Re: Gnome.org needs major improvement

[Martin Alderson <mail martinalderson co uk>]

On 17 Jul 2004, at 19:30, Robert McMeekin wrote:

> On Sat, 2004-07-17 at 18:44 +0100, Martin Alderson wrote:
> > It is a pretty sad affair as of now, with no focus on any elements of
> > the site and really bad design and usability practices on the site.
>
> The main issue it seems is that there is a lot of information for
> developers on a page that should be for end users? (Hey, when you say 
> it
> that way it really doesn't sound like the end of the world.)

Fine, if it should be a developer site, it's a choice you should make. 
I feel it's a mistake though - developers won't mind clicking on 
developers.gnome.org or whatever and bookmarking it. Making Gnome.org 
exceedingly developer-orintated will put off many people from Gnome and 
therefore cost future users and developers.

> > The font is also a size too big for the homepage. Not a big issue but
> > severely stops you putting more on the home-page.
>
> They aren't setting the font size, you are.

Let's stop being pedantic. The 'default font is also a size too big'. 
99% of users won't change the font size in their browser because a) 
many browsers don't let you easily and b) most sites don't use relative 
font sizes.

> > Another problem is how you edit the homepage, which I think is way too
> > hard. Designers are not good at programmer style CVS commands, and
> > programmers are not good at design. Simple as that, in general, please
> > don't make designers use CVS.
>
> I don't agree at all--many designers seem to work out well with CVS.
> the current GNOME website, for example, is very pretty.

While design is very much your (and my) tastes, I don't think it stands 
out. Apple.com, Mozilla (while also bad usability-wise, it's quite nice 
too look at) and even some of Microsoft's sites are very nicely 
designed.

You are also missing my point -- I was simply saying a lot of talent 
will (and probably already has) been lost because of this system, not 
what the current site has achieved.

Martin


Martin Alderson,
IntechHosting

Email: martin intechhosting co uk
Web: http://www.intechhosting.co.uk