Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
Hey Tom, That was slick, the mock up listed Bordeaux under third party apps and when the site went live it was somehow removed :D Well, the mockup had a fairly crummy presentation of Bordeaux; I meant to ask Steven to submit a better put together version, with nicer graphics and such, but I forgot. Hopefully this will serve for that. Cheers, Jeremy
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 4:39 PM, Jeremy White jwh...@codeweavers.com wrote: At Wineconf, we made the decision to change the entry page to the Wine web site. The hope was to simplify and stream line it, and to put in place the infrastructure to start moving more content to the Wiki. Jeremy Newman and Jon Parshall have put a lot of time and energy into a proposed new design, following what we took away from the meetings at Wineconf. A mock up of that design is up now here: http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/ That was slick, the mock up listed Bordeaux under third party apps and when the site went live it was somehow removed :D Cheers, Tom -- http://www.wine-reviews.net/
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 12:25 PM, Jeremy Newman [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: * More IE6 tweaks. The fonts don't resize correctly in IE6. Go to the view menu and choose Text Size - Largest. Only the size of the bullets changes. This will exclude people from the site that have visual disabilities such as myself. I've seen this before and it's caused by specifying a fixed font size using points or pixels. The way to fix it is to use some form of non-specific size specification such as a percentage, an em, or one of the small, medium, large words. Other than that issue, I think the proposed design looks really nice.
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
On Wed, 2008-11-26 at 12:26 -0800, Matt Perry wrote: The fonts don't resize correctly in IE6. Go to the view menu and choose Text Size - Largest. Only the size of the bullets changes. This will exclude people from the site that have visual disabilities such as myself. IIRC IE does not resize fonts if their size is specified in px. -- Dimi Paun [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lattica, Inc.
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
Jeremy Newman wrote: * AppDB, Forums, and Bugzilla will look like the Wiki Sample, just with their sidebar navs, and content areas. This is why I did not mock them up. This is probably just a small bug but a commenter on my blog pointed out that you should make the tabs themselves clickable, and not just the words within the tab. That way it's easier to get to AppDB by clicking as soon as you see the tab light up. Thanks, Scott Ritchie
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
The look of the website has improved a lot and it feels a lot more modern. Personally I don't like the front page much. I find it a bit empty. I would like to see what Wine is. I would suggest to look at http://www.go-mono.com the website of the Mono project. On their website your directly see on a banner what Mono is and a list with important features is shown in a column on the left. I think Wine's main features could be shown in a similar way. Sure you could have an information page but I think doing what the Mono guys did is enough for 90% of the people. News could be shown in a similar way. I'm not saying we should clone their website but personally I don't like the 'openoffice.org'-like design much. Roderick At Wineconf, we made the decision to change the entry page to the Wine web site. The hope was to simplify and stream line it, and to put in place the infrastructure to start moving more content to the Wiki. Jeremy Newman and Jon Parshall have put a lot of time and energy into a proposed new design, following what we took away from the meetings at Wineconf. A mock up of that design is up now here: http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/ ...and the theming intended for all 'child' pages of the web site, starting with the Wiki: http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/wiki.html Beyond the normal controversy that any new design sparks there is one major potential controversial change. That is, I am asking for prime placement on the download page on behalf of CodeWeavers instead of the (stale and ugly, sorry) banner ads we used in the past. You can see our current concept around that positioning here: http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/download.html I hope that the general community sees that as a reasonable exchange for all of the work we put into Wine and hosting the Wine server, and a vast improvement over the banner ads. At any rate, comments and feedback are welcome. And in a vain attempt to prevent all the flames from scorching Jon and Jeremy, I'd like to officially state how much I appreciate their efforts. Cheers, Jeremy -- Sensationsangebot nur bis 30.11: GMX FreeDSL - Telefonanschluss + DSL für nur 16,37 Euro/mtl.!* http://dsl.gmx.de/?ac=OM.AD.PD003K11308T4569a
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
Hi all, I'm really excited about the new redesign effort. Overall the first attempt seemed more consistent. I like the vertical alignment more. I've got troubles to get oriented in the second attempt. Black background of search dialog seems more consistent with the page style. I'm absolutely happy with the top buttons: WineHQ, Wiki, AppDB, Bugzilla, Forums That would make winehq my default site instead of using 3 addresses. I'd vote for hover hints in Wiki left menu. Cheers Hark Scott Ritchie wrote: Cesar Izurieta wrote: Here's a quick relayout with some of the ideas posted in this thread: http://caih.org/wine/WineHQ.html Ewww. The vertical alignment is much better, and the news dragging to the bottom is just tacky. Scott Ritchie
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
Roderick Colenbrander wrote: The look of the website has improved a lot and it feels a lot more modern. Personally I don't like the front page much. I find it a bit empty. I would like to see what Wine is. I would suggest to look at http://www.go-mono.com the website of the Mono project. On their website your directly see on a banner what Mono is and a list with important features is shown in a column on the left. I think Wine's main features could be shown in a similar way. Sure you could have an information page but I think doing what the Mono guys did is enough for 90% of the people. News could be shown in a similar way. I'm not saying we should clone their website but personally I don't like the 'openoffice.org'-like design much. Roderick Hi Roderick, I consider the Mono example developer-oriented page. There is too much irrelevant information packed on one page for usual user or tester. As Wine is targeting broader audience than developers, I think the Jeremy's mockup is much more to the point. Cheers Hark
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
