Re: Nitpicky thoughts about the new www.gnome.org

[Allan Day <aday gnome org>]

On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 at 2:45 PM, Debarshi Ray <rishi is lostca se> wrote:
...

To me the new website still doesn't convey what GNOME is. It is better
than the previous one, which used really abstract terminology, in
that it prominently features a laptop running GNOME. However, just
saying that it is "an easy and elegant way to use your computer", or
that it "has been designed from the ground up to help you have the
best possible computing experience" is still vague.

When I go to "learn more", I see some nice screenshots and text, but
it still expects my to read between the lines to figure out that GNOME
is a client side OS (or a desktop environment for the more technically
savvy) for laptops and desktops.

...
 

The updated design is mostly a relayout of the previous site. It's a big improvement and something that was long overdue. My hope is that it will mark the start of a more active period of development for the website. There are lots of things that could be improved.

I largely agree that we have more work to do to properly introduce and describe the project. However, I don't think the answer is to state that GNOME is simply a desktop environment or a client side OS (an obvious question - how do you describe these to someone who isn't familiar with that terminology?)

The difficulty is that GNOME is a number of things - an OS/desktop UX, a stack, an application platform, a collection of technologies (that can be repurposed), an effort to integrate and test. We're not just about our own code, but other people's code too. And we're more than code - we're a project, an initiative, a community, a set of values.

We could communicate these things in a few different ways. One option we've considered in the past is to have a more value-driven banner as the first thing you see on the home page. Another alternative might be to give the different aspects of the project (UX, technologies, mission) a more prominent place on the home page, with more equal weighting.

tl;dr version - it's not a trivial issue, but it would be good to figure it out!

Allan