Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
Don Stewart wrote: Newbies: http://haskell.org Everything regular users need at fingertips http://dashboard.haskell.org/ That's fine. But please, no matter how minimalist the newbie page, make sure that there is a clear and prominent link there to the advanced page. Otherwise, if I happen to be somewhere without my bookmarks, it will take me a lot of fumbling in the dark to find it. Thanks, Yitz ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
On 15 Jul 2009, at 06:03, Richard O'Keefe wrote: On Jul 10, 2009, at 6:14 PM, Thomas Davie wrote: In my mind, the front page is for nothing more than enticing people to use Haskell for long enough to look at a second page where all the useful stuff is if you are a haskell programmer. I would have thought that a web page should serve its most frequent visitors best. By all means have an enticing paragraph at the top, pointing to a second page, but why make life hard for regular Haskellers visiting their site? Because regular haskellers are perfectly capable of bookmarking http://haskell.org/usefullstuff.html , while newbies will only get what google tells them -- the front page. Bob ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
I asked why make life for regular Haskellers, and On Jul 17, 2009, at 4:56 AM, Thomas Davie replied: Because regular haskellers are perfectly capable of bookmarking http://haskell.org/usefullstuff.html , while newbies will only get what google tells them -- the front page. Sorry, but (1) I have a couple of hundred bookmarks; I may be a regular Haskeller, but it's better human interfacing for me to type www.haskell.org than to look things up in bookmarks. (2) Who says Google will only tell them the front page? PageRank means that Google will offer them first the page that is (to a first approximation) most linked to, and eventually that will be www.haskell.org/usefullstuff. (3) Right now, if you actually try it, Googling for Haskell gives you Haskell Introduction - HaskellWiki as the *second* link it offers. Are you really saying that there are lots of newbies who are smart enough to appreciate Haskell when they see it, but so excruciatingly dumb that they won't try Haskell Introduction? What might be a good thing would be if someone touched the introduction page from time to time. At the moment, it's about a year older than the main page, which makes it less inviting. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
On Jul 10, 2009, at 6:14 PM, Thomas Davie wrote: In my mind, the front page is for nothing more than enticing people to use Haskell for long enough to look at a second page where all the useful stuff is if you are a haskell programmer. I would have thought that a web page should serve its most frequent visitors best. By all means have an enticing paragraph at the top, pointing to a second page, but why make life hard for regular Haskellers visiting their site? ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
On 9 Jul 2009, at 18:32, Thomas ten Cate wrote: Are there any kind of hard statistics and analytics that we can base this discussion upon? There is always room for improvement, but stumbling around in the dark making blind guesses may not be the best way to go. Although I personally feel that Lenny's proposed page is an improvement, statistics could tell us what actual people actually use the site for. I'm not sure that that's useful. We can (assuming there are statistics) easily find out what the front page *is* used for. But that doesn't necessarily mean that that's what it *should* be used for. In my mind, the front page is for nothing more than enticing people to use Haskell for long enough to look at a second page where all the useful stuff is if you are a haskell programmer. It should include no more than a description of what haskell is, why it's cool, a link to the documentation, a link to a Haskell Platform Dowload and a link to the earlier mentioned second page. Bob ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
2009/7/10 Thomas Davie tom.da...@gmail.com: On 9 Jul 2009, at 18:32, Thomas ten Cate wrote: Are there any kind of hard statistics and analytics that we can base this discussion upon? There is always room for improvement, but stumbling around in the dark making blind guesses may not be the best way to go. Although I personally feel that Lenny's proposed page is an improvement, statistics could tell us what actual people actually use the site for. I'm not sure that that's useful. We can (assuming there are statistics) easily find out what the front page *is* used for. But that doesn't necessarily mean that that's what it *should* be used for. In my mind, the front page is for nothing more than enticing people to use Haskell for long enough to look at a second page where all the useful stuff is if you are a haskell programmer. It should include no more than a description of what haskell is, why it's cool, a link to the documentation, a link to a Haskell Platform Dowload and a link to the earlier mentioned second page. Hi, As said by others, I find that, beside the content you mention, the appearance of a wiki is inviting, and the Events, Headlines and Recent package updates makes the haskell community looks active and welcoming (which it is). In fact, although it would be even more overwhelming, the titles of the last posts on planet.haskell.org and the Haskell Weekly News could maybe appear... We could even have a featured package section where someone give a nice introduction to a new or not well known package. (If it is too much but considered a good idea, a possibility would be to have just a little, although slightly outstanding link beside the package name in the Recent package updates section.) Cheers, Thu ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
