Good job. Looks great. I agree with all the principles and love the design.
On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 12:06 PM, Robin Komiwes <[email protected]>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. > -- Best regards, Igor Drobiazko http://tapestry5.de/blog
