Hi Denis, Here are some personal thoughts on what can be improved within CS. I can help a bit working on this, we can talk about that through this mailing list or the crystal-develop one, through personal mails, through trac tickets or the 'Discussion' option of the web pages.
IMO, the most important aspect is having a more attractive and usable web site. The current site is rather complete but it is having some problems: * The visual aspect of the web site is rather sober and sad. When going to the web site of a 3D engine, the visitor expect to find fancy images etc. The impression given by the current web site doesn't reflect the graphical potential of CS. - We can have more images, eg a random screenshot on the main page and images within the news. - The graphical layout may be improved. Less importantly, the layout may be unified between the web site, the blogs, the forum, the trac. * The navigation is not evident. It is hard to find the information you want when you don't know where it is. There are three menus on the main page: on the left, at the top, and in a box on the right. This is disturbing. All menus should be regrouped at the same place, ie on the left. Some quick links are also missing, while some others are outdated. The page structure may also be improved: some big pages may be split, some small pages may be merged. Here is a proposition of a menu layout: About - Home - News - Features - Screenshots - Videos Projects - Crystal Space Engine - CEL - CELstart Community - Forums - Blogs - Other Developers - Subversion - Trac - Bugs Donations - Contribute Documentation - Manual - API - Tutorials Ressources - For artists Download - Demos - SDK Links - YoFrankie - Crystal Core - blender2crystal - CrystalArchitect - PlaneShift ToolBox * Some information is outdated or incomplete - The most important page is the main page. This is where the visitor will choose between going further or zapping to another web site. The description of CS may be improved to reflect more the status and the potential of CS. There may also be more news when there are events like release candidates, binary packages, new features, new projects, things to test, needs (like seeking for an artist for the relooking of the web site), etc - The second most important pages are the feature list and the screenshots/videos. The current pages doesn't reflect the impressive feature list and potential of CS/CEL/etc. They can be improved to be more accurate/complete/sexy. There can also be more videos/demos on the features and uses of CS. A win32 demo package may help. * Another important aspect of CS that is problematic is the time between each releases. Having some scripts to automatize the whole process can help a lot. Having supported binary packages too. Regards, Christian ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Planet: dedicated and managed hosting, cloud storage, colocation Stay online with enterprise data centers and the best network in the business Choose flexible plans and management services without long-term contracts Personal 24x7 support from experience hosting pros just a phone call away. http://p.sf.net/sfu/theplanet-com _______________________________________________ Crystal-main mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/crystal-main Unsubscribe: mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe
