Ignoring the rest of the thread, but jumping in here...
hask...@kudling.de wrote:
For the hompage we're talking about, glancing is even simpler since
everything is on the same page and you can scroll it quite easily.
I don't agree that "everything on one page" makes comprehension easier.
I'm not sure hiding a level of the hierarchy of information behind a
few clicks make things easier.
That depends on which task we are talking about:
- getting an overview of all available information, or
- finding exactly what you are looking for
I agree with minh thu. For the newcomer to the Haskell community the big
question is not "what is Haskell?" but rather "I've heard of this
Haskell thing, how do I get started?" and "I've tinkered with this
Haskell thing, where do I get more?"
The biggest thing I dislike about the alternative pages mentioned by the
OP is that they fail in this task. Many of those pages are entirely
unhelpful on where to go and/or are filled with administrative nonsense
only the compiler developers would care about. Those that aren't are so
so polished that there's no content left, or if there is it can't be
easily discerned from all the other polish (e.g. the Ruby site. *I* know
the content there is meaningful, but the presentation has a very
corporate who-gives-a-damn flavor to it which dissuades actually reading
the page).
Certainly changes could be made (e.g. the verbiage of the description
paragraph, moving the language choice to the top, minimizing the
realestate devoted to the top bar, simplifying the many redundant search
boxes/links,...) but I think by and large the page is very good as a
portal for new users as well as for experienced community members
looking for That One Thing Whatsitcalled. Hiding the TOC content behind
links is a sure way to keep people from finding it and reading it.
--
Live well,
~wren
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