The Wine design would focus more on users. The 'banner' would be about running your Windows programs on Linux/FreeBSD/Mac and would mention office apps, games and so on. The highlights would show features e.g. support for Win3.1-XP, DirectX capability and so on. Roderick Roderick Colenbrander wrote: The look of the website has improved a lot and it feels a lot more modern. Personally I don't like the front page much. I find it a bit empty. I would like to see what Wine is. I would suggest to look at http://www.go-mono.com the website of the Mono project. On their website your directly see on a banner what Mono is and a list with important features is shown in a column on the left. I think Wine's main features could be shown in a similar way. Sure you could have an information page but I think doing what the Mono guys did is enough for 90% of the people. News could be shown in a similar way. I'm not saying we should clone their website but personally I don't like the 'openoffice.org'-like design much. Roderick Hi Roderick, I consider the Mono example developer-oriented page. There is too much irrelevant information packed on one page for usual user or tester. As Wine is targeting broader audience than developers, I think the Jeremy's mockup is much more to the point. Cheers Hark -- Pt! Schon vom neuen GMX MultiMessenger gehört? Der kann`s mit allen: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/multimessenger
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
There's a lot of talk going on here about User focus which is absolutely great. In the 15 years of Wine development, we've accrued quite a large user base (myself included; I've never even written a patch for Wine, and only started using Wine 5-6 years ago). Perhaps these questions need to be answered: Q 1) What do users want to see on the site? Q 2) What do we *want* the users to see on the site? Q 3) What *will* the users see when they visit the site? I propose the following answers: A 1) Some download (or instructions to download something) that makes all their Windows programs work nicely, fluff their pillows and make them a good cup of cocoa. Regular visitors would want to see signs of project activity (such as the WWN or the 2-weekly release notices) A 2) The FAQ (and other useful information) A 3) The eye is drawn to the big white box in the square that says Information, Download, Help etc. Most users will likely click on the Download link straight away, but maybe while it's downloading they'll take a look at the Information. The buttons at the top are secondary and at the moment, not likely to be noticed by a first-time visitor. This is coming from someone who's answered a lot of questions in #winehq that are answered quite well by the FAQ. I think the proposed layout is good overall. Both the original proposition linked to by Jeremy and Cesar's modifications have pros and cons, and are IMO a vast improvement on the current winehq site. The rest of my two cents: - Keep the buttons to the sub-sites at the top right. Visible, but out of the way at the same time - Keep the news items on the front page brief and have a dedicated news/archive page for full details - Scrap the latest releases section (only kidding, but it's about the only thing so far that hasn't been objected to in some way) - Less wine, more beer! (Or in .de, weniger wein, mehr bier!)
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
It's looking pretty good, but I think that the one at http://caih.org/wine/WineHQ.html is a little better. What I really don't like about them is that everything's a bit too rounded, which looks a little tacky. The icons, tabs, and white backgrounds could all be squarer. Also, the icons and links are probably a bit too big. Anyway, I hacked together a quick idea of how the tabs could possibly be made a bit nicer - http://stephengentle.com/media/images/wine/tabs.png . I didn't put in any of the content, or most of the boxes, but it's more the tabs I was focusing on. I also made the wine glass logo a little smaller, and the main box less rounded - which I think looks better. The WineHQ test could probably be made a little smaller as well... -Stephen
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 4:39 PM, Jeremy White [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At Wineconf, we made the decision to change the entry page to the Wine web site. The hope was to simplify and stream line it, and to put in place the infrastructure to start moving more content to the Wiki. Jeremy Newman and Jon Parshall have put a lot of time and energy into a proposed new design, following what we took away from the meetings at Wineconf. +1 They have done a kickass job with this layout. -- Steven Edwards There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come. - Victor Hugo
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
On Mon, 24 Nov 2008, Scott Ritchie wrote: [...] Can be improved with minor tweaks: * The news should be clickable, and take you to a separate news page with slightly longer stories. Agreed. We should have a separate news page. It could probably work as the news archive page directly: just show the most recent 10 news items with a link at the bottom to get the next 10, etc. In the sidebox 'News' should link to that page. To save space, we could omit the year, after all nowadays the news items are frequent enough that the year is not ambiguous. So November 7, 2008: Wine 1.1.8 Released would become November 7: Wine 1.1.8 Released And we could remove the following sentence altogether as it does not add anything to the new title: The Wine development release 1.1.8 is now available. * Rather than getting smaller when you hover the mouse over the buttons, it should be the other way around - highlight them and they get bigger Agreed too. I guess the idea it to make it look like the button has been pressed but I don't like it. It would be nicer if a kind of neon ring lit up around it (like in some elevators). [...] * I would replace it with a very small boilerplate text that says what Wine does, namely Wine lets you run Windows applications in Linux and on the Mac. We don't want to be Linux-centric however (it's hard enough as it is to convince FreeBSD users we don't hate them). So maybe replace Linux with Unix, or add in FreeBSD, or simply BSD into it. And I think we can drop the beginning of the sentence since it will appear as follows: WINE hq Runs Windows applications on Linux, BSD and Mac OS X. (I'd even be tempted to bold 'applications' for newbies...) * The Help! button could be a bit friendlier, eg Get Help or Support. At the least, drop the exclamation point. Well, 'Help!' has a nice Beatles ring to it, while 'Get Help' sounds very much like 'Go see a Shrink' and 'Support' like we're going to put them in touch with an 'Alcoholics Anonymous' group. g More seriously, the problem with using single words is that it makes it harder to keep consistent about using the active or passive form. So we have: * 'Information' and 'Development' on the passive side. * 'Download' and 'Donate' on the active side. * 'Help!' on one side or the other, depending on how you understand it. Notice how OpenOffice.org avoids this issue by using proper sentences. [...] * The download icon is weird. A large down arrow would probably be better than a CD, especially since we don't offer anything CD-like. * Similarly, using the classic wrench icon for development would be a bit more obvious. Sounds good too. I'm not a big fan of the high contrast in the colors. The OpenOffice.org site is much softer in that respect. But then colors... I also find the glass on the main page to be huge (as in too big). I don't know if it is related, but on my laptop (1024x768) there is no background to the right of the sidebar. There is ample blank space next to the main buttons though. So there's some work needed so the site can adapt to lower window widths. It should be able to cope down to about 820 pixels as far as I can see here. -- Francois Gouget [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://fgouget.free.fr/ Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, if he gets angry, he'll be a mile away - and barefoot.
