While I agree that a new design should be appealing to first-time users, we shouldn't neglect
returning users searching for specific pieces of information. I like the overall new design but I'd
put a little bit more emphasis on the links to documentation, downloads, javadocs, etc.
Great Job! I like it very much!
Uli
On 25.05.2010 12:06, Robin Komiwes wrote:
I said some weeks ago that I will assist the documentation renew effort by
proposing a redesign for Tapestry homepage.
I'm quite satisfied with the first draft and I now need the community
feedback to know if I should stop or continue this way. Of course, if
someone wants to help on the content or the design, you are very welcome.
The URLs :
http://komiwes.fr/tapestry
http://komiwes.fr/tapestry/getting_started.htm
http://komiwes.fr/tapestry/community.htm
Now, here are the key principles of this redesign. I've tried to follow
them, and some may need to be expressed more.
- Everything is marketing
Others frameworks understand that well. They all have a shiny homepage, with
key words, quotes from great people and baselines that you can't miss.
The homepage should seduce and convince people. You've got to know that the
framework you are using, or about to, is one of the best frameworks. In
fact, there are plenty of good frameworks, if you launch tomorrow another
"good framework", you are already dead. You need to offer a rockstar
framework.
On this redesign, a newcomer will be satisfied by how the information is
clear and concise. He will know the concept of Tapestry (cf baseline) and
will instantly have an idea of Tapestry strengths (cf Java power, scripting
ease, highly productive).
Finally he will be invited to give 20 minutes of its time to try the
framework and realize how true was what we announced before.
- Community
Every framework should focus on its community. IMHO, that's another key
point: again, if you think that an open source framework will buzz just
because it is well made, you may have miss how the internet has evolved
since some years. Ruby on Rails and jQuery have integrated that since the
beginning. Focusing on the community is mandatory. Why?
First, because as a Web framework developer, you can't cover every feature.
Web is just too big. Especially in the Java ecosystem. If someone cover a
feature for you, thanks him and then do advertising for its contribution as
it was one of the features of the framework. It should be presented as a
part of the framework itself, not as "a nice side project that you may look
to if you want to...".
Secondly, because the web is social. If people feels that they are part of
an active community, they will be proud of it and will wants to make other
people joining it. They will blog for you, they will evangelize for you. In
fact, they will to the marketing job for you.
I think the effort on this point should be pushed a lot further. We should
have some specs on how to write and provide components library, how to
provides plugins. We should have a place where to publish them.
We should also have an open sourced keynote available to make presentations
of Tapestry 5, like Howard's one :
http://www.slideshare.net/hlship/tapestry-5-java-power-scripting-ease
Everyone should be able to grab it and then do a presentation to its local
JUG.
- Fresh content
It's important to look like active. We all know here that Tapestry is active
but if you look at the actual website, there is no clue about that.
Here, I think using a specific Twitter account (I've reserved @tapestry_5)
for pushing news both on a social network and on the Tapestry website would
be great. We would be able to easily push fresh, concise news from both
Tapestry 5 framework and any other related tweets.
- Efficiency
One of the "cons" of maven sites is that they make you writing big pages and
big menus. It is bad because it results in an insanely big amount of data
that kills the data itself.
The homepage should be efficient and concise.
- References
Real Tapestry applications showcase is a must have. We should be able to say
"Hey, look! They've been using Tapestry in production and see how nice it
works.". We already have some greats examples and we should show them.
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