Re: to make newbie more comfortable and easier to glance: suggestion on change frontpage of gap

2009-05-11 Thread Riccardo Mottola 
Hi,

although I did not like your proposals directly, I understand your points
and ideas, the current access was indeed suboptimal.

I thus merged your different ideas and the  GAP homepage now has all
application listed with a description, but much shorter.
Another page has now a complete index, description will follow.

Information about unreleased projects and a way to mark them if the
description is available will follow. It is pretty trivial for the user to
notice it, since no download link exists!

Riccardo

- Original Message - 
From: Lars Sonchocky-Helldorf lars.sonchocky-helld...@hamburg.de
To: Riccardo Mottola mul...@ngi.it
Cc: Zhang Weiwu zhangwe...@realss.com; GNUstep general
discuss-gnustep@gnu.org
Sent: Sunday, May 10, 2009 1:46 AM
Subject: Re: to make newbie more comfortable and easier to glance:
suggestion on change frontpage of gap


 Hi Riccardo,

 I second Zhang's view. A short description would give visitors - who
 aren't gnustep old stagers - an idea what GAP and all the other
 stuff on that page is about. Even if the frontpage is considered just
 a quick acces page.

 I think it would also help with regard to search engines which then
 would be able to display a short text in their search results.

 The non released project should get a label that says coming soon
 or similar IMHO.

is descripbed is more




___
Discuss-gnustep mailing list
Discuss-gnustep@gnu.org
http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnustep

Re: to make newbie more comfortable and easier to glance: suggestion on change frontpage of gap

2009-05-10 Thread hns 
On 10 Mai, 01:46, Lars Sonchocky-Helldorf lars.sonchocky-
helld...@hamburg.de wrote:
 Hi Riccardo,

 I second Zhang's view. A short description would give visitors - who  
 aren't gnustep old stagers - an idea what GAP and all the other  
 stuff on that page is about. Even if the frontpage is considered just  
 a quick acces page.

 I think it would also help with regard to search engines which then  
 would be able to display a short text in their search results.

 The non released project should get a label that says coming soon  
 or similar IMHO.

 Take for instance a website likehttp://unsanity.com/who also offer  
 (although commercial) software (this is only an example of how such a  
 page can be done, not an advertisement for them). They have a similar  
 setup like GAP. Their frontpage has a *detailed* 'news' section so  
 that regular visitors get a quick impression what happened. Their  
 'products' pagehttp://www.unsanity.com/products/lists not only the  
 names of the apps they're selling, but also a short description of  
 those. Or would you have known what for instance their silk or  
 mighty mouse is for without having a *short* introduction first?

That reminds me what the GNUstep Software Index is showing as content
(in a different layout).

   http://www.gnustep.org/softwareindex/

Maybe, it should be more part of the GAP Web Page?

If it would help, we could add a database checkbox GAP so that it
shows only the GAP projects.


 regards,

         Lars

 Am 06.05.2009 um 05:44 schrieb Riccardo Mottola:

  Hi Zhang.

  I occasionally dub as webmaster too. The team of active GAP  
  developers has
  shrunk a bit...

  I understand what you want to change and appreciate your effort,  
  but it is
  confusing to me. I prefer without the descriptions. Furthermore,  
  imagine
  when new applications will be added! A real mess! In the future  
  maybe some
  kind of categorization will be needed.

  The links on the fron tpage need to serve as quick-access to the  
  sub-pages.

  If you want a page that acts more of a guide with short  
  descriptions, a page
  were a whole GAP based  environment setup is descripbed is more
  appropriate, so the user can read, pick what he needs and go in to  
  deeper
  details.

  I also disagree with hiding non-released projects, they are maybe not
  dormant, just unreleased. For example the Browser Vespucci had  
  quite some
  talk, so it should be correctly represented on the front page.

  Actually, some of our projects miss a page and some screenshot,  
  I'll work on
  that.

  Thanks in any case for your intrest in the GNustep Application  
  Project.
    Riccardo

  - Original Message -
  From: Zhang Weiwu zhangwe...@realss.com
  To: GNUstep general discuss-gnus...@gnu.org
  Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 5:21 PM
  Subject: to make newbie more comfortable and easier to glance:  
  suggestion on
  change frontpage of gap

  I did not find how to contact the webmast in the gap website so I  
  just
  post it here. I'd propose small change on the index page to make  
  it less
  confusing for newbies like me.

  What I did is to add short description to alive projects and hide the
  hibernating projects. Maybe there should be a link to a special page
  where all hibernating projects are listed, but they should not be  
  on the
  front page to attract unnecessary attention.