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
The new user-centric design looks promising. Contrary to some others I quite like the round corners and more modern look. Here are a few observations: - Light gray text on a white background is not so nice. - I thought it was called Wine and not WINE now. Shouldn't the logo at the top left reflect this? - I don't really like the icons too much: As others mentioned, a simple down arrow for the 'Download' icon might be better and the Development icon is really non-intuitive. Better alternatives would be gears or a wrench (or both). Also, I don't see a reason for them being buttons instead of just the icons over the background. Putting the icons into a box just detracts from the icons themselves, at least for me. Also, would it kill to user other colors than than those dictated by the theme for the icons? Compare this to http://www.openoffice.org/ which I'm guessing this design is based on. - I think a big Compatibility link, as done in the re-layout, really belongs onto the front page. I'm guessing many users will want to know if their favorite app runs with wine before the download link even becomes relevant, both for users who are deciding weather to switch to Linux / Mac and those that just want to find out if there is any reason to upgrade from the Wine version that ships with their distro. - As many others, I also despise secondary scroll bars. Right now the news content shows way too much redundancy: The Latest Releases box, the title of the latest news entry as well as it's first sentence all just say The latest Wine version is 1.1.8 and they are right next to each other. Is there some way to combine this? How about just: Latest stable release (links to release page) Latest release (also links to it's own release page) Release date. Major changes. 1/2 Non-release news items (WWN,...) Also, even when resizing the browser window to the point where a horizontal scroll bar appears there is still quite a bit of white space in the center, yet the news box has a small fixed width that forces line breaks in the release change summary bullet points. +1 To the idea of getting screenshots back on the page, it's surprising how much a little eye candy can do.They should however be more up to date (perhaps automatically linked from platinum apps on the AppDB) and as was suggested link back to the relevant AppDB entry. Regards, Daniel Scharrer
Fw: Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
Sent to wrong mailing list. -Forwarded Message- From: James Mckenzie [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Nov 25, 2008 9:01 AM To: Wine Users Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design Daniel Scharrer [EMAIL PROTECTED] at Nov 25, 2008 8:50 AM (MST) wrote about Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design The new user-centric design looks promising. Contrary to some others I quite like the round corners and more modern look. Here are a few observations: - Light gray text on a white background is not so nice. This is very hard to read. I like a shade of Yellow on a Green background. White on Green is better. Easy on the eyes. White on Red is also good. - I don't really like the icons too much: As others mentioned, a simple down arrow for the 'Download' icon might be better The use of the down arrow is intuitive as well. This may lead directly to an available download or download page. The Development icon is really non-intuitive. Better alternatives would be gears or a wrench (or both). +1 for gears with wrench. - I think a big Compatibility link, as done in the re-layout, really belongs onto the front page. I'm guessing many users will want to know if their favorite app runs with wine before the download link even becomes relevant, both for users who are deciding weather to switch to Linux / Mac and those that just want to find out if there is any reason to upgrade from the Wine version that ships with their distro. I agree. A link to a Compatibility page should be on the Front Page where users can find it. The compatibility page should have categories rather than colors as well: Runs with Wine unaltered Runs with Wine with Windows DLLS Partially Runs with Wine Partially Runs with Wine with Windows DLLS DOES NOT RUN WITH WINE (Yes, the bold is deliberate.) +1 To the idea of getting screenshots back on the page, +1 to this as well. A small, clickable, screenshot of a running application does wonders. James McKenzie
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
Thanks for all the feedback, folks; I have to admit that was a bit overwhelming. I've read through it all, and have tried to digest it, below. But I think there is a strong sense here that no one likes a web site designed by committee. Given that, I think the plan will be to adjust based on feedback, and then go forward. After all, once we take it live, patches will still be accepted grin. Here is the digest of comments as I saw them: 1. Folks are basically cool with the CodeWeavers positioning; there is some thought we should even provide more information and linkage to our compatibility database. (I think we'll baby step with what we have now). 2. Lots of people hate the secondary scroll bar. 3. People want a longer introduction to Wine. I think it needs to be short and sweet. We'll noodle; suggestions welcome. 4. We should have hovers on the Wiki page (Jer is working on that). 5. Some folks found the grey text a bit hard to read. (I avoid color discussions like the plague; I think it's kind of like emacs vs vi. I just report the news). 6. There was some agitation for more news, more description, and perhaps more visual elements, like a screen shot. 7. There is some concern as to Wine vs WINE I had raised this privately, and was given the back hand of the artiste. I appreciate the work of the artiste, and so have backed off. 8. There were comments about the icons Some folks didn't like the download icon, some folks wanted the icons to pop more when hovered. The artiste is chewing on it. And then, finally, there were some comments on the main text points themselves. Notably, this one from Dan: About What is Wine, and why should I use it? I think that's a good change. In fact, I think we were so focused on the visual elements that we didn't really spend a ton of time on the words and they could be tweaked. and we're missing the user task Will my app work with Wine? which should link to the appdb. I disagree with the second point. I think the top level should remain very simple. The secondary pages can explain that Wine may not run their application, and so the appdb should feature prominently in that explanation. But I think leading with it is part of the slippery slope to too many links. Cheers, Jeremy
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
Austin English wrote: On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 12:27 AM, Scott Ritchie [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We also don't really need a link to AppDB from the big buttons in the front - AppDB is only the place to go when you're looking for it (hence the button in the upper right) or once you know something about Wine (hence a link in the about page). I disagree. You could make the same argument against bugzilla/forums/wiki. The frontpage should serve as a portal to the rest of the site. Many times when I needs appdb/wiki, I go to winehq.org and then click the appropriate link. I agree the main page should be the portal where you go to find everything... chris p.s. kudo's on the new design!
