Re: [Gimp-developer] SGO to WGO Transition

[Pat David <patdavid gmail com>]

Bear in mind that we are only just now beginning to address content that
was not new prior to the transition to the new infrastructure.  I'll
address those things as best as I can.

On Fri, Nov 20, 2015 at 3:18 PM Elle Stone <ellestone ninedegreesbelow com>
wrote:

> 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).

Appropriate?  Maybe.  This is one of the links it was suggested to carry
over from the old site.  I'm not tied to it personally, but don't really
mind it either.

If you know which version each of the books on the page were written for,
please let us know here and I'll try to include it!


> 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?

We could, but this does rely on CSS animations, which I can't assume
everyone has available (IE8-9 don't for instance).  I can look into
possibly showing something like that, but for now I'm going to keep the
attributions plainly visible for the authors.  Maybe I'll have a look at
styling it slightly different.


> 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.

I'm going to assume you've never played with building blocks as a child?
Or seen them used as a metaphor for extensibility or "building on"?

If not, that is what it's "about".  :)


> 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.

I love studies!  Artistically I like the way it is.  I'll consider flipping
it when I get a chance to look at it.


> 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?

It could be, but the "extensibility & flexibility" section may get merged
with the "programming algorithms" section.  If so, the DTP section will
stay how it is to differentiate it from the core 4 values defined in the
product vision ages ago.


>       * 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.

So your suggestion is to change it to what exactly?


> 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 site does NOT requite JS to show the icons in the footer.  You are
likely using an extension to block scripts in your browser (noscript?).  If
this is the case, you'll need to examine your settings to understand what
is happening, which is that you're actually blocking the fonts (which those
icons are packaged as).

So yes, you can easily view the icons in the footer without scripts running
(try turning off just javascript and you'll see).


> 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.

Understood.  You don't need scripts to get the download.  It appears there
is soething odd with the noscript extension and the actual noscript tag.
I'm looking into it right now.


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

Oh well?  Just trying to be thorough/descriptive.  I can remove the last
sentence which is superfluous.


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

And?


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

Yes?  No problem with that.


>       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"

Because MOST users are looking for a download for their current OS.  So we
try to be helpful and provide links directly to the most probably relevant
download for them.

Also, the one line is always shown specifically for those edge cases you
mention (unless you've disabled scripts, in which case you should just see
a complete output of all the download options).


>       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.

Yes, we talked about removing these, and will most likely.  We can also use
some description of how to use the hashes to verify.