re: Wineconf follow up: Cosmetic website changes
That's right, I foolishly volunteered to put together a draft for winehq.org's front page inspired by openoffice.org's front page. The main constraint discussed at wineconf was that the site navigation should not change with this redesign ('cause that requires lots more work). Also, it's inaccurate to call this a cosmetic change; it's really driven by usability concerns. I have a sneaking suspicion that http://wiki.winehq.org is at this point a better place to send beginners to than http://winehq.org, and that's just wrong... our simplest URL should also be our best foot forward. - Dan
On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 12:52 AM, Dan Kegel <dank(a)kegel.com> wrote:
That's right, I foolishly volunteered to put together a draft for winehq.org's front page inspired by openoffice.org's front page.
The main constraint discussed at wineconf was that the site navigation should not change with this redesign ('cause that requires lots more work).
Also, it's inaccurate to call this a cosmetic change; it's really driven by usability concerns. I have a sneaking suspicion that http://wiki.winehq.org is at this point a better place to send beginners to than http://winehq.org, and that's just wrong... our simplest URL should also be our best foot forward. - Dan
So there seem to be some fundamental issues conflicting here. wiki.winehq.org is a good place to send newbies because it has tons of information, but its not an easy landing page for somebody new to look at. OOO's website however has very little in the way of raw information, however it does have nice and easy aesthetics which directs users to said information. Thus it seems what we want is to aesthetically change winehq.org to be point to the big databases of information we already have. Am I correct? The only real thing we need to do is make our links to answers more obvious which could be trivially done by adding <h1> around the wiki link. More seriously though what are your goals in the redesign? What do you plan to rip out/keep? Currently the homepage has a whole bunch of different things, which do we want to keep? * Left menu nav for main winehq sites * About static pages nav * download nav * support nav * Dev. nav * search in the bottom left corner * Landing paragraph + random screenshot * Main news feed * Latest release * Random quote * Ads by Google * WWN Backlisting * Hosted by CW / Paypal buttons
On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 10:20 PM, Zachary Goldberg <zgold(a)bluesata.com> wrote:
So there seem to be some fundamental issues conflicting here. wiki.winehq.org is a good place to send newbies because it has tons of information, but its not an easy landing page for somebody new to look at.
Oh, I don't know. Seems to me that the wiki it's a *better* landing page for newbies; it does a better job of leading them by the hand without making them scroll or click. winehq.org has a lot of stuff they don't care about, and they have to scroll or click to get to something friendly.
OOO's website however has very little in the way of raw information, however it does have nice and easy aesthetics which directs users to said information.
If it directs users to information well, it's not aesthetics, it's usability. The idea is to use the front page to quickly handle the most frequent questions (how to get it, where's the doc), and if that's not what they're after, to direct them to a page based on their 'role' (e.g. user or developer).
Currently the homepage has a whole bunch of different things, which do we want to keep?
* Left menu nav for main winehq sites * About static pages nav * download nav * support nav * Dev. nav * search in the bottom left corner * Landing paragraph + random screenshot * Main news feed * Latest release * Random quote * Ads by Google * WWN Backlisting * Hosted by CW / Paypal buttons
Anything users don't care about should not be on the front page (except for a 'Developers' link). - Dan
Oh, I don't know. Seems to me that the wiki it's a *better* landing page for newbies; it does a better job of leading them by the hand without making them scroll or click.
I disagree. People still have an expectation that a 'front page' has some sort of introductory component to it. And even users expect to need to go to a front page, I think they would almost be caught off guard to be thrown straight into a Wiki. (You almost need the motivator of 'trouble running Wine? go here!'). And I don't like the notion that users somehow get to trump all other potential uses of the web page.
If it directs users to information well, it's not aesthetics, it's usability.
The idea is to use the front page to quickly handle the most frequent questions (how to get it, where's the doc), and if that's not what they're after, to direct them to a page based on their 'role' (e.g. user or developer).
But this I do agree with. Cheers, Jeremy
On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 5:26 AM, Jeremy White <jwhite(a)winehq.org> wrote:
Oh, I don't know. Seems to me that the wiki it's a *better* landing page for newbies; it does a better job of leading them by the hand without making them scroll or click.
I disagree. People still have an expectation that a 'front page' has some sort of introductory component to it.
The wiki does have introductory content. It says, right at the top: "Wine enables Linux, Mac, BSD, and Solaris users run Windows applications without a copy of Microsoft Windows. Wine is free software under constant development. "
And even users expect to need to go to a front page, I think they would almost be caught off guard to be thrown straight into a Wiki.
I wasn't proposing replacing www.winehq.org with a wiki; the wiki front page is just a very rough draft of what the front page should be. (I'm not happy with it yet, either, but I think it's an improvement info-access-wise over our current front page.)
And I don't like the notion that users somehow get to trump all other potential uses of the web page.
It's a simple matter of reducing unusability for the greatest number of people. And besides, we work for the users, don't we? :-) - Dan
participants (3)
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Dan Kegel -
Jeremy White -
Zachary Goldberg