best to represent this on our front page, but i think it is important that that be the case. Apart from this emphasis, i generally agree with Henning's thoughts on the front page. Regarding Velocity in a webapp... I like having a front page link to this guide. Like Will, it feels like there have been fewer simplistic questions on this since we added that page. I also think it would be good to have a link right above or below it that quickly tells how to use Velocity outside a webapp. The title of this would probably depend on the examples created for it. Which, by the way, i'm not sure we have any good, simple, easy-to-get-started-with, examples of this. Maybe i'll take a shot at that before 1.5 goes final... On 12/18/06, Claude Brisson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Some remarks / suggestions... Le dimanche 17 décembre 2006 à 14:10 +0100, Henning Schmiedehausen a écrit : New users need to know -- What the heck is Velocity? +1. So what is it? Is it a templating engine? A toolbox for a templating engine? What is the Velocity project. I'm struggling with that answer myself. ;-) Apache Velocity is the Velocity template engine and a set of complementary and closely-tied projects. Also (more pragmatic... ahum... not purely aesthetic) the project (in the title) vs projects (in the menu) - what about changing the title to sthing like the Velocity Umbrella or the Velocity Connection? i think we should generally refer to the Apache Velocity TLP as Apache Velocity and put no further nouns into it. If we need a generic noun as a synonym, i'd stick with project as that is how the ASF views us collectively. -- What's the latest version? +1. Latest Version of what? We already have three sub projects. What about including validation/compatibility/voting steps for subprojects, so that a particular version of a subproject is officially linked with every engine release? Hence, there would be a Velocity package version, the same as the core, and newcomers can avoid dealing with subproject versions. Advanced users who want to mix versions can fetch infos on subprojects pages and use subversion. I think this is a great idea. Not a high priority, but definitely something i'd like to work on once we get the TLP move completed and Velocity Engine 1.5 and VelocityTools 1.3 out the door. At this point, all VelocityTools releases are compatible with Velocity Engine 1.3+. Starting with VelocityTools 2.x, we'll probably require Velocity Engine 1.5+. It would be fantastic to have some simple way of expressing on overview of all these dependencies on our web site, especially as we bring in other subprojects and push Anakia and Texen out of the Engine. Claude - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Forio Business Simulations Will Glass-Husain [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.forio.com - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Velocity Site - Preview
So, finally having digged out of the heap'o'work, here it goes: On Tue, 2006-12-12 at 09:48 -0800, Will Glass-Husain wrote: Hi Henning, As I mentioned before, the layout look great. I have specific thoughts on the front page of the site. This page provides the first impression for new users and is a frequent stop for intermediate/experienced users. I think we should aim it to provide immediate help to these two group and move all other content away. New users need to know -- What the heck is Velocity? +1. So what is it? Is it a templating engine? A toolbox for a templating engine? What is the Velocity project. I'm struggling with that answer myself. ;-) -- How do I build a webapp with Velocity? -0. IMHO you are wrong here. If you say how do I start developing with Velocity, then I agree. I resent narrowing Velocity down to a web technology. IMHO we should much more focus on general templating engine and leave the developing a web application to the domain of Velocity Tools (and other explicitly web-related, velocity-based technologies like Click and VelTools. Offering links on developing web applications with Velocity, embedding Velocity into your project, writing a general templating solution with Velocity would be great. The question again is, Is this part of the wrapper site or part of the engine docs? -- What's the latest version? +1. Latest Version of what? We already have three sub projects. -- Is there recent activity or news about this project? +1. And I want to automatize it with an RSS feed. Maven 2 plugin anyone? ;-) -- How do I get help? +1 Intermediate/experienced users need to know -- Where can I find the Javadocs, users guide, etc Hm. In my experience from projects where I proposed Velocity, the most important question is how do I download it. Javadocs, guides etc. comes later. Stuff that isn't as important (and shouldn't take up valuable front page space) -- Anything more than a sentence about the Velocity TLP organization No. The Velocity Project is IMHO != The Velocity Engine Project. Do we want a first class citizen? This is the wrapper site for the TLP and the most important thing for me is that this site should change as little as possible. Having everything at your finger tips means, that you can have a stable page with all the information