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
Jeremy White wrote: 2. Lots of people hate the secondary scroll bar. I love the secondary scroll bar. It allows a larger amount of content to fit into a small space. I did add a more news link to the area. That link will take you to a full width news view. Don't forget, the site will also still have the news available as RSS. 3. People want a longer introduction to Wine. I think it needs to be short and sweet. We'll noodle; suggestions welcome. I used Francois suggestion for the top blurb. I also darkened it a bit. 4. We should have hovers on the Wiki page (Jer is working on that). Added some simple hovers. 5. Some folks found the grey text a bit hard to read. (I avoid color discussions like the plague; I think it's kind of like emacs vs vi. I just report the news). Since monitors vary so much, it is a problem. I agree, I had it a bit light. Made it darker. 6. There was some agitation for more news, more description, and perhaps more visual elements, like a screen shot. I think these elements belong on secondary pages. The goal is to keep the front page simple. 7. There is some concern as to Wine vs WINE I had raised this privately, and was given the back hand of the artiste. I appreciate the work of the artiste, and so have backed off. Everywhere else it is Wine, the logo is just that a logo. I preserved the logo from the old site. 8. There were comments about the icons Some folks didn't like the download icon, some folks wanted the icons to pop more when hovered. The artiste is chewing on it. I agree the red glow needs to be more pronounced. We will tweak it a bit. Other tweaks I made. * More IE6 tweaks. I spent way too much time fixing the layout on that #*$'n browser. There still are a ton of users on it. It is the only one of the IEs that currently works well under Wine. On that topic, someone needs to fix the PNG loading with this new design. I'm using a CSS/javascript hack to get alpha channels to load in IE6. This hack breaks under wine, and the images are not loaded. It would be a good time to fix it before we take this live. I'd hate the new layout to not look good under our own software. * Front page rollovers use CSS now instead of JavaScript. * Front page layout, dropped the tables, and used CSS and DIV tags. Alexander suggested the news area be a bit wider, and grow a bit more as you stretch out the browser Window. I believe I accomplished this in a way that works on all browsers. * The design should hold up at 800x600 now. Other thoughts. * Rounded corners are here to stay. To me they feel consistent with the roundedness of the Wine glass logo. * AppDB, Forums, and Bugzilla will look like the Wiki Sample, just with their sidebar navs, and content areas. This is why I did not mock them up. * I like the larger logo on the front page. I did compromise and make the logos on all other pages smaller. -Newman
RFC: Proposed new web site design
At Wineconf, we made the decision to change the entry page to the Wine web site. The hope was to simplify and stream line it, and to put in place the infrastructure to start moving more content to the Wiki. Jeremy Newman and Jon Parshall have put a lot of time and energy into a proposed new design, following what we took away from the meetings at Wineconf. A mock up of that design is up now here: http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/ ...and the theming intended for all 'child' pages of the web site, starting with the Wiki: http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/wiki.html Beyond the normal controversy that any new design sparks there is one major potential controversial change. That is, I am asking for prime placement on the download page on behalf of CodeWeavers instead of the (stale and ugly, sorry) banner ads we used in the past. You can see our current concept around that positioning here: http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/download.html I hope that the general community sees that as a reasonable exchange for all of the work we put into Wine and hosting the Wine server, and a vast improvement over the banner ads. At any rate, comments and feedback are welcome. And in a vain attempt to prevent all the flames from scorching Jon and Jeremy, I'd like to officially state how much I appreciate their efforts. Cheers, Jeremy
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
2008/11/24 Jeremy White [EMAIL PROTECTED]: At Wineconf, we made the decision to change the entry page to the Wine web site. The hope was to simplify and stream line it, and to put in place the infrastructure to start moving more content to the Wiki. Jeremy Newman and Jon Parshall have put a lot of time and energy into a proposed new design, following what we took away from the meetings at Wineconf. I like the new look - congrats Jeremy and Jon. A mock up of that design is up now here: http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/ ...and the theming intended for all 'child' pages of the web site, starting with the Wiki: http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/wiki.html I assume that this will apply to bugzilla, AppDB and the Forum as well. Beyond the normal controversy that any new design sparks there is one major potential controversial change. That is, I am asking for prime placement on the download page on behalf of CodeWeavers instead of the (stale and ugly, sorry) banner ads we used in the past. You can see our current concept around that positioning here: http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/download.html My only comment here is that it would be useful to list the 'Office' and 'Games' versions, along with the CrossOver version number and the Wine version number that they are based on. That way it is easier to tell how far off the Wine tip they are (for example if you need a version or later of Wine) and if there is a new version of CrossOver available (if you have missed the announcement on the news section). In addition to this, w.r.t. the AppDB, it may be useful to merge the Wine AppDB and CrossOver AppDB. That way you'll be able to see whether Wine, CrossOver Office or CrossOver Games is best for running the application(s) you are interested in. I hope that the general community sees that as a reasonable exchange for all of the work we put into Wine and hosting the Wine server, and a vast improvement over the banner ads. +1 - Reece
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 3:39 PM, Jeremy White [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At Wineconf, we made the decision to change the entry page to the Wine web site. The hope was to simplify and stream line it, and to put in place the infrastructure to start moving more content to the Wiki. Jeremy Newman and Jon Parshall have put a lot of time and energy into a proposed new design, following what we took away from the meetings at Wineconf. A mock up of that design is up now here: http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/ ...and the theming intended for all 'child' pages of the web site, starting with the Wiki: http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/wiki.html Awesome great work guys! Love it for the most part. Just one nit: I hate secondary scroll bars (the scroll bar for the news). I can live with it of course, just wouldn't be there in my ideal. But really looks great overall. Beyond the normal controversy that any new design sparks there is one major potential controversial change. That is, I am asking for prime placement on the download page on behalf of CodeWeavers instead of the (stale and ugly, sorry) banner ads we used in the past. You can see our current concept around that positioning here: http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/download.html I hope that the general community sees that as a reasonable exchange for all of the work we put into Wine and hosting the Wine server, and a vast improvement over the banner ads. Seems reasonable to me. Awesome effort on the design, --John Klehm
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 4:25 PM, John Klehm [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 3:39 PM, Jeremy White [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At Wineconf, we made the decision to change the entry page to the Wine web site. The hope was to simplify and stream line it, and to put in place the infrastructure to start moving more content to the Wiki. Jeremy Newman and Jon Parshall have put a lot of time and energy into a proposed new design, following what we took away from the meetings at Wineconf. A mock up of that design is up now here: http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/ ...and the theming intended for all 'child' pages of the web site, starting with the Wiki: http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/wiki.html Awesome great work guys! Love it for the most part. Another +1. Looks much more sleek. Just one nit: I hate secondary scroll bars (the scroll bar for the news). I can live with it of course, just wouldn't be there in my ideal. But really looks great overall. Beyond the normal controversy that any new design sparks there is one major potential controversial change. That is, I am asking for prime placement on the download page on behalf of CodeWeavers instead of the (stale and ugly, sorry) banner ads we used in the past. You can see our current concept around that positioning here: http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/download.html I hope that the general community sees that as a reasonable exchange for all of the work we put into Wine and hosting the Wine server, and a vast improvement over the banner ads. Seems reasonable to me. FYI, you've got Crossover listed twice on that page. You didn't remove it from the bottom. -- -Austin
re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
Looks great so far. Comments: 1) nested scrollbars are evil. Better to put the news on its own tab, lose the little sidebar the news was in, and have a very small area in the main box for just the one most important headline. 2) The main choice text needs to be closer to user tasks. So instead of Information Overview of Wine features. we should have About What is Wine, and why should I use it? and we're missing the user task Will my app work with Wine? which should link to the appdb.
