Jean T. Anderson wrote:
That home page is another thing that could use serious redesign, :-)
something simpler that links to the charter.
Torque has a home page that provides a synopsis and a link to the most
current release: http://db.apache.org/torque/ . (Moving that up after
their "What is Torque?" section would make it instantly visible.) And I
like the way JDO has the news on the home page (http://db.apache.org/jdo/).
If you look at the home pages for Torque or PostgreSQL you immediately
get the feeling that these are home pages for a software products. I
think our homepage more gives the impression of being a home page for a
development project. I think this is the wrong approach. Our "front
page" should focus on attracting users of Derby. The heading "The
Apache Derby Project" appeals more to potential developers of Derby.
Some suggestions:
- The header should only say "Apache Derby".
- A table of contents make the page pretty dull. I think the fact that
we feel we need a TOC indicates that there are probably too much stuff
on the front page. (If you look at the Postgres front page, it is
mostly links to other pages.)
- I do not know what is technically possible, but having more columns
will bring more information to the top of the page. At least on my
laptop, I still have to scroll down to find the link to downloads and
the news.
- The fact that people are not able to find downloads in the menu on the
left side, indicates that something is probably wrong with the design.
Maybe the text is to small and does not show well due to the background
color.
--
Øystein