that you can bookmark. Not, that it must be the first page on the site. From an user perspective it is (IMHO) much more important that if I bookmark a page from the wrapper site, it is around for a very long time. The information on it might change but the page itself should not. The ASF has a number of projects that are notoriously bad in that respect. So these projects end up with everything on index.html because this is the only page that they can guarantee to be always there. -- Anything about the Apache Software Foundation -1 here. Velocity is a part of the ASF and either we are doomed to have this is our license, these are our goals, these are our rules pages or just say we are a part of the ASF prominently and then link to the general information pages. -- Long menus in the body of the page. It's tempting to say this is a hierarchy -- we shouldn't put engine specific info on the home page-- everything goes on the individual project page. But I disagree-- for ease of use we need to orient users immediately on the main page of the site. And I disagree here. If you are a first timer, the TLP site should give you an overview on what is there. I remember coming as a first timer (and initial exposure to Apache/Jakarta) to the Turbine web site and getting swamped with Turbine, Fulcrum, Stratum, Scarab, even Ant and later Maven and not being able to make heads or tails of it because there was simply no overview there. I want to avoid that with Velocity first-timers. You get to the site. You see what is there. You might even decide that Tools is the right thing for you, even though you came here hearing about Velocity as in Velocity Engine. If you are a seasoned user or just a Velocity Templating engine user, you bookmark http://velocity.apache.org/engine/ and you are done. The one project I try to model the site after is the Struts web site. Struts basically is one project. However, the actual project information is *not* available from its title page. It is general information. If you are a struts developer, you don't bookmark the first page. You bookmark e.g. http://struts.apache.org/1.3.5/ for struts 1.3.5. And that page will not change. It might be helpful to look at other multiproject sites, e.g. Hibernate (http://hibernate.org) First two paragraphs - about the main project. Short third paragraph about the organization. Then comes a short summary of each project. Then recent news (with dates). On the left is clear, bold menu with prominent link to Documentation, Download, and Forum Mailing Lists. Not saying this is perfect, but all the user questions listed
Re: Velocity Site - Preview
Hi Henning, I'm afraid this is a slow conversation since we both seem to be responding to Velocity emails in our respective evenings :-) Thanks for the detailed response. We're in rough agreement, but have a difference in emphasis. Clarifying/responding to a couple of points. * You've convinced me about not having the top page to default to Velocity Engine but have general-project content. I also agree the main page needs to include a menu with brief summaries of all subprojects. * I want to make sure that the main page clearly communicates to the users what Velocity-as-a-project is all about. (Hibernate does a good job of this). The current draft is mostly organizational (Velocity is a project of the Apache Software Foundation, charged with the creation and maintenance of open-source software... ); I'm proposing we make this more technical. The first three paragraphs of the current web site aren't bad, actually. With a little rewording we can make them about the approach (templating language, separating Java code from text content, etc.) and not about the engine. * About webapps. I'm just asking for a link on the main page Building a web application with Velocity. (again, like the current site). We don't need to insist that Velocity-as-a-web-tool is predominant. But I'd guess more than 50% of the new users are looking for this info. This is tricky for them to figure out, since the possible answers cut across multiple subprojects and third party frameworks. My impression is that we've had less clueless where do i start with the web questions on the user list since I put up this article, though it's hard to judge. * About the ASF. I see your point about our Apache community being important part of who we are. I still think this info is overemphasized in the main page and would be better served by a two links About the Apache Velocity Project and About the Apache Software Foundation rather than 4 inches of valuable front page body text. I'll have some time later this week. If you don't mind, I'll do a pass editing the front page and see if I can inject some of these thoughts into your excellent first cut. WILL On 12/17/06, Henning Schmiedehausen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So, finally having digged out of the heap'o'work, here it goes: On Tue, 2006-12-12 at 09:48 -0800, Will Glass-Husain wrote: Hi Henning, As I mentioned before, the layout look great. I have specific thoughts on the front page of the site. This page provides the first impression for new users and is a frequent stop for intermediate/experienced users. I think we should aim it