Re: The last long steps of the gnome.org website

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

Hi Luc,

Thanks for all the comments! Much appreciated.

Luc Pionchon wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I am looking at http://wptest.gnome.org/. There has been a huge work
> done since last time I looked at it, wow! Here are a few quick
> comments,
> 
> 
> In the front page,
> 
> For more GNOME news:
> I would not point at planet.go in first place, especially for people
> discovering GNOME it might be confusing. I see planet.go more as "the
> voice of the community" than a news feed for everybody. Maybe we
> should point at twitter feed or the whole archive of the main page
> news, or?

Agreed. I'd prefer to have the social media links there.

> On the bottom links,
> 
> The GNOME project
> I would rename "teams" to "The GNOME Community" the same way as "The
> GNOME Foundation". It would include also the people's map, traditional
> meetings (confs, hackfest), the https://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct,
> link to planet.go etc. So it is more *people* oriented than just a
> team list.

It could be nice to have a community page. We certainly need a place for
the worldwide map. I'd quite like to leave the teams page separate,
though. GNOME is a hard project to navigate, and I was hoping that a
clearly labeled guide to the various working groups in the project would
help newcomers to find their way around.

> Products
> I would rename "Applications" to "GNOME Applications"

I figured it would be obvious that the apps are GNOME apps... maybe this
point could do with reiteration though.

> Products / GNOME is free software
> I would add a link to a page "GNOME is free software". The page would
> explain what is free software, link to GPL, LGPL and source code.

The About page already asserts GNOME's Free Software values. Do we need
a separate page for this? We already link to the GNU site. That does a
good job of explaining what Free Software is.

> Resources
> Wikis are used for so many things, I would rename "wiki" to "Live
> documentation (wiki)"

But it's not just documentation...

> I would rename "Code hosting" to "[Browse ]GNOME source code"

Yeah, 'Code hosting' isn't good. 'Development Code', perhaps? ('GNOME
Source Code' could be tarballs.)

> I would not link to jhbuild, this is pretty hot for a high level
> entry.

I kinda like it that the footer links to the key development resources
(and JhBuild is pretty key). The site isn't just for users; it's for
developers too. I understand the concern about making it too development
focused, though. Anybody else got a view on this?

> Resources / User support
> It think there should be a top level entry, in first place, for users
> only: "User support". I am a user, I am lost on jhbuild page, where
> should I go? Documentation, forums, ml, irc, bug reports, etc. The
> GNOME support portal [1], and the GNOME support Forums [2] are doing a
> pretty good job here too.
> [1] http://gnomesupport.org/
> [2] http://gnomesupport.org/forums/
> I am not sure who is behind and what is the relation between gnome and
> gnomesupport though i think they should work hand in hand (or foot in
> foot?)

I don't think GNOME is in the position to offer high-quality support
yet, and I don't want to users' hopes up. Maybe in the future...?
There's some advice about this on the contact page, the first piece of
which is 'go to your distro first'.

> News
> overall I feel it is missing a place for general news on gnome.

You're right - there are gaps in our news coverage (which isn't to say
that there aren't *some* good sources of GNOME news).

> Another source for news is footnotes (http://gnomedesktop.org/) which
> used to do a pretty good job, though seems a bit down recently. Again,
> foot in foot work would be great!

Footnotes doesn't have the right level of quality, imo. Plus it seems a
bit too independent of the GNOME project.

> I would put identi.ca and twitter on the same line, as the content is
> identi.cal: "GNOME tweets at identi.ca or twitter"

Nice idea. That would be a bit long though, wouldn't it?

> On the language selection:
> It is pretty neat :) though I feel it non obvious. map = language? is
> click-able? I found it by chance. Isn't it all the opposite of GNOME
> design philosophy? An arrow down would help. Or why not just a simple
> permanent language list?

Good catch. I think Andreas is working on this. :)

> Another idea: why not keep this "underground" for developer resource
> links? And use the grassy middle ground for users, partners and press?
> (the separation line could be more like grass/soil with little stones
> and roots)

I'm not sure I want to separate user stuff and developer stuff that
much. The wiki is applicable to both, as are the mailing lists, IRC and
Bugzilla.

> GNOME 3.0 Desktop http://wptest.gnome.org/desktop/
> I would simplify the first sentence as "Get things done with ease,
> comfort and control"

I've been wondering about that too. I'd wanted to keep the word design
in there because good design seems to be something that many users look
for. Maybe it would be better being shorter though...

> <P>aragraphs in general
> would be much easier to read if line's width would be much shorter
> (like in newspapers!) therefore organizing paragraphs in columns or
> boxes. For example: http://wptest.gnome.org/get-involved/

I've seen mockups for some pages which have this kind of layout.
Vincius, Andreas: what do you think?

Thanks again!

Allan
-- 
Blog: https://afaikblog.wordpress.com/
IRC: aday on irc.gnome.org