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
On Monday 24 November 2008 22:39:05 Jeremy White wrote: At Wineconf, we made the decision to change the entry page to the Wine web site. The hope was to simplify and stream line it, and to put in place the infrastructure to start moving more content to the Wiki. Jeremy Newman and Jon Parshall have put a lot of time and energy into a proposed new design, following what we took away from the meetings at Wineconf. A mock up of that design is up now here: http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/ ...and the theming intended for all 'child' pages of the web site, starting with the Wiki: http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/wiki.html Beyond the normal controversy that any new design sparks there is one major potential controversial change. That is, I am asking for prime placement on the download page on behalf of CodeWeavers instead of the (stale and ugly, sorry) banner ads we used in the past. You can see our current concept around that positioning here: http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/download.html I hope that the general community sees that as a reasonable exchange for all of the work we put into Wine and hosting the Wine server, and a vast improvement over the banner ads. At any rate, comments and feedback are welcome. And in a vain attempt to prevent all the flames from scorching Jon and Jeremy, I'd like to officially state how much I appreciate their efforts. Cheers, Jeremy This looks really ince! Do you have a mock-up for the AppDB as well? :) Alexander N: Sørnes
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
2008/11/24 Jeremy White [EMAIL PROTECTED]: At Wineconf, we made the decision to change the entry page to the Wine web site. The hope was to simplify and stream line it, and to put in place the infrastructure to start moving more content to the Wiki. Another comment: on the wiki page revamp (http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/wiki.html), the side panel links do not have a hover state to indicate that you are over them, like the navigation tabs at the top. - Reece
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
2008/11/24 Jeremy White [EMAIL PROTECTED]: At Wineconf, we made the decision to change the entry page to the Wine web site. The hope was to simplify and stream line it, and to put in place the infrastructure to start moving more content to the Wiki. Jeremy Newman and Jon Parshall have put a lot of time and energy into a proposed new design, following what we took away from the meetings at Wineconf. A mock up of that design is up now here: http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/ ...and the theming intended for all 'child' pages of the web site, starting with the Wiki: http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/wiki.html Beyond the normal controversy that any new design sparks there is one major potential controversial change. That is, I am asking for prime placement on the download page on behalf of CodeWeavers instead of the (stale and ugly, sorry) banner ads we used in the past. You can see our current concept around that positioning here: http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/download.html I hope that the general community sees that as a reasonable exchange for all of the work we put into Wine and hosting the Wine server, and a vast improvement over the banner ads. At any rate, comments and feedback are welcome. And in a vain attempt to prevent all the flames from scorching Jon and Jeremy, I'd like to officially state how much I appreciate their efforts. Cheers, Jeremy Looks great! I think the frontpage should have some short wine description like the current site does. Maybe something like: Wine lets you: * Install and run unmodified MS Windows programs in Linux and other platforms. * Develop MS Windows applications under other operating systems. * You don't even need a MS Windows license to do so.
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
Random thoughts: - I like it. - I agree that there should be a very short description of what Wine does. Probably summarizing it in 2 sentences or so where the Run Windows Everywhere currently is. Something like, Run Windows applications on Linux and OS X without installing Windows. Wine is a compatibility layer for running Windows programs. - The icons next to Information, Help, and Donate are ok. The icon for Download doesn't seem as eye-catching, but the icon for Development seems a little wonky. No, I'm not going to offer any better suggestions. - I don't mind secondary scroll bars. For the haters, maybe show the current news for 4 seconds, and then start it automatically scrolling down? - Can, or should, WineHQ take over the wiki from Dimi? This might be a good opportunity. - I don't know which search terms people use to find Wine, but this sounds like a good chance to do some search engine optimization. - Currently if you go to the wiki, you can navigate back to WineHQ, AppDB, Forums, etc on the left. The sample doesn't have that. Brian
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
2008/11/25 Brian Vincent [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Random thoughts: - Currently if you go to the wiki, you can navigate back to WineHQ, AppDB, Forums, etc on the left. The sample doesn't have that. Those links have been moved to the top. As such, they are (or will/should be) consistent throughout the website. The same applies to the front page as well (the links have moved from the left hand side as well). -- Additional observation: The CodeWeavers icon at the bottom -- there is a gradient from top to bottom (is this intentional?); the text and the 'C' graphic have a white border which makes it jarring w.r.t. the dark background (it looks pixelated and is slightly harder to read as a result). Is the image a gif instead of a png with an alpha channel? - Reece
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
+1 Looks nice :) Tom On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 4:39 PM, Jeremy White [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At Wineconf, we made the decision to change the entry page to the Wine web site. The hope was to simplify and stream line it, and to put in place the infrastructure to start moving more content to the Wiki. Cheers, Jeremy
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
2008/11/24 Dan Kegel [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Looks great so far. Comments: 1) nested scrollbars are evil. Better to put the news on its own tab, lose the little sidebar the news was in, and have a very small area in the main box for just the one most important headline. I disagree about losing news altogether, I think it definetely serves a worthy purpose and perhaps can be integrated in a way which doesn't cause this scrollbar-sticker shock we're seeing. Otherwise I echo the opinion of others in saying I appreciate the overall look and feel, its rather pleasant -Z.