to provide immediate help to these two group and move all other content away. New users need to know -- What the heck is Velocity? +1. So what is it? Is it a templating engine? A toolbox for a templating engine? What is the Velocity project. I'm struggling with that answer myself. ;-) -- How do I build a webapp with Velocity? -0. IMHO you are wrong here. If you say how do I start developing with Velocity, then I agree. I resent narrowing Velocity down to a web technology. IMHO we should much more focus on general templating engine and leave the developing a web application to the domain of Velocity Tools (and other explicitly web-related, velocity-based technologies like Click and VelTools. Offering links on developing web applications with Velocity, embedding Velocity into your project, writing a general templating solution with Velocity would be great. The question again is, Is this part of the wrapper site or part of the engine docs? -- What's the latest version? +1. Latest Version of what? We already have three sub projects. -- Is there recent activity or news about this project? +1. And I want to automatize it with an RSS feed. Maven 2 plugin anyone? ;-) -- How do I get help? +1 Intermediate/experienced users need to know -- Where can I find the Javadocs, users guide, etc Hm. In my experience from projects where I proposed Velocity, the most important question is how do I download it. Javadocs, guides etc. comes later. Stuff that isn't as important (and shouldn't take up valuable front page space) -- Anything more than a sentence about the Velocity TLP organization No. The Velocity Project is IMHO != The Velocity Engine Project. Do we want a first class citizen? This is the wrapper site for the TLP and the most important thing for me is that this site should change as little as possible. Having everything at your finger tips means, that you can have a stable page with all the information that you can bookmark. Not, that it must be the first page on the site. From an user perspective it is (IMHO) much more important that if I bookmark a page from the wrapper site, it is around for a very long time. The information on it might change but the page itself should not. The ASF has a number of projects that are notoriously bad in that respect. So these projects end up with everything on index.html
Re: Velocity Site - Preview
I like the direction this is heading, especially as laid out here: http://wiki.apache.org/jakarta-velocity/VelocitySite I'll help with the Tools docs at least. But it might be a week or so. I've gotta get some other work done first. On 12/11/06, Henning P. Schmiedehausen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [Hm. I could have sworn I've sent this out already. Seems it never made it] To let you know what I've been busy over the weekend: I've been wrestling with maven 2 and site building. A preview of where I intent to go is currently visible at http://velocity.apache.org/staging/ Comments, Criticism, Help, Patches wanted. Most of that is already in the site svn; I've created a custom skin for the site, that is not yet there. Best regards Henning -- Henning P. Schmiedehausen -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] | J2EE, Linux, 91054 Buckenhof, Germany -- +49 9131 506540 | Apache person Open Source Consulting, Development, Design | Velocity - Turbine guy Save the cheerleader. Save the world. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Velocity Site - Preview
Hi Henning, As I mentioned before, the layout look great. I have specific thoughts on the front page of the site. This page provides the first impression for new users and is a frequent stop for intermediate/experienced users. I think we should aim it to provide immediate help to these two group and move all other content away. New users need to know -- What the heck is Velocity? -- How do I build a webapp with Velocity? -- What's the latest version? -- Is there recent activity or news about this project? -- How do I get help? Intermediate/experienced users need to know -- Where can I find the Javadocs, users guide, etc Stuff that isn't as important (and shouldn't take up valuable front page space) -- Anything more than a sentence about the Velocity TLP organization -- Anything about the Apache Software Foundation -- Long menus in the body of the page. It's tempting to say this is a hierarchy -- we shouldn't put engine specific info on the home page-- everything goes on the individual project page. But I disagree-- for ease of use we need to orient users immediately on the main page of the site. It might be helpful to look at other multiproject sites, e.g. Hibernate (http://hibernate.org) First two paragraphs - about the main project. Short third paragraph about the organization. Then comes a short summary of each project. Then recent news (with dates). On the left is clear, bold menu with prominent link to Documentation, Download, and Forum Mailing Lists. Not saying this is perfect, but all the user questions listed above are answered with a minimum of scrolling or clicking around. On a new topic, when I click Engine I am apparently in some type of global-all-Engine-version home page that will then link to each of our historic versions. I