Hi Ingrid,
I'm trying to get back to the original problem, from which this
discussion departed a lot.
Working on the 'project' page for Chart in OOo I would like to get
interested people there more easily.
Interested people as in developers right?
So far it is really difficult to find this page. You need to click on
projects. There you need to choose 'Accepted Projects' from a not self
explaining list. Then you need to choose 'Graphic Applications' from a
longish not self explaining list. Ah - then you find the 'Chart
Application' link in the text. I think a lot of interested people will
not find that complicated way.
What I would like to have is an icon for the chart on the main OOo
page as other parts of OOo have it. For example there are icons for
Writer or Math. A chart icon would fit there nicely and could link
directly to the chart website:
http://graphics.openoffice.org/chart/chart.html
So you want to reduce one, I admit, long sequence of clicks, to just one
click? The link on the front page has become more or less the goal,
instead of better reachability of the project page. There is a limit to
how many links can be present on the front page (that is why some time
ago we redesigned the homepage, and decreased the number of links).
There is no hard number, and it is basically instinct... but in order to
not scare users away you need to keep things simple. Simple is less
choices, less options, more attention to what is offered....
The only problem I see here is that the other icons do not link to the
related project pages but only to a small peace of marketing text
without further links. So after a first experience with this link for
Writer maybe nobody will try the chart link.
Again from a developer's perspective, right? These pages have been
created to not confront end-users with the, in general, very messy
project pages. I don't want to say all are messy, but most are, or at
least too much focussed on development instead of end users, the majority...
Bridges however between the two groups are indeed scarce, and before
this discussion this problem was hardly given any attention on this
list. This discussion is a very interesting discussion. Feedback from
all users of the website is important to this website project.
Could we please change this dead ends and link to the related project
pages instead?
No. Or we should move to a consistent style over all projects. The nice
thing about the product pages (not saying it is perfect) is that you can
quickly scan the main products of OpenOffice.org. And yes, it is more
directed at end end users, and not at people who start programming with
OOo, either to contribute to its code base, or using its base to create
tools that make use of the OOo technology. These might indeed be given
more attention... but I would suggest stop focusing on this main page
link... I think that improving the project pages would already help
getting developers where you want them too so much better than at this
moment, but then without scaring new potential users of the OOo suite
with a crowded homepage.
g.,
Maarten
--
Maarten Brouwers (murb)
http://www.murb.nl
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