  Before:
 http://emerson.realss.com/index.html
  After:
 http://emerson.realss.com/index:1.html

  ___
  Discuss-gnustep mailing list
  discuss-gnus...@gnu.org
 http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnustep

___
Discuss-gnustep mailing list
Discuss-gnustep@gnu.org
http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnustep

Re: to make newbie more comfortable and easier to glance: suggestion on change frontpage of gap

2009-05-09 Thread Lars Sonchocky-Helldorf 

Hi Riccardo,

I second Zhang's view. A short description would give visitors - who  
aren't gnustep old stagers - an idea what GAP and all the other  
stuff on that page is about. Even if the frontpage is considered just  
a quick acces page.


I think it would also help with regard to search engines which then  
would be able to display a short text in their search results.


The non released project should get a label that says coming soon  
or similar IMHO.


Take for instance a website like http://unsanity.com/ who also offer  
(although commercial) software (this is only an example of how such a  
page can be done, not an advertisement for them). They have a similar  
setup like GAP. Their frontpage has a *detailed* 'news' section so  
that regular visitors get a quick impression what happened. Their  
'products' page http://www.unsanity.com/products/ lists not only the  
names of the apps they're selling, but also a short description of  
those. Or would you have known what for instance their silk or  
mighty mouse is for without having a *short* introduction first?


regards,

Lars


Am 06.05.2009 um 05:44 schrieb Riccardo Mottola:


Hi Zhang.

I occasionally dub as webmaster too. The team of active GAP  
developers has

shrunk a bit...

I understand what you want to change and appreciate your effort,  
but it is
confusing to me. I prefer without the descriptions. Furthermore,  
imagine
when new applications will be added! A real mess! In the future  
maybe some

kind of categorization will be needed.

The links on the fron tpage need to serve as quick-access to the  
sub-pages.


If you want a page that acts more of a guide with short  
descriptions, a page

were a whole GAP based  environment setup is descripbed is more
appropriate, so the user can read, pick what he needs and go in to  
deeper

details.

I also disagree with hiding non-released projects, they are maybe not
dormant, just unreleased. For example the Browser Vespucci had  
quite some

talk, so it should be correctly represented on the front page.

Actually, some of our projects miss a page and some screenshot,  
I'll work on

that.

Thanks in any case for your intrest in the GNustep Application  
Project.

  Riccardo

- Original Message -
From: Zhang Weiwu zhangwe...@realss.com
To: GNUstep general discuss-gnustep@gnu.org
Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 5:21 PM
Subject: to make newbie more comfortable and easier to glance:  
suggestion on

change frontpage of gap


I did not find how to contact the webmast in the gap website so I  
just
post it here. I'd propose small change on the index page to make  
it less

confusing for newbies like me.

What I did is to add short description to alive projects and hide the
hibernating projects. Maybe there should be a link to a special page
where all hibernating projects are listed, but they should not be  
on the

front page to attract unnecessary attention.

Before:
http://emerson.realss.com/index.html
After:
http://emerson.realss.com/index:1.html





___
Discuss-gnustep mailing list
Discuss-gnustep@gnu.org
http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnustep




___
Discuss-gnustep mailing list
Discuss-gnustep@gnu.org
http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnustep

Re: to make newbie more comfortable and easier to glance: suggestion on change frontpage of gap

2009-05-09 Thread Zhang Weiwu 

Hi Riccardo

Lars Sonchocky-Helldorf wrote:
A short description would give visitors - who aren't gnustep old 
stagers - an idea what GAP and all the other stuff on that page is 
about. Even if the frontpage is considered just a quick acces page.


Do you agree with this idea?

On the front page there shall be 3 applications each with description, 
screenshot and project URI, lined up vertically in a column. The 3 
applications, 2 of them are released products and 1 unreleased yet 
(where screenshot can be omitted). These 3 applications are randomly 
chosen from a pool of existing projects, so each visit to the site see 
something different. A link more projects leads to a summary page 
where all products are introduced.



___
Discuss-gnustep mailing list
Discuss-gnustep@gnu.org
http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnustep

Re: to make newbie more comfortable and easier to glance: suggestion on change frontpage of gap

2009-05-05 Thread David Chisnall 
Possibly you have a very wide screen / browser window, but for me that  
ends up displaying the text in very difficult-to-read, small,  
columns.  Your eye is drawn across the page, while the text goes  
down.  Very bad usability.


If you're going to put the description under the name, you need fewer  
columns or more space between them.  Possibly make the description  
text smaller too - at the moment it just blurs into the headings.


David

On 5 May 2009, at 16:21, Zhang Weiwu wrote:

I did not find how to contact the webmast in the gap website so I  
just post it here. I'd propose small change on the index page to  
make it less confusing for newbies like me.


What I did is to add short description to alive projects and hide  
the hibernating projects. Maybe there should be a link to a special  
page where all hibernating projects are listed, but they should not  
be on the front page to attract unnecessary attention.