think this is a mistake. Most users don't care about historic versions. I suggest we link directly to the current release, with hyperlinks to take you to docs for historic versions (or bleeding edge from source control). Again, the motivation is to make navigation simple so users can find what they want quickly. By the way, I'd be glad to help out writing content. But I'll pause to hear comments first. WILL P.S. Thanks for pushing this along. I'm really eager to see us launch TLP and Velocity 1.5. On 12/11/06, Henning P. Schmiedehausen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [Hm. I could have sworn I've sent this out already. Seems it never made it] To let you know what I've been busy over the weekend: I've been wrestling with maven 2 and site building. A preview of where I intent to go is currently visible at http://velocity.apache.org/staging/ Comments, Criticism, Help, Patches wanted. Most of that is already in the site svn; I've created a custom skin for the site, that is not yet there. Best regards Henning -- Henning P. Schmiedehausen -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] | J2EE, Linux, 91054 Buckenhof, Germany -- +49 9131 506540 | Apache person Open Source Consulting, Development, Design | Velocity - Turbine guy Save the cheerleader. Save the world. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Forio Business Simulations Will Glass-Husain [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.forio.com - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Velocity Site - Preview
Hi Henning, No branches or tags - sounds good. WILL On 12/12/06, Henning P. Schmiedehausen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Will Glass-Husain [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Thanks. I have the build process nailed down now and the skin is checked in. If you want to try out for yourself, just fetch http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/velocity/site/, take a look at the README.txt and follow the instructions. (I've removed the 'trunk' directory on purpose, mainly because a trunk implies IMHO tags and branches. Both we probably will not need for the site (or will we?). I've seen your other mail but it's already midnight over here and I will comment about it tomorrow. I've deployed a new preview on the staging directory; should hit the mirror servers in a few minutes or so. Best regards Henning Interesting. I like the look and feel. I've got lots of comments on the content. But I'm going to send them tomorrow when I'm more awake. WILL On 12/11/06, Henning P. Schmiedehausen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [Hm. I could have sworn I've sent this out already. Seems it never made it] To let you know what I've been busy over the weekend: I've been wrestling with maven 2 and site building. A preview of where I intent to go is currently visible at http://velocity.apache.org/staging/ Comments, Criticism, Help, Patches wanted. Most of that is already in the site svn; I've created a custom skin for the site, that is not yet there. Best regards Henning -- Henning P. Schmiedehausen -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] | J2EE, Linux, 91054 Buckenhof, Germany -- +49 9131 506540 | Apache person Open Source Consulting, Development, Design | Velocity - Turbine guy Save the cheerleader. Save the world. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Forio Business Simulations Will Glass-Husain [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.forio.com - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Henning P. Schmiedehausen -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] | J2EE, Linux, 91054 Buckenhof, Germany -- +49 9131 506540 | Apache person Open Source Consulting, Development, Design | Velocity - Turbine guy Save the cheerleader. Save the world. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Forio Business Simulations Will Glass-Husain [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.forio.com - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Velocity Site - Preview
Interesting. I like the look and feel. I've got lots of comments on the content. But I'm going to send them tomorrow when I'm more awake. WILL On 12/11/06, Henning P. Schmiedehausen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [Hm. I could have sworn I've sent this out already. Seems it never made it] To let you know what I've been busy over the weekend: I've been wrestling with maven 2 and site building. A preview of where I intent to go is currently visible at http://velocity.apache.org/staging/ Comments, Criticism, Help, Patches wanted. Most of that is already in the site svn; I've created a custom skin for the site, that is not yet there. Best regards Henning -- Henning P. Schmiedehausen -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] | J2EE, Linux, 91054 Buckenhof, Germany -- +49 9131 506540 | Apache person Open Source Consulting, Development, Design | Velocity - Turbine guy Save the cheerleader. Save the world. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Forio Business Simulations Will Glass-Husain [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.forio.com - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