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
Jeremy White wrote: At Wineconf, we made the decision to change the entry page to the Wine web site. The hope was to simplify and stream line it, and to put in place the infrastructure to start moving more content to the Wiki. Jeremy Newman and Jon Parshall have put a lot of time and energy into a proposed new design, following what we took away from the meetings at Wineconf. I thought we took away that Dan Kegel would magically pull a design out of his wizard's hat. Regardless, thanks for doing the work. A mock up of that design is up now here: http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/ ...and the theming intended for all 'child' pages of the web site, starting with the Wiki: http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/wiki.html As Wine's unofficial usability evangelist, I present a quick and dirty review of the new design below. Keep one point in mind: it's much better, and thank you for getting it done. Beyond the normal controversy that any new design sparks there is one major potential controversial change. That is, I am asking for prime placement on the download page on behalf of CodeWeavers instead of the (stale and ugly, sorry) banner ads we used in the past. You can see our current concept around that positioning here: http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/download.html Anything is better than making our website look like it was from 1998. Perhaps not coincidentally, that's how many people viewed the quality of our software. I hope that the general community sees that as a reasonable exchange for all of the work we put into Wine and hosting the Wine server, and a vast improvement over the banner ads. At any rate, comments and feedback are welcome. Good: * Much friendlier, better looking, easier to focus on what I want. Looks professional. * The prominent donate link on the front page is very recognizable. I guarantee you'll have more donations as a result. * All the old cruft links are gone. * The new small icon reflects the main image on the site, and also no longer has the tiny artifacts that the old one did. Impressive. Can be improved with minor tweaks: * The news should be clickable, and take you to a separate news page with slightly longer stories. * Rather than getting smaller when you hover the mouse over the buttons, it should be the other way around - highlight them and they get bigger * The slogan Windows software everywhere doesn't make much sense. I would replace it with a very small boilerplate text that says what Wine does, namely Wine lets you run Windows applications in Linux and on the Mac. This summarizes everything for someone visiting the site who has never heard of Wine before. * The Help! button could be a bit friendlier, eg Get Help or Support. At the least, drop the exclamation point. * The text under Donate is obvious, so we can benefit from a bit of explanation. Something like Help volunteer Wine developers improve Wine -- this also helps sell the donate button * The text under Download could be more extensive too, eg Get the latest Wine packaged for your distribution -- I don't think we lose much by using a short sentence here since the text is already partially transparent and optional to read. * The download icon is weird. A large down arrow would probably be better than a CD, especially since we don't offer anything CD-like. * Similarly, using the classic wrench icon for development would be a bit more obvious. As it is now I'm not sure what it means except for the word development right next to it. Bad: * The inlaid scrollbar under the news tab. However, I think the proper way to deal with this is to simply have shorter news stories rather than change the scroll bar. The current sample news (Wine 1.1.7 released), for instance, could easily be just 2 sentences and a link to the larger story. Longer stories could be reserved for a separate news page. And in a vain attempt to prevent all the flames from scorching Jon and Jeremy, I'd like to officially state how much I appreciate their efforts. It looks really good in general. I'm excited. Thanks, Scott Ritchie
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
Reece Dunn wrote: My only comment here is that it would be useful to list the 'Office' and 'Games' versions, along with the CrossOver version number and the Wine version number that they are based on. That way it is easier to tell how far off the Wine tip they are (for example if you need a version or later of Wine) and if there is a new version of CrossOver available (if you have missed the announcement on the news section). In addition to this, w.r.t. the AppDB, it may be useful to merge the Wine AppDB and CrossOver AppDB. That way you'll be able to see whether Wine, CrossOver Office or CrossOver Games is best for running the application(s) you are interested in. While a radical idea, this would be really really nice if done properly. I see no reason for our communities to stay segregated, especially if it can help improve Wine. I was always subtly bothered by how nice Codeweavers' compatibility site was compared with AppDB, as well as the obvious duplication of terms (Maintainer vs Advocate, different rating scales, etc.) It makes Codeweavers seem more distant than they really are. Crossover users know about Wine. They continue to use Crossover even when an application works in Wine's AppDB, so I don't see any potential harm to Codeweaver's business from merging the two. Quite the opposite, actually -- it's rather hard for a visitor to Wine's AppDB to learn that an application is supported by Crossover and is guaranteed to work, and that's information a potential customer clicking through versions of might work in Wine 1.1.7 would really like to hear. So, let's discuss it. Thanks, Scott Ritchie
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 5:43 PM, Zachary Goldberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 1) nested scrollbars are evil. Better to put the news on its own tab, lose the little sidebar the news was in, and have a very small area in the main box for just the one most important headline. I disagree about losing news altogether I didn't say get rid of it. I said give it its own tab, so that it's not scrunched in a tiny sidebar with a *!# internal scrollbar. A single headline on the front page, linking to the news, should suffice.
