Re: [Gimp-developer] SGO to WGO Transition

[Elle Stone <ellestone ninedegreesbelow com>]

On 11/20/2015 09:27 AM, Pat David wrote:
> I'm afk for most of the day today, with sporadic phone connectivity.  I'll
> do my best to address any questions.  Anything more complex will have to
> wait until the evening here (-06:00UTC).

Some comments, fwiw:

The Home page (http://static.gimp.org/):

1. Regarding the link at the bottom of each page for "Books": Is it 
appropriate to link at the bottom of every page to a page of mostly 
commercial? books about GIMP?
     It seems more appropriate to have a link to the page of books 
about GIMP from only the Documentation page, instead of from every page 
on the website (on the actual Books page it would nice to show what 
version of GIMP the various books were written for).


2. The printed credits to individuals for artwork on the GIMP home page 
seem visually distracting. What about using an "on hover" credit like 
the very attractive on-hover credit (which doesn't seem to need any 
scripts to work) used by the Krita home page (krita.org), and maybe also 
give credit on the "about/authors" page?


3. What is the line drawing at the bottom of the page about? Maybe it's 
obvious to everyone else, but I don't have a single clue why that line 
drawing is there.


4. According to a study, a website viewer's gaze "tracks" the gaze of 
people in photographs. The lady in the "High quality Photo Manipulation" 
image is looking to the left, completely out of the frame. Flip the 
image left to right and she's directing her gaze, and also the reader's 
gaze, towards the text and the page.


5. The section for "Key Component in a Desktop Publishing Workflow": 
Could this section be made smaller and put side-by-side with the section 
on Extensibility & Flexibility, so that visually these two sections 
match the visual weight/space devoted to Photo Manipulation, Original 
Artwork, Graphic Design, and Programming Algorithms?

     * This section has a larger, bolder headline font than the other 
"equal weight" items (editing photographs, doing graphic design, etc) 
and a whole lot more page space devoted to it, which makes it seem like 
GIMP is mostly meant for desktop publishing.

     * The sentence "It is best used in workflows involving other free 
software such as Scribus, Inkscape, and SwatchBooker" almost makes it 
sound like GIMP can't be used very well or easily without also 
installing these other softwares.


All pages: The site requires javascript enabled to display the icons at 
the bottom of the page. Otherwise, except for the GIMP icon, the icons 
are just place-holders.
     Some people consider scripts to be a security risk. Is there a way 
to make the icons at the bottom of the page display without requiring 
the user to enable scripts?


The about page (http://static.gimp.org/about/):

     * The "about/authors" page starts and ends with GIMP 2.6.

     * For the "Important GIMP Links":

          * The GIMP toolkit. The linked-to page doesn't show any 
connection to GIMP. A lot of people won't know that GTK started as part 
of GIMP.

          * The GNU links: following those links, again the 
relationship between GNU and GIMP isn't clear except to people who 
already know the relationship between GNU and GIMP.


The donations page (http://static.gimp.org/donating/): It almost seems 
like donating to GIMP really is donating to GNOME? At least some of the 
methods for making donations don't give a warm feeling that GIMP 
specifically will get the donations.


The download page (http://static.gimp.org/downloads/): The download page 
uses a script to detect the user's operating system:

     * Again, some users consider scripts to be a security risk.

     * The message displayed when scripts are disabled is very long.

     * Sometimes users "spoof" the OS in the header information.

     * Sometimes users want to download software for an operating 
system other than what they are using.

     Why not just cut to the chase, disable the OS-detecting script, 
and use the one line:

     "Show downloads for GNU/Linux | OS X | Microsoft Windows | All"

     Also the download page has MD5 check-sums for all the GIMP 2.8 
releases. It might be better to only offer check-sums for the last GIMP 
2.8 release, and maybe offer some of the more secure types of check-sums 
plus "how to check" information.

Best,
Elle