My goal for this new version is just to give the existing site a pick-me-up but keep it with the same layout so that all the same perks apply.
On Tue, Nov 29, 2016 at 7:59 PM, Tim McNamara <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On Nov 29, 2016, at 3:57 AM, Andrew Bernard <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > If however you are discussing expanding the mindshare of lilypond in the > > music publishing world, then I hardly think the cosmetic appearance of a > > website is the most influential factor. That's a very shallow approach. > > Surely it must be the quality and engineering of the software itself that > > speaks for lilypond's virtues. > > The cosmetic appearance of the web site is most certainly an influential > factor in expanding the "mindshare" of Lilypond. That is one of the > realities of the world as it works. The quality and engineering of the > software itself is invisible to 99% of your potential users. > > Take me- I am a musician. I know nothing useful about C and it's > variants, Scheme, etc. Lilypond might have the most elegant code ever > written and I will not see it, even if you point right at it. The result? > I am not going to evaluate Lilypond by its engineering. There's clearly > some disadvantage to me for that, but at 57 years old with a full-time > career, I'm not going to learn how to code. But the advantage is that I > get to look at the software and the website more naively- compared to > someone who has an encyclopedic knowledge of what's under the hood- as a > new potential user would. > > Unless you only want people who already know how to code to be your > customers. That's a small market. > > For people just finding out about Lilypond, the Lilypond web site is the > point of entry (I first heard about Lilypond on the MacUpdate site and > followed the link from there). Does it say to me "this is a modern, > powerful application that will produce beautiful sheet music that you will > be proud to hand out to your peers?" Or does it say "this application is > the product of spit, chewing gum and baling wire?" OK, I am exaggerating a > lot because the current web site doesn't actually say that to me, but it is > dated now and looks a bit hobbyist by comparison. > > Inasmuch as much of the FOSS community is often loathe to admit it, > branding does actually matter. Getting people to use the software > matters. Writing great free-as-in-speech software and then not persuading > people to give it a try tends to shoot that software in the foot. An > attractive, modern website can help with that. > > John's pages look pretty good and I thank him for the hours he put into > it. The scrolling is not annoying on my tablets but was on my laptops, for > some reason. That being said, having looked at the sample web site on my > laptops, tablets and phone, the Learn page is very difficult as it stands. > It's row upon row of basically undifferentiated choices- if you didn't go > there already knowing what you wanted, the page doesn't help you choose. > > _______________________________________________ > lilypond-user mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user > -- John Roper Freelance Developer and Simulation Artist Boston, MA USA http://jmroper.com/
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