We could even have a featured package section... I like that idea! If there's a blog or something (the contents of which are automatically pulled into the wiki/site), then there could be a guest writer each month to write a short post about their favorite (or their own ;-) package on hackage. This would certainly make the site seem more alive (as does that automatic hackage feed, but this would be written by a human). - Tom Lokhorst On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 9:04 AM, minh thunot...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/7/10 Thomas Davie tom.da...@gmail.com: On 9 Jul 2009, at 18:32, Thomas ten Cate wrote: Are there any kind of hard statistics and analytics that we can base this discussion upon? There is always room for improvement, but stumbling around in the dark making blind guesses may not be the best way to go. Although I personally feel that Lenny's proposed page is an improvement, statistics could tell us what actual people actually use the site for. I'm not sure that that's useful. We can (assuming there are statistics) easily find out what the front page *is* used for. But that doesn't necessarily mean that that's what it *should* be used for. In my mind, the front page is for nothing more than enticing people to use Haskell for long enough to look at a second page where all the useful stuff is if you are a haskell programmer. It should include no more than a description of what haskell is, why it's cool, a link to the documentation, a link to a Haskell Platform Dowload and a link to the earlier mentioned second page. Hi, As said by others, I find that, beside the content you mention, the appearance of a wiki is inviting, and the Events, Headlines and Recent package updates makes the haskell community looks active and welcoming (which it is). In fact, although it would be even more overwhelming, the titles of the last posts on planet.haskell.org and the Haskell Weekly News could maybe appear... We could even have a featured package section where someone give a nice introduction to a new or not well known package. (If it is too much but considered a good idea, a possibility would be to have just a little, although slightly outstanding link beside the package name in the Recent package updates section.) Cheers, Thu ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
Jeff Wheeler wrote: ... Search that follows it is awkward. There are three large search choices for beginners: 1) the search at the top, which confusingly has two submit buttons (with ambiguous differences to a beginner); 2) the Search link near the top of the navigation (which links to an almost empty page that might as well be included at the link's location); and 3) the Search link underneath the About header, which doesn't seem to belong at all. I agree the search aspect could be improved: the MediaWiki software/ database indexing need an upgrade, the Google 'custom search' Haskell logos are out-of-date and having two Google search links seems excessive. Repeating my old search for 'mdo' which started me on this thread http://www.mail-archive.com/haskell-cafe@haskell.org/msg7.html the box at the top still returns no results, but it is better because it does now suggest looking at this page http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/HaskellWiki:Searching As I understand it the box at the top is built into the wiki software and can be improved by upgrading the MediaWiki version/indexing. (It would be good to report to MediaWiki that the error message should if possible say Search words of X characters or less are not indexed when appropriate rather than Zero results. Maybe the latest version is cleverer.) The two Google links, neither of them added by me, both have old logos and seem to give similar results for 'mdo' except that the first returns results beyond just haskell.org. For this 'mdo' search I can't see any advantage in having two Google search links. Richard. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
tom.davie: On 9 Jul 2009, at 18:32, Thomas ten Cate wrote: Are there any kind of hard statistics and analytics that we can base this discussion upon? There is always room for improvement, but stumbling around in the dark making blind guesses may not be the best way to go. Although I personally feel that Lenny's proposed page is an improvement, statistics could tell us what actual people actually use the site for. I'm not sure that that's useful. We can (assuming there are statistics) easily find out what the front page *is* used for. But that doesn't necessarily mean that that's what it *should* be used for. In my mind, the front page is for nothing more than enticing people to use Haskell for long enough to look at a second page where all the useful stuff is if you are a haskell programmer. It should include no more than a description of what haskell is, why it's cool, a link to the documentation, a link to a Haskell Platform Dowload and a link to the earlier mentioned second page. Maybe that's actually a new Haskell Platform page you're describing? -- Don ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
2009/7/9 hask...@kudling.de: Hi, i find the current www.haskell.org frontpage quite overwhelming. Compare it for example with the home pages of other programming languages : http://caml.inria.fr/ http://factorcode.org/ http://sbcl.sourceforge.net/ http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/ http://www.falconpl.org/ Here is my sketch of a leaner, more structured Haskell front page: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/User:Lenny222/Haskell Comments? My favorite in all these is haskell.org :) I find it very to the point and not overwhelming at all : it's easy to glance over it and find quickly what I want. In fact, the homepage reflects well the language and its community: effective, useful, healthy and joyful. Cheers, Thu ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