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
2008/11/24 Scott Ritchie [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Jeremy White wrote: At Wineconf, we made the decision to change the entry page to the Wine web site. The hope was to simplify and stream line it, and to put in place the infrastructure to start moving more content to the Wiki. Jeremy Newman and Jon Parshall have put a lot of time and energy into a proposed new design, following what we took away from the meetings at Wineconf. I thought we took away that Dan Kegel would magically pull a design out of his wizard's hat. Regardless, thanks for doing the work. A mock up of that design is up now here: http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/ ...and the theming intended for all 'child' pages of the web site, starting with the Wiki: http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/wiki.html As Wine's unofficial usability evangelist, I present a quick and dirty review of the new design below. Keep one point in mind: it's much better, and thank you for getting it done. Beyond the normal controversy that any new design sparks there is one major potential controversial change. That is, I am asking for prime placement on the download page on behalf of CodeWeavers instead of the (stale and ugly, sorry) banner ads we used in the past. You can see our current concept around that positioning here: http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/download.html Anything is better than making our website look like it was from 1998. Perhaps not coincidentally, that's how many people viewed the quality of our software. I hope that the general community sees that as a reasonable exchange for all of the work we put into Wine and hosting the Wine server, and a vast improvement over the banner ads. At any rate, comments and feedback are welcome. Good: * Much friendlier, better looking, easier to focus on what I want. Looks professional. * The prominent donate link on the front page is very recognizable. I guarantee you'll have more donations as a result. * All the old cruft links are gone. * The new small icon reflects the main image on the site, and also no longer has the tiny artifacts that the old one did. Impressive. Can be improved with minor tweaks: * The news should be clickable, and take you to a separate news page with slightly longer stories. * Rather than getting smaller when you hover the mouse over the buttons, it should be the other way around - highlight them and they get bigger * The slogan Windows software everywhere doesn't make much sense. I would replace it with a very small boilerplate text that says what Wine does, namely Wine lets you run Windows applications in Linux and on the Mac. This summarizes everything for someone visiting the site who has never heard of Wine before. * The Help! button could be a bit friendlier, eg Get Help or Support. At the least, drop the exclamation point. * The text under Donate is obvious, so we can benefit from a bit of explanation. Something like Help volunteer Wine developers improve Wine -- this also helps sell the donate button * The text under Download could be more extensive too, eg Get the latest Wine packaged for your distribution -- I don't think we lose much by using a short sentence here since the text is already partially transparent and optional to read. * The download icon is weird. A large down arrow would probably be better than a CD, especially since we don't offer anything CD-like. * Similarly, using the classic wrench icon for development would be a bit more obvious. As it is now I'm not sure what it means except for the word development right next to it. Bad: * The inlaid scrollbar under the news tab. However, I think the proper way to deal with this is to simply have shorter news stories rather than change the scroll bar. The current sample news (Wine 1.1.7 released), for instance, could easily be just 2 sentences and a link to the larger story. Longer stories could be reserved for a separate news page. And in a vain attempt to prevent all the flames from scorching Jon and Jeremy, I'd like to officially state how much I appreciate their efforts. It looks really good in general. I'm excited. Thanks, Scott Ritchie Here's a quick relayout with some of the ideas posted in this thread: http://caih.org/wine/WineHQ.html
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
A few comments from an outsider: * Looks very Web 2.0-ish. Gradients, glossiness, rounded corners, dark background. You might want to tune it down slightly to make it look more polished. But this may just be my personal dislike for Web 2.0 designs. * I am missing an introductory text. It should be really short, like: Wine lets you run Windows programs on Linux and the Mac, so you don't need to buy Windows. (Addendum: That introduction in the latest relayout is too technical and long.) * About the big links: great! WineHQ was always hard to navigate, but this is really nice! The grey text is a little hard to read though. I think it wouldn't hurt the overall readability if the contrast was a little higher, say #777 or even #555. The smaller size already does the job of making that text secondary to the links. * I really liked the random screen-shots that showed what Wine could do. Maybe it could be worked back into the new design at the bottom of the page? Something like: Wine can run many programs, including these: And then three screen-shots with a caption that says which program it is. Those then link to their respective AppDB pages. It could be too much clutter though. Remco
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 10:03 PM, Dan Kegel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 5:43 PM, Zachary Goldberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 1) nested scrollbars are evil. Better to put the news on its own tab, lose the little sidebar the news was in, and have a very small area in the main box for just the one most important headline. I disagree about losing news altogether I didn't say get rid of it. I said give it its own tab, so that it's not scrunched in a tiny sidebar with a *!# internal scrollbar. A single headline on the front page, linking to the news, should suffice. +2 -- -Austin
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
A few comments from a long-time supporter and amateur web-developer: * I like the look of it! Very nice work * I agree with previous comments about the nested scroll area, however I believe that a brief News section does belong on the main page. If no other (reasonable) solution is presented, the current mock-up layout is tollerable * Tables for layout? Only if you have to (should consider browser targeting here, i.e. does WineHQ want to support IE6?) * Again related to browser targeting, CSS-based roll-overs should ideally be prefered over Javascript ones * A brief description of Wine would be suitable for the main page, possibly even as little as changing Windows Software Everywhere.. to read Windows software on Unix-like systems * I'd suggest changing Information to read About (maybe a bit nit-picky, but it seems less formal) * Perhaps we could integrate some of the key FAQ items into the Information/About page, e.g. running from the command-line, maybe even the one on DirectX. At the least, a direct link to the FAQ would be nice :) I do like the new layout a lot and with any luck it will stop people in #winehq complaining that they can't find appdb, or the search bar, or even where to download Wine from. Well done once again!