Before:
http://emerson.realss.com/index.html
After:
http://emerson.realss.com/index:1.html

Patch: (let me know if posting patch here is okay or how to  
coordinate with the webmaster)


--- index.html  2009-03-15 06:15:56.0 +0800
+++ index:1.html2009-05-05 23:13:22.0 +0800
@@ -7,6 +7,11 @@
link rel=stylesheet href=gnustep-main.css type=text/css
style type=text/css media=screen
@import gnustep-main-2.css;
+   div.content.applications dl {
+   width: 24%;
+   float: left;
+   padding-left: 1%;
+   }
/style
meta http-equiv=Content-type content=text/html; 
charset=UTF-8
link rel=SHORTCUT ICON href=/images/gnustep-favicon.ico
@@ -30,84 +35,28 @@
	Links below which are not active are for apps which are planned  
or in the process of being coded, but have not yet been released.  
Please check the latest CVS for unreleased versions of these apps.

/p
/div
-   div class=content downloads
-   h4
-   Current Packages
-   /h4
-   table border=0 width=95% align=center
-   tr
-   td
-   a 
href=ftp/index.htmlFTP/a
-   /td
-   td
-   Graphos
-   /td
-   td
-   a 
href=innerspace/index.htmlInnerSpace/a
-   /td
-   td
-   Installer
-   /td
-   /tr
-   tr
-   td
-   a 
href=timemon/index.htmlTimeMon/a
-   /td
-   td
-   a 
href=batmon/index.htmlBatMon/a
-   /td
-   td
-   loginpanel
-   /td
-   td
-   NFSAdmin
-   /td
-   /tr
-   tr
-   td
-   a 
href=nextgo/index.htmlNeXTGo/a
-   /td
-   td
-   a 
href=lapispuzzle/index.htmlLapisPuzzle/a
-   /td
-   td
-   a 
href=ladder/index.htmlLadder/a
-   /td
-   td
- a 
href=remotedesk/index.htmlRemoteDesk/a
-   /td
-   /tr
-   tr
-   td
-   a 
href=addresses/index.htmlAddresses/a
-

Re: to make newbie more comfortable and easier to glance: suggestion on change frontpage of gap

2009-05-05 Thread Zhang Weiwu 

David Chisnall wrote:
Possibly you have a very wide screen / browser window, but for me that 
ends up displaying the text in very difficult-to-read, small, 
columns.  Your eye is drawn across the page, while the text goes 
down.  Very bad usability.


If you're going to put the description under the name, you need fewer 
columns or more space between them.  Possibly make the description 
text smaller too - at the moment it just blurs into the headings.
You are right. No I don't have a very wide screen but optimal Chinese 
text column width is 13 characters, which means at XGA there could be 
some 5 columns. I wasn't aware I was dealing English content.


How about this:
file:///home/zhangweiwu/GNUstep_Projects/www.nongnu.org/gap/index:2.html

--- index.html  2009-03-15 06:15:56.0 +0800
+++ index:2.html2009-05-05 23:39:40.0 +0800
@@ -7,6 +7,33 @@
link rel=stylesheet href=gnustep-main.css type=text/css
style type=text/css media=screen
@import gnustep-main-2.css;
+   div.content.applications {
+   padding: 0em;
+   }
+   div.content.applications h2 {
+   text-align: center;
+   }
+   div.content.applications dl {
+   width: 32%;
+   float: left;
+   padding-left: 1%;
+   }
+   div.content.applications dl dt {
+   background-color: whitesmoke;
+   border: thin solid lightgray;
+   padding-left: 0.5em;
+   padding-right: 0.5em;
+   }
+   div.content.applications dl dt :link,
+   div.content.applications dl dt :visited {
+   text-decoration: none;
+   }
+   div.content.applications dl dd {
+   background-color: whitesmoke;
+   padding-left: 0.5em;
+   padding-right: 0.5em;
+   margin-bottom: 0.5em;
+   }
/style
meta http-equiv=Content-type content=text/html; 
charset=UTF-8
link rel=SHORTCUT ICON href=/images/gnustep-favicon.ico
@@ -30,84 +57,27 @@
Links below which are not active are 
for apps which are planned or in the process of being coded, but have not yet 
been released. Please check the latest CVS for unreleased versions of these 
apps.
/p
/div
-   div class=content downloads
-   h4
-   Current Packages
-   /h4
-   table border=0 width=95% align=center
-   tr
-   td
-   a 
href=ftp/index.htmlFTP/a
-   /td
-   td
-   Graphos
-   /td
-   td
-   a 
href=innerspace/index.htmlInnerSpace/a
-   /td
-   td
-   Installer
-   /td
-   /tr
-   tr
-   td
-   a 
href=timemon/index.htmlTimeMon/a
-   /td
-   td
-   a 
href=batmon/index.htmlBatMon/a
-   /td
-   td
-   loginpanel
-   /td
-   td
-   NFSAdmin
-   /td
-   /tr
-   tr
-   td
-   a 
href=nextgo/index.htmlNeXTGo/a
-   /td
-   td
-   a 
href=lapispuzzle/index.htmlLapisPuzzle/a
-   /td
-   td
-   a 
href=ladder/index.htmlLadder/a
-   /td
-   td
-

