So it seems to me that there are two very distinct issues here. One is
about the content and the other is about aesthetics. From my
interpretation of the Fogel quotes, it speaks less about aesthetics as
about content, clear writing, and clear organization. I understand about
the ecosystem, and how it is important to have engaging, clearly written
documentation. In my opinion, for Scooby 0.1, the content is more
important than aesthetics.
That said, from a PM's perspective of Scooby all that is needed on front
facing pages is
a link somewhere on the main OSAF page to Scooby (and Cosmo), instead of
being buried on the wiki. A Scooby centralized page that helps route
developers to the right parts of the wiki.
The other point which is obvious but seems to be another project all
together is the organization of the wiki. And to touch on Brian's point,
everything already looks inconsistent: OSAF front page, the Chandler
launch page, and the wiki, all have different organizations, different
formating and different aesthetics. If we're serious about the branding
for OSAF and the ecosystem of products, we should start by choosing
common look for the OSAF front page, wiki and the project home pages.
-Priscilla
Sheila Mooney wrote:
Sorry if this is repetitive...
+ I really don't think there is any disagreement that we want to have
something better than
this....http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Projects/ScoobyHome.
+ I also think there is agreement that we want to have some key pieces
of content like links to the blog, mailing lists, how to get involved
(whatever seems reasonable at this stage). I personally am not crazy
about links to placeholder pages that say "in progress", but that's
just my opinion.
+ Where we really disagree is giving the Scooby 0.1 landing page the
same look and feel as the Chandler landing page to make it more like
an "official" part of the ecosystem. To address one of Brian's
replies, it's not that we think putting together a custom html page is
beyond our capabilities over the next 2 weeks. Mimi is simply pointing
out that it's not as simple as Pieter just using the Chandler page,
adding the content and tweaking a few things. Matt and others will
have to do SOME work. When we decided in mid-Jan to just package up
whatever "Scooby" we had by a certain date, test it for a day and put
it out there, the PPD team just assumed we would go with something
sufficient but low key as a landing page. Low key certainly doesn't
imply crappy or that we wouldn't follow most of the principles
described by Fogel. Since the Scooby releases are expected to be more
frequent, we could plan for a more full scale landing page in 0.2.
For all the time I have spent over the past 2 weeks on this, it might
have been better spent working on the larger branding effort we need
to tackle for all our products including the "ecosystem". I don't
think that when we designed the Chandler 0.6 landing page we were
thinking of the look and feel for all the products, the ecosystem or
how we want Chandler 1.0 to look. For me, one take-away here is that
perhaps it would be a good idea to start thinking about this sooner
rather than later.
Just my 2 cents.
On Feb 13, 2006, at 7:07 PM, Mimi Yin wrote:
Ted,
I think one of the issues of pulling together an HTML page that
incorporated some Chandler landing page elements to tie the landing
pages together was that it would require resources (ie. Matt) for
building it.
There seem to be 2 issues:
1. Resources and time (less design and more front-end implementation,
I think whether we do a wiki page or a custom HTML page, the design
team will have to expend a comparable amount of effort)
2. What is the cost of waiting on a custom landing page until 0.2?
All things being equal, a scaled down custom landing page that feels
like it's a member of the ecosystem (as in related to Chandler) would
be great. But 2 questions are:
+ Can we accomplish this AND release on time?
+ If not, are we willing to hold the release for a custom landing page?
Mimi
On Feb 13, 2006, at 6:24 PM, Ted Leung wrote:
Hi Pieter,
Pieter Hartsook wrote:
Hi,
There have been some discussions regarding a "landing page" for the
Scooby project that we thought we should take to the maillists for
comments.
I'm confused about what you are asking for here, other than a high
level of visual polish.
When we left the meeting last week
<http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Journal/MtgNotes0208>,
I thought that we had agreed on a plan for the landing page, which
called for incorporating elements
from the Chandler project page (the left side navigation) into the
Scooby project page.
When Scooby 0.1 is released we will have three major components of the
Chandler ecosystem in place as official active OSAF projects;
Chandler, Cosmo, and Scooby. For each project we want to make it easy
for potential developers and others to quickly and effortlessly get
information about the project in order to encourage them to get
involved and begin to build an active community. This effort is in
keeping with Fogel's observations about packaging and presentation:
"A related mistake is that of skimping on presentation and packaging,
figuring that these can always be done later, when the project is well
under way. Presentation and packaging comprise a wide range of tasks,
all revolving around the theme of reducing the barrier to entry.
Making the project inviting to the uninitiated means writing user and
developer documentation, setting up a project web site that's
informative to newcomers, automating as much of the software's
compilation and installation as possible, etc."
--- Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free
Software Project by Karl Fogel, p. 10
When Chandler 0.6 was released we collected information from various
sources and created the Chandler landing page
<http://chandler.osafoundation.org> as visually appealing home page
for the project that organizes and clearly leads visitors to
appropriate pages for more information. Some of the links on the
landing page go to wiki pages, some to the OSAF website, some to the
group blog, and some to secondary html pages on the landing page site
itself. By creating the landing page site instead of using the wiki we
had more control over the design of the page and made it more
attractive and easier to understand and navigate.
We of course want to provide those interested in Cosmo and Scooby with
similar easy-of-entry access to information about those projects as
well. The question at hand is, What do we do over the next couple of
weeks to prepare a landing page for the initial 0.1 release of Scooby?
There are a continuum of solutions:
1) At one end we can create a "landing page" on the wiki and simply
continue to provide a redirect from <http://scooby.osafoundation.org>
to the wiki.
2) We could make a simple html, mostly text-based page that would free
the landing page from the wiki navigation and editing kruft and allow
a more appealing presentation of the content.
3) We could borrow from the work done on the Chandler landing page,
keeping much of the navigation aids and style the same but modifying
the content to target the Scooby 0.1 release.
At this point, I'll interject my opinion, that if time and resources
allow, I am in favor of option #3. I see the advantages that Fogel
pointed out in having good presentation in the project web site early
in the project in order to lower the barriers to entry. I also believe
reusing similar design elements on the different project landing pages
not only makes it easier for someone who is familiar with one project
to more easily find their way in a sister project, but it subtly
reiniforces the familial relationship among the projects.
There is some concern that a graphically polished landing page for
Scooby may inappropriately set expectations that the software is more
mature than the 0.1 release is. I think that we can set expectations
appropriately through the messaging/content on the page. And as the
project matures we can maintain the interface and change the
expectation messaging. Similarly, at this early stage in the Scooby
project some of the documentation (like some of the features and
functionality) may not have been created yet. Again, going back to
Fogel...
If you look at the website for Subversion, which is the project
Fogel is currently working on, you'll see that our project pages
go way beyond the Subversion site in terms of graphics, etc. I'm
sure that Fogel finds the Subversion site adequate to the task. So I
don't really think that we need to spend a huge amount of effort
beyond the basic look of the Chandler project page.
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