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
Cesar Izurieta wrote: Here's a quick relayout with some of the ideas posted in this thread: http://caih.org/wine/WineHQ.html Ewww. The vertical alignment is much better, and the news dragging to the bottom is just tacky. We also don't really need a link to AppDB from the big buttons in the front - AppDB is only the place to go when you're looking for it (hence the button in the upper right) or once you know something about Wine (hence a link in the about page). Thanks, Scott Ritchie
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 12:27 AM, Scott Ritchie [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We also don't really need a link to AppDB from the big buttons in the front - AppDB is only the place to go when you're looking for it (hence the button in the upper right) or once you know something about Wine (hence a link in the about page). I disagree. You could make the same argument against bugzilla/forums/wiki. The frontpage should serve as a portal to the rest of the site. Many times when I needs appdb/wiki, I go to winehq.org and then click the appropriate link. -- -Austin
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
Austin English wrote: On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 12:27 AM, Scott Ritchie [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We also don't really need a link to AppDB from the big buttons in the front - AppDB is only the place to go when you're looking for it (hence the button in the upper right) or once you know something about Wine (hence a link in the about page). I disagree. You could make the same argument against bugzilla/forums/wiki. The frontpage should serve as a portal to the rest of the site. Many times when I needs appdb/wiki, I go to winehq.org and then click the appropriate link. I'm not arguing against that - we absolutely should have an AppDB and a bugzilla link in the corner. They're very useful. I'm just saying such a link doesn't have to also be among the large, friendly buttons at the left, which is where a complete newcomer's eyes are drawn. A newcomer who doesn't know what they're looking for, and thus probably doesn't want AppDB or Bugzilla yet (but does probably want About, Download, or Support) Thanks, Scott Ritchie
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 5:42 PM, Scott Ritchie [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Austin English wrote: On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 12:27 AM, Scott Ritchie [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We also don't really need a link to AppDB from the big buttons in the front - AppDB is only the place to go when you're looking for it (hence the button in the upper right) or once you know something about Wine (hence a link in the about page). I disagree. You could make the same argument against bugzilla/forums/wiki. The frontpage should serve as a portal to the rest of the site. Many times when I needs appdb/wiki, I go to winehq.org and then click the appropriate link. I'm not arguing against that - we absolutely should have an AppDB and a bugzilla link in the corner. They're very useful. I'm just saying such a link doesn't have to also be among the large, friendly buttons at the left, which is where a complete newcomer's eyes are drawn. A newcomer who doesn't know what they're looking for, and thus probably doesn't want AppDB or Bugzilla yet (but does probably want About, Download, or Support) Thanks, Scott Ritchie I'm not a fan of the huge buttons and links, I think they're an eyesore. I would prefer it to look like how wiki is here http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/wiki.html Also I think the latest news about the project should be a centrepiece like it is in the existing design, not swept away to the side, -Jeff
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
On Tuesday 25 November 2008 01:59:12 Brian Vincent wrote: - I don't know which search terms people use to find Wine, but this sounds like a good chance to do some search engine optimization. Dunno. If I enter wine into Google, the first hit is www.winehq.org, followed by Wikipedia's Wine(software) article and the Wine section of the Ubuntu forums, before giving the Wine(beverage) Wikipedia article. These might be slightly off due to the fact that Google decides I'm German and prefer German websites and German websites about the beverage spell it Wein. All in all it looks like we're well-represented, though. Cheers, Kai -- Kai Blin WorldForge developer http://www.worldforge.org/ Wine developerhttp://wiki.winehq.org/KaiBlin Samba team member http://www.samba.org/samba/team/ -- Will code for cotton. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
2008/11/25 Scott Ritchie [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Cesar Izurieta wrote: Here's a quick relayout with some of the ideas posted in this thread: http://caih.org/wine/WineHQ.html Ewww. The vertical alignment is much better, and the news dragging to the bottom is just tacky. I agree. For the news, how about just listing them by the date and title - this should give you enough information for a quick glance. The title then links to the extended announcement. As an alternative, there could be an expander to get the mini summary. And an RSS feed would be very nice :). Something like: News -- November 7, 2008: [+] Wine 1.1.8 Released October 24, 2008: [-] Wine 1.1.7 Released The Wine development release 1.1.7 is now available. ... [rss] Also, +1 for CSS roll over and menus (there are plenty of examples and tutorials on the net), and it should be possible - with carefully crafted HTML+CSS to support older/broken browsers if needed. - Reece
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
Jeff Zaroyko wrote: On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 5:42 PM, Scott Ritchie [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Austin English wrote: On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 12:27 AM, Scott Ritchie [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We also don't really need a link to AppDB from the big buttons in the front - AppDB is only the place to go when you're looking for it (hence the button in the upper right) or once you know something about Wine (hence a link in the about page). I disagree. You could make the same argument against bugzilla/forums/wiki. The frontpage should serve as a portal to the rest of the site. Many times when I needs appdb/wiki, I go to winehq.org and then click the appropriate link. I'm not arguing against that - we absolutely should have an AppDB and a bugzilla link in the corner. They're very useful. I'm just saying such a link doesn't have to also be among the large, friendly buttons at the left, which is where a complete newcomer's eyes are drawn. A newcomer who doesn't know what they're looking for, and thus probably doesn't want AppDB or Bugzilla yet (but does probably want About, Download, or Support) Thanks, Scott Ritchie I'm not a fan of the huge buttons and links, I think they're an eyesore. I would prefer it to look like how wiki is here http://wine.codeweavers.com/winehq_new/wiki.html Also I think the latest news about the project should be a centrepiece like it is in the existing design, not swept away to the side, -Jeff What would all that other information you want to cram in there be, though? Almost all of the information that goes onto the current main page is better homed in the wiki, and as a developer I rarely find myself at the actual front page of the current winehq. Stuff like Sending Patches is certainly not going to be ever clicked on by a newcomer straight off the internet, for instance. By including such links on the front page, however, we risk scaring away visitors by cluttering their first impression with irrelevant or confusing stuff. You are right that the news being prominent - that's why it's on the front page, and why we should have a dedicated news page. Putting a typical Wine news blurb in its entirety is a bit too far -- the majority of the text on the front page would be stuff like Still better crypt32 support instead of what we want them to read. I suggest we print the headlines, and keep the site focused on what's important for newcomers. This redesign is a dramatic step, no doubt. It refocuses the page towards users rather than Wine developers. You and I as serious Wine people will need to shift our behavior somewhat to get the same use of the site. Instead of interacting with the front page of the Wine website we'll be one step underneath (such as from the main wiki page or the contribution page). However, I think it's a worthy sacrifice - the new design looks like a page I can genuinely send a stranger to. Thanks, Scott Ritchie
Re: RFC: Proposed new web site design
I like the new style however I can't help but feel that: - The links should be where the news is - The news should be where the links are - There's no about wine text like there is on the old page and I don't think moving it to an about page is a good idea. Regards, Andrew