Hello haskell, Thursday, July 9, 2009, 5:54:16 PM, you wrote: i find the current www.haskell.org frontpage quite overwhelming. it's rather frequent topic here :) Here is my sketch of a leaner, more structured Haskell front page: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/User:Lenny222/Haskell i like your design. i believe that homepage is used primarily by first-time users and here they will find all they need to understand haskell and start to use it -- Best regards, Bulatmailto:bulat.zigans...@gmail.com ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
I find it very to the point and not overwhelming at all : it's easy to glance over it and find quickly what I want. Thanks for your feedback. Most people feel overwhelmed when confronted with more than 7+-2 items: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/10/09/30-usability-issues-to-be-aware-of/ On the current Haskell frontpage there are over 60 links competing for attention. I am not sure whether we should design interfaces solely with few people having exceptional abilities in mind. This could be understood as a statement about who Haskell is made for in itself. Bye, Lenny ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
hask...@kudling.de wrote: Most people feel overwhelmed when confronted with more than 7+-2 items: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/10/09/30-usability-issues-to-be-aware-of/ This refers to the number of items/things people can remember in their short-time memory. This has nothing to do with the maximum number of menu items you should use. There is of course a limit, but there is no reason to limit it to 7+-2. Cheers, -- Jochem Berndsen | joc...@functor.nl GPG: 0xE6FABFAB ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
2009/7/9 hask...@kudling.de: I find it very to the point and not overwhelming at all : it's easy to glance over it and find quickly what I want. Thanks for your feedback. Most people feel overwhelmed when confronted with more than 7+-2 items: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/10/09/30-usability-issues-to-be-aware-of/ On the current Haskell frontpage there are over 60 links competing for attention. I am not sure whether we should design interfaces solely with few people having exceptional abilities in mind. This could be understood as a statement about who Haskell is made for in itself. Well, I guess there is room for personnal preference... But I don't find correct to say 60 links competing for attention. You forget to mention the section titles and the separation in two columns. You could have said more than 600 words competing for attention... I can understand people find it overwhelming, but only *at first sight*. I would make the comparison with a table of content for a book. I've seen book providing a chapters at a glance part, just before the real table of content. Glancing a few pages to see the chapter names (that is not paying attention to the sections and subsections) is not very more complicated. 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'm not sure hiding a level of the hierarchy of information behind a few clicks make things easier. Please don't be upset by my opinion, it's just that; I've no will to enforce it to anybody :) Cheers, Thu ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
I've seen book providing a chapters at a glance part, just before the real table of content. Such an inverted pyramid is exactly the consequence Nielson draw from the F shape pattern (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html). And that's my critque: i don't see the most important things there are to be sayed about Haskell in the top left corner. 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 think we should optimize for the latter, where What is Haskell? being the most improtant question. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
I never said we should only expose 7 links. Take for example the task Find out more about this Haskell i heared about. You would need to scan the right half of the front page and you need to scan the left part of the page. There you need to scan About, it could be explained under Why use Haskell? or Language definition or Haskell in 5 steps or Learning Haskell or Wiki articles or Blog articles and news. Where should i look? I have to scan a lot of text, i have to keep a lot of options in mind and for my taste the load is too much. Be my limit 7 or 20 links. hask...@kudling.de wrote: Most people feel overwhelmed when confronted with more than 7+-2 items: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/10/09/30-usability-issues-to-be-aware-of/ This refers to the number of items/things people can remember in their short-time memory. This has nothing to do with the maximum number of menu items you should use. There is of course a limit, but there is no reason to limit it to 7+-2. Cheers, -- Jochem Berndsen | joc...@functor.nl GPG: 0xE6FABFAB ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
