Notes about the test site.

[Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com>]

Here are some notes I made while starting to edit the test site at 
http://gnome.jardigrec.eu 

Please don't be discouraged, but please do try to fix the problems so
they aren't experience by people later. Then I can happily make a list
of all the great things about the new system compared to our current
www.gnome.org site.

Annoying extra rubbish as a visitor:
* www.gnome.org is not a news site. The standard stuff just gets in the
way:
  * We need to remove the "by XYZ" and "last modified on XYZ" text from
each page.
    * Links such as "Other products by this author" make no sense.
      Even if the sentence was corrected to say "Other product
descriptions by this author" it wouldn't be useful.
  * We don't need the email-this-page button.
  * We don't need the print-this-page button. My browser has a Print
menu item.

Other annoyances as a visitor:
* No page titles, unless the writer has explicitly repeated the page
title in the page description box.
* Menu strangeness:
  The second-level menu feels invisible. For instance, most people who
look at 
  http://gnome.jardigrec.eu/en/about
  will have no idea that there are additional detailed pages. We are
hiding everything but the top-level of pages.
  For most top-level pages, I guess that the page itself should be the
menu, with text describing what to expect on the page.
  If we have to add "see the menu at the right" in the text on every
page then this is a sign that something is very wrong.

Problems as a contributor:
* The Display and Add To Folder menus are unclear and apparently
useless. It's just an invitation to break something.
* Editing annoyances:
  * Full-screen button: When I use this, there is no way to get back to
non-full-screen, and no way to save my changes, so I lose data.
  * Can't create links. Clicking on the link button seems to open an
extra green box, but it is mostly under the existing (now grayed-out)
toolbar box, so I can't use it. Again, I lose data.
  * Uses <br/> instead of <p></p>. This is probably a problem for
translation, which needs more information about structure.
  * Related Items are not shown. This could be a useful feature.
Otherwise we need to write the links manually, which will break easily.
  * Not obvious how to create sub-headings or otherwise define the
structure of the content on a single page. Now I see that the drop-down
box can do this, but this is not obvious. If we can't make it easier,
then we'll need a short how-to for contributors.

Problems as a translator:
* When you are logged in, there is a Manage Translations button, but
it's very strange. I don't know if this changes the identified source
language of the current page, or starts a translation of the current
page in a new language.
  I expect to see a list of languages, with some indication of whether a
translation exists and is up-to-date.
  I expect to be able to easily add or update a translation for a
language.
* It uses language codes such as en, instead of locales, such as en_GB.
* There is apparently no .po file translation. This was a major blocking
requirement.

Workflow:
* I would like to see a list of recent changes, ideally with a diff.
* I would like to enter a comment when I make a change, for other people
to see in that list of changes. Then they could correct my mistakes or
know that I had done something that we discussed.

Products pages:
* Clicking on Products shows me a sub-menu with a small selection of
GNOME applications.
  Clicking on one of these GNOME applications shows me a menu with
product categories (and a description).
* The navigation would at least be clearer if the menus had titles such
as "Popular Products" and "Product Categories".
* For instance, here http://gnome.jardigrec.eu/en/products/evince, 
    the _name_ of the application should be highly visible on the page.
* Are these going to be updated regularly? Can application maintainers
update this information easily?
   If not, we must remove it, because it will quickly become useless.

Structure problems:
 * There are many near-duplicate pages.
   I know you want to cover all the bases, and have every page that
someone might look for, but I think people will manage to find "e.g" Get
Involved if they are looking for "Teams", without needing a specific
"Teams" page.
   Some of them are just filler that seems necessary because you've
chosen certain top-level headings. But people would still find the
appropriate page 
   if it happened to be under another obvious top-level heading.
* There are so many duplicates that someone needs to go through and make
a detailed list, so we can choose which ones to combine.
  Quim says this has been given lots of thought, so let's just revisit
it this later after we've filled in the text.

Nice-to-have wishlist:
* It would be nice to have a spell-check button when editing pages.


-- 
Murray Cumming
murrayc murrayc com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com