Hi All Forgive me for skipping out of the running Homepage design proposal thread with top posting a new message. I simply want to distill the great comments I got so far (thanks everyone!) on the first rough draft of the homepage, so we can keep all the information together.
Let me run over the major points. Design ------ 1. Images of real life chickens The image I used on the homepage is a random image of chickens (not from Alaric) but carries a creative commons license which allows free commercial use. The only thing we need to do is to add some sort of credit to the photographer on the site. Yet, Alaric, if you are listening and able to shoot some pics of your chicks...? Yaroslav pointed out that the picture is currently a bit attention demanding, so I will see to tone it down a bit. Maybe a different (brighter?) picture might seek less attention. 2. Still much text As some have correctly pointed out, there is still a load of text (amount did not change that much over the original), yet I intentionally did not touch the actual content. I am in no (technical knowledgeable) position to edit the text. I am fully aware that the text, especially the bullet points and feature listings, is much too long. They are not "punchy" enough, not (dare I say it) commercial enough. A powerful bullet I like (short, to the point) is: "Very supportive community, with a wide intellectual background.". I think this should be an example for the other points. So I reach out to you guys to help reshape these texts into a more to-the-point and accurate form. Mario already provided some good alternative texts. 3. Colors Almost everyone pointed out that some texts are not very readable with the current color scheme. I agree (sorry for that ;) ). Also, Mario, yes I tried to incorporate the colors of the logo into the site, simply because I like both the logo and its colors. It just feels right. It's playful and yet professional. I feel a bit uncomfortable with picking a different color scheme as I think this would fight the logo very quickly. On the other hand...my main focus is not design...so I could just be talking gibberish here. Or...do you also mean we could change the actual colors of the logo, Mario? If there are any color-aware folks in the room to comment on this....please do! Features -------- 1. Interactive shell As I understand it this would be not as feasible as I first thought, and, in hindsight, for good reason (Thanks for pointing out why everyone). So, let us assume we do not get an interactive shell...yet I do find it important that we show some code examples right on the front page. Maybe three or four (or more!) samples depicting typical features of CHICKEN. These samples could be easily "flipped" through with a few navigation buttons, they would carry a clear title per sample and a few comments inline of what this code is about. Programmers love to see beautiful code...right? 2. Map of CHICKEN around the world Hmmm...Peter made a good remark about privacy...and apparently this has been attempted before and has already seen its exit. No map then. 3. Latest changes Mario was not very favorable about the "Latest changes" section on the homepage...yet this is something I see with a lot of languages and end-user tools. To me, it shows that there is progress going on. If I see no version numbers/release dates I tend to get suspicious. If there is a clear timeline that shows that the project is alive, however, it boosts my confidence in giving it a try. Or does that sound too naive? 4. Eggs list Peter mentioned a link to the eggs list...actually I did not think about that at all, but it is indeed very important to show some major eggs right on the front page. Eggs are what can make the language more interesting to more higher level users and to show that a lot of tooling is already available. CHICKEN is not only a compiler for/dialect of Scheme, but an impressive tool belt as well. General ------- 1. Structure Matt wrote a very insightful reply towards how we should approach this beast. First, Matt, don't feel hopelessly outclassed...I wrote but two eggs which I consider to be the basics of the basics. I shamefully haven't touched CHICKEN and wasn't present in the community for the whole 2014... Next, the reference to the Open Dylan is very nice. They have the exact features I was looking for. Yet their design is, regretfully, a simple Bootstrap theme. Finally, I also agree that only reforming the homepage, only to fall back to the current design for the remainder of the site, only adds insult to injury. I too think it is therefor important to try and get a picture of how the site is currently structured (sitemap?) and see how we can (and if we need to) restructure the information to be better accessible and digestible. Moving the Download button more in sight and presenting more apparent top links to relevant parts of the site was my feeble attempt at restructuring. Yet, again, I agree this has to be done in a more structural way. Any ideas anyone? 2. Gathering it all Do you all think the mailing list is the perfect spot to discuss and progress with a possible new site overhaul? As many different topics may need to be discussed, ideas presented and alterations made...it may be difficult to keep everything organized with mail. Ideas? Cheers, Tim _______________________________________________ Chicken-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/chicken-users