Are there any kind of hard statistics and analytics that we can base this discussion upon? There is always room for improvement, but stumbling around in the dark making blind guesses may not be the best way to go. Although I personally feel that Lenny's proposed page is an improvement, statistics could tell us what actual people actually use the site for. I don't see any tracking code in the page source. Maybe the site admins could install Google Analytics? It's free, easy to install and use, and very informative. (Or some other usage tracker; I merely suggested GA because I use it and know that it works well.) Thomas On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 17:53, hask...@kudling.de wrote: I never said we should only expose 7 links. Take for example the task Find out more about this Haskell i heared about. You would need to scan the right half of the front page and you need to scan the left part of the page. There you need to scan About, it could be explained under Why use Haskell? or Language definition or Haskell in 5 steps or Learning Haskell or Wiki articles or Blog articles and news. Where should i look? I have to scan a lot of text, i have to keep a lot of options in mind and for my taste the load is too much. Be my limit 7 or 20 links. hask...@kudling.de wrote: Most people feel overwhelmed when confronted with more than 7+-2 items: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/10/09/30-usability-issues-to-be-aware-of/ This refers to the number of items/things people can remember in their short-time memory. This has nothing to do with the maximum number of menu items you should use. There is of course a limit, but there is no reason to limit it to 7+-2. Cheers, -- Jochem Berndsen | joc...@functor.nl GPG: 0xE6FABFAB ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
ttencate: Are there any kind of hard statistics and analytics that we can base this discussion upon? There is always room for improvement, but stumbling around in the dark making blind guesses may not be the best way to go. Although I personally feel that Lenny's proposed page is an improvement, statistics could tell us what actual people actually use the site for. FWIW, the current layout is actually based on previous analysis of Popular Pages a few years ago, so that we have O(1) access to key resources. -- Don ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
2009/7/9 Don Stewart d...@galois.com: ttencate: Are there any kind of hard statistics and analytics that we can base this discussion upon? There is always room for improvement, but stumbling around in the dark making blind guesses may not be the best way to go. Although I personally feel that Lenny's proposed page is an improvement, statistics could tell us what actual people actually use the site for. FWIW, the current layout is actually based on previous analysis of Popular Pages a few years ago, so that we have O(1) access to key resources. Wonderful ! Do you mean that if we put every links from haddock on the homepage, we'd have O(1) access to any piece of documentation ? haskell.org is the neatest data structure of functional programming ! Thu ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
I think it would be best if the page were targeted towards newcomers, and not as a jump point for resources. Such a jump page is useful, but not as a homepage. Perhaps haskell.org/linkswould be a better place for such a thing. As an aside, in the current homepage, the Haskell description is outweighed by the link menu on the left. IMO the reader's eyes should move from the title, to the description, then either down or left. Currently my attention is split evenly between the link menu and the title/description, which results in confusion. On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 12:33 PM, Don Stewart d...@galois.com wrote: ttencate: Are there any kind of hard statistics and analytics that we can base this discussion upon? There is always room for improvement, but stumbling around in the dark making blind guesses may not be the best way to go. Although I personally feel that Lenny's proposed page is an improvement, statistics could tell us what actual people actually use the site for. FWIW, the current layout is actually based on previous analysis of Popular Pages a few years ago, so that we have O(1) access to key resources. -- Don ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe -- The greatest obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents, and the oceans was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge. - Daniel J. Boorstin ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
ttencate: On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 18:33, Don Stewartd...@galois.com wrote: ttencate: Are there any kind of hard statistics and analytics that we can base this discussion upon? There is always room for improvement, but stumbling around in the dark making blind guesses may not be the best way to go. Although I personally feel that Lenny's proposed page is an improvement, statistics could tell us what actual people actually use the site for. Thanks Don, I should have thought of that. It's a start! No matter what we decide, I'd like to advocate for maintaining the RSS feed of Hackage uploads on the front page -- this is what makes the page seem alive and active, and was introduced in response to John Hughes complaining the page was always out of date. (Similar to the Arch Linux package updates: http://www.archlinux.org/) -- Don ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
By the way, the most valuable pixels, right at the top of the page, are wasted on wiki stuff. Compare http://www.haskell.org/ with, for example, http://www.ruby-lang.org/ http://python.org/ If, like the consensus seems to be, the page should be made more friendly to beginners (who are unlikely to want to contribute to the wiki right away), then this should be moved elsewhere, or at the very least made smaller and less obtrusive. Thomas ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
bulat.ziganshin: Hello Don, Thursday, July 9, 2009, 8:33:17 PM, you wrote: FWIW, the current layout is actually based on previous analysis of Popular Pages a few years ago, so that we have O(1) access to key resources. yes, and it means that page is optimized for regular Haskell users what is proposed, though, is to optimize it for newcomers so they will find their way to Haskell so first we need to decide what category of users homepage should be optimized for. who can set up poll? Perhaps a newbie page can be designed separately first, and hosted concurrently. Then we can offer both: Newbies: http://haskell.org Everything regular users need at fingertips http://dashboard.haskell.org/ A newbie porthole is a great idea. -- Don ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 10:00 AM, Thomas ten Cate ttenc...@gmail.com wrote: By the way, the most valuable pixels, right at the top of the page, are wasted on wiki stuff. Compare http://www.haskell.org/ with, for example, http://www.ruby-lang.org/ http://python.org/ The thing I like the most from the ruby page is the top box of content where it starts describing ruby with a Read more... link adjacent to a code snippet. Because I doubt anyone will agree on *the one* best code snippet to show people, I think there should/could be a pool of fun snippets and loading the page picks one at random. I have no idea if the wiki engine supports this. I also like the strip of links at the top with things like, Download, Community, and so on. Something I think the Haskell page does much better than the other two, is the listing of events and hackage updates. Both of those sections feel inviting to me. It makes me curious and I want to explore. The python page looks at least as cluttered as the haskell page. Neither the haskell page or the python page have the same look and feel of the ruby page. I think the shaded/gradient backgrounds actually add a lot to the visual experience. I also like that the boxes have a different bg color for the box title and the box contents. I also like the use of icons on the ruby page. The Download Ruby link/box with the download icon is very inviting. I just want to download it, even if I'm not going to use ruby! Perhaps we could have a contest similar to the logo contest but for homepage asthetics redesign. I think the content on the haskell page is great, but the visual style of the presentation could be improved considerably. If, like the consensus seems to be, the page should be made more friendly to beginners (who are unlikely to want to contribute to the wiki right away), then this should be moved elsewhere, or at the very least made smaller and less obtrusive. Optimizing for newcomers seems wise. Jason ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 3:11 PM, Derek Elkins derek.a.elk...@gmail.comwrote: On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 12:31 PM, Jason Dagitda...@codersbase.com wrote: On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 10:00 AM, Thomas ten Cate ttenc...@gmail.com wrote: By the way, the most valuable pixels, right at the top of the page, are wasted on wiki stuff. Compare http://www.haskell.org/ with, for example, http://www.ruby-lang.org/ http://python.org/ The thing I like the most from the ruby page is the top box of content where it starts describing ruby with a Read more... link adjacent to a code snippet. Because I doubt anyone will agree on *the one* best code snippet to show people, I think there should/could be a pool of fun snippets and loading the page picks one at random. I have no idea if the wiki engine supports this. I also like the strip of links at the top with things like, Download, Community, and so on. Something I think the Haskell page does much better than the other two, is the listing of events and hackage updates. Both of those sections feel inviting to me. It makes me curious and I want to explore. The python page looks at least as cluttered as the haskell page. Neither the haskell page or the python page have the same look and feel of the ruby page. I think the shaded/gradient backgrounds actually add a lot to the visual experience. I also like that the boxes have a different bg color for the box title and the box contents. I also like the use of icons on the ruby page. The Download Ruby link/box with the download icon is very inviting. I just want to download it, even if I'm not going to use ruby! Perhaps we could have a contest similar to the logo contest but for homepage asthetics redesign. I think the content on the haskell page is great, but the visual style of the presentation could be improved considerably. If, like the consensus seems to be, the page should be made more friendly to beginners (who are unlikely to want to contribute to the wiki right away), then this should be moved elsewhere, or at the very least made smaller and less obtrusive. Optimizing for newcomers seems wise. Jason This is what I see when visiting the Ruby page: DoS vulnerability in BigDecimal That's true. And I never said we want to copy the ruby community :) In fact, I'd prefer to not be associated with them given the community's blatant unprofessionalism and sexism (cf. CouchDB presentation at a semi-recent ruby conference). I do think their page has more visual appeal though. So other than pointing out the DoS, did you have feedback? Thanks, Jason ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
IMO, causing a segfault in the interpreter is more than just a DOS vulnerability :) On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 6:11 PM, Derek Elkins derek.a.elk...@gmail.comwrote: On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 12:31 PM, Jason Dagitda...@codersbase.com wrote: On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 10:00 AM, Thomas ten Cate ttenc...@gmail.com wrote: By the way, the most valuable pixels, right at the top of the page, are wasted on wiki stuff. Compare http://www.haskell.org/ with, for example, http://www.ruby-lang.org/ http://python.org/ The thing I like the most from the ruby page is the top box of content where it starts describing ruby with a Read more... link adjacent to a code snippet. Because I doubt anyone will agree on *the one* best code snippet to show people, I think there should/could be a pool of fun snippets and loading the page picks one at random. I have no idea if the wiki engine supports this. I also like the strip of links at the top with things like, Download, Community, and so on. Something I think the Haskell page does much better than the other two, is the listing of events and hackage updates. Both of those sections feel inviting to me. It makes me curious and I want to explore. The python page looks at least as cluttered as the haskell page. Neither the haskell page or the python page have the same look and feel of the ruby page. I think the shaded/gradient backgrounds actually add a lot to the visual experience. I also like that the boxes have a different bg color for the box title and the box contents. I also like the use of icons on the ruby page. The Download Ruby link/box with the download icon is very inviting. I just want to download it, even if I'm not going to use ruby! Perhaps we could have a contest similar to the logo contest but for homepage asthetics redesign. I think the content on the haskell page is great, but the visual style of the presentation could be improved considerably. If, like the consensus seems to be, the page should be made more friendly to beginners (who are unlikely to want to contribute to the wiki right away), then this should be moved elsewhere, or at the very least made smaller and less obtrusive. Optimizing for newcomers seems wise. Jason This is what I see when visiting the Ruby page: DoS vulnerability in BigDecimal ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe -- The greatest obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents, and the oceans was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge. - Daniel J. Boorstin ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 12:31 PM, Jason Dagitda...@codersbase.com wrote: On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 10:00 AM, Thomas ten Cate ttenc...@gmail.com wrote: By the way, the most valuable pixels, right at the top of the page, are wasted on wiki stuff. Compare http://www.haskell.org/ with, for example, http://www.ruby-lang.org/ http://python.org/ The thing I like the most from the ruby page is the top box of content where it starts describing ruby with a Read more... link adjacent to a code snippet. Because I doubt anyone will agree on *the one* best code snippet to show people, I think there should/could be a pool of fun snippets and loading the page picks one at random. I have no idea if the wiki engine supports this. I also like the strip of links at the top with things like, Download, Community, and so on. Something I think the Haskell page does much better than the other two, is the listing of events and hackage updates. Both of those sections feel inviting to me. It makes me curious and I want to explore. The python page looks at least as cluttered as the haskell page. Neither the haskell page or the python page have the same look and feel of the ruby page. I think the shaded/gradient backgrounds actually add a lot to the visual experience. I also like that the boxes have a different bg color for the box title and the box contents. I also like the use of icons on the ruby page. The Download Ruby link/box with the download icon is very inviting. I just want to download it, even if I'm not going to use ruby! Perhaps we could have a contest similar to the logo contest but for homepage asthetics redesign. I think the content on the haskell page is great, but the visual style of the presentation could be improved considerably. If, like the consensus seems to be, the page should be made more friendly to beginners (who are unlikely to want to contribute to the wiki right away), then this should be moved elsewhere, or at the very least made smaller and less obtrusive. Optimizing for newcomers seems wise. Jason This is what I see when visiting the Ruby page: DoS vulnerability in BigDecimal ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 5:17 PM, Jason Dagitda...@codersbase.com wrote: On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 3:11 PM, Derek Elkins derek.a.elk...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 12:31 PM, Jason Dagitda...@codersbase.com wrote: On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 10:00 AM, Thomas ten Cate ttenc...@gmail.com wrote: By the way, the most valuable pixels, right at the top of the page, are wasted on wiki stuff. Compare http://www.haskell.org/ with, for example, http://www.ruby-lang.org/ http://python.org/ The thing I like the most from the ruby page is the top box of content where it starts describing ruby with a Read more... link adjacent to a code snippet. Because I doubt anyone will agree on *the one* best code snippet to show people, I think there should/could be a pool of fun snippets and loading the page picks one at random. I have no idea if the wiki engine supports this. I also like the strip of links at the top with things like, Download, Community, and so on. Something I think the Haskell page does much better than the other two, is the listing of events and hackage updates. Both of those sections feel inviting to me. It makes me curious and I want to explore. The python page looks at least as cluttered as the haskell page. Neither the haskell page or the python page have the same look and feel of the ruby page. I think the shaded/gradient backgrounds actually add a lot to the visual experience. I also like that the boxes have a different bg color for the box title and the box contents. I also like the use of icons on the ruby page. The Download Ruby link/box with the download icon is very inviting. I just want to download it, even if I'm not going to use ruby! Perhaps we could have a contest similar to the logo contest but for homepage asthetics redesign. I think the content on the haskell page is great, but the visual style of the presentation could be improved considerably. If, like the consensus seems to be, the page should be made more friendly to beginners (who are unlikely to want to contribute to the wiki right away), then this should be moved elsewhere, or at the very least made smaller and less obtrusive. Optimizing for newcomers seems wise. Jason This is what I see when visiting the Ruby page: DoS vulnerability in BigDecimal That's true. And I never said we want to copy the ruby community :) In fact, I'd prefer to not be associated with them given the community's blatant unprofessionalism and sexism (cf. CouchDB presentation at a semi-recent ruby conference). I do think their page has more visual appeal though. So other than pointing out the DoS, did you have feedback? I admit it; you caught me. I'm not a newbie and I don't use the front page terribly often, but I do like most of the links that are on it. The Ruby page is certainly prettier, but the layout of the Haskell page is fine in my opinion; the difference is mainly eye-candy. On another topic, I know people have expressed that they have liked the fact that the entire Haskell site is a wiki; this expressing openness and community involvement. I personally don't find the Haskell front page too cluttered and I think most of issue in that vein could be resolved by simply making sure the most important/newbie-oriented links are above the fold and appropriately emphasized/categorized as is partially done already. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
I like the Haskell page the way it is. The O'Caml web page, is, by comparison, infuriatingly unhelpful. ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
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 ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
Rick R wrote: As an aside, in the current homepage, the Haskell description is outweighed by the link menu on the left. IMO the reader's eyes should move from the title, to the description, then either down or left. Currently my attention is split evenly between the link menu and the title/description, which results in confusion. This would be (partially) fixed by reducing the whitespace between the title and the description. Our eyes are attracted to whitespaces, so this is one of the key areas that makes or breaks a design. As it stands the description is stranded and has nothing to lead one into it; whereas the sidebar is taller, in bold, in highlight color,... -- Live well, ~wren ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
Don Stewart wrote: ttencate: On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 18:33, Don Stewartd...@galois.com wrote: ttencate: Are there any kind of hard statistics and analytics that we can base this discussion upon? There is always room for improvement, but stumbling around in the dark making blind guesses may not be the best way to go. Although I personally feel that Lenny's proposed page is an improvement, statistics could tell us what actual people actually use the site for. Thanks Don, I should have thought of that. It's a start! No matter what we decide, I'd like to advocate for maintaining the RSS feed of Hackage uploads on the front page -- this is what makes the page seem alive and active, and was introduced in response to John Hughes complaining the page was always out of date. (Similar to the Arch Linux package updates: http://www.archlinux.org/) +1. I also like the events listing, since community events tend to be one of the hardest things to get a single concrete listing of. -- Live well, ~wren ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
Jeff Wheeler wrote: I suspect most people who like the Ruby page see the Ruby is... section as especially effective at introducing the language, and the random snippet is a simple way to show off a bit of code before they dive into a tutorial. I'll agree that that part is slick. The rest of it I dislike. In particular the whole right column is indicative of link hell where they couldn't just decide on a single way to make links: there's the download button which is different (fine), there're the first two boxes (also fine), there's the third box which is like the first two but has a whole bunch of extraneous text, there's a bullet listing of top projects which looks entirely different, there's a random RSS link which looks different again, and then it flows into the old-posts segment of the main body which is different again, and then we get to the footer links which mirror the header (this one is fine), and then i18n links are different again and relegated to a footnote (which isn't very inviting to non-English natives),... Whereas haskell.org is much more consistent in picking a single style and running with it. There are some things that could be tweaked (why is GHC in bold? can we remove the extra leading line between indented link groups and their heading link?) but it gives a much more coherent and well designed image. -- Live well, ~wren ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