Re: to make newbie more comfortable and easier to glance: suggestion on change frontpage of gap

2009-05-05 Thread Zhang Weiwu 

Zhang Weiwu wrote:


How about this:
file:///home/zhangweiwu/GNUstep_Projects/www.nongnu.org/gap/index:2.html

Silly me! Should be:
http://emerson.realss.com/index:2.html


___
Discuss-gnustep mailing list
Discuss-gnustep@gnu.org
http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnustep

Re: to make newbie more comfortable and easier to glance: suggestion on change frontpage of gap

2009-05-05 Thread Riccardo Mottola 
Hi Zhang.

I occasionally dub as webmaster too. The team of active GAP developers has
shrunk a bit...

I understand what you want to change and appreciate your effort, but it is
confusing to me. I prefer without the descriptions. Furthermore, imagine
when new applications will be added! A real mess! In the future maybe some
kind of categorization will be needed.

The links on the fron tpage need to serve as quick-access to the sub-pages.

If you want a page that acts more of a guide with short descriptions, a page
were a whole GAP based  environment setup is descripbed is more
appropriate, so the user can read, pick what he needs and go in to deeper
details.

I also disagree with hiding non-released projects, they are maybe not
dormant, just unreleased. For example the Browser Vespucci had quite some
talk, so it should be correctly represented on the front page.

Actually, some of our projects miss a page and some screenshot, I'll work on
that.

Thanks in any case for your intrest in the GNustep Application Project.
  Riccardo

- Original Message - 
From: Zhang Weiwu zhangwe...@realss.com
To: GNUstep general discuss-gnustep@gnu.org
Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 5:21 PM
Subject: to make newbie more comfortable and easier to glance: suggestion on
change frontpage of gap


 I did not find how to contact the webmast in the gap website so I just
 post it here. I'd propose small change on the index page to make it less
 confusing for newbies like me.

 What I did is to add short description to alive projects and hide the
 hibernating projects. Maybe there should be a link to a special page
 where all hibernating projects are listed, but they should not be on the
 front page to attract unnecessary attention.

 Before:
 http://emerson.realss.com/index.html
 After:
 http://emerson.realss.com/index:1.html




___
Discuss-gnustep mailing list
Discuss-gnustep@gnu.org
http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnustep

Re: to make newbie more comfortable and easier to glance: suggestion on change frontpage of gap

2009-05-05 Thread Zhang Weiwu 

Riccardo Mottola wrote:

I understand what you want to change and appreciate your effort, but it is
confusing to me. I prefer without the descriptions. Furthermore, imagine
when new applications will be added! A real mess! In the future maybe some
kind of categorization will be needed.
  
You are right that it could be messy with a lot of applications. It is 
not my intention to put all applications with description on the front 
page. However general website design suggest links without description 
will not be clicked at all. When I visit GAP the first time I wasn't 
aware there are so many good things on it because it's not conformable 
to click through where half are not interesting to me.


It is like some websites put a photo of all team member without 
explanation, in the end, only visitors who happen to know the team 
member in person would click that photo. But the team could be unaware 
of that because they know who is one the photo.

If you want a page that acts more of a guide with short descriptions, a page
were a whole GAP based  environment setup is descripbed is more
appropriate, so the user can read, pick what he needs and go in to deeper
details.
  
I guess visitors want to see such a page. Putting too many links on a 
front page has the side effect that if people are not interested in one 
of the links they walkaway thinking there are nothing further 
interesting to them, which is exactly what happened to me 2 years ago. 
It took me 2 years to come back to gnustep project again and check in 
detail what's going on, which happened last week.

I also disagree with hiding non-released projects, they are maybe not
dormant, just unreleased. For example the Browser Vespucci had quite some
talk, so it should be correctly represented on the front page.
  
Agreed. I'd rather say instead of hiding non-released projects, projects 
doesn't have a page should either have a page (even if very brief, in 
one sentence what the project does and contact person) or gets hidden. 
Otherwise they look like deadlinks. Deadlinks gives visitor impression 
that no management is going on and people are not serious about it, 
which is exactly how I felt 2 years ago. In last 2 years I learned to 
not to consider opensource project like commercial projects: in 
opensource projects better poke in and ask a lot of questions to see 
what's going on. But there are people like me nowadays.

Actually, some of our projects miss a page and some screenshot, I'll work on
that.
  


You will do everybody a great help by putting pages on the not-released 
projects. Thanks!



___
Discuss-gnustep mailing list
Discuss-gnustep@gnu.org
http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnustep