Cleaning up the winehq.org website
Lately I've been attempting to polish up the content on our website. The visual design looks great since the revamp a while back, however a lot of the actual words trouble me. There's a lot of stuff from the dark ages still lurking around that we don't actually want users to see. Accordingly, I've been rewriting and deleting a few things and will be sending lostwages patches in, however I'd like to discuss the changes here in case there's any objections. 1) Delete the "Link to us" section on the downloads page. No one uses this graphic and the information is just noise. 2) Remove the unmaintained porting status page: http://www.winehq.org/status/porting - I don't believe this data is useful to anyone, and if it is it should be imported into the wiki so it can actually be updated. 3) Remove the "Wine Features" page: http://www.winehq.org/wine_features - From a user's perspective, the main feature of Wine can be communicated very simply: run Windows programs. We can do this much more effectively earlier in the website, such as on the About page. More worrisome about the features page, though, is what it doesn't contain - a user seeing a (seemingly) exhaustive list and actually reading it might incorrectly conclude that his particular program or device doesn't work. The features page is also prone to be out of date. I'm also going to give the text on some of the content pages a focused rewrite. The About page and many of it's links are fairly wordy at the moment. I want to avoid losing any users who may potentially dismiss us as amateurish or too complicated based on our web site. Thanks, Scott Ritchie
On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 9:08 AM, Scott Ritchie<scott(a)open-vote.org> wrote:
Lately I've been attempting to polish up the content on our website. The visual design looks great since the revamp a while back, however a lot of the actual words trouble me. There's a lot of stuff from the dark ages still lurking around that we don't actually want users to see.
Accordingly, I've been rewriting and deleting a few things and will be sending lostwages patches in, however I'd like to discuss the changes here in case there's any objections.
1) Delete the "Link to us" section on the downloads page. No one uses this graphic and the information is just noise.
2) Remove the unmaintained porting status page: http://www.winehq.org/status/porting - I don't believe this data is useful to anyone, and if it is it should be imported into the wiki so it can actually be updated.
3) Remove the "Wine Features" page: http://www.winehq.org/wine_features - From a user's perspective, the main feature of Wine can be communicated very simply: run Windows programs. We can do this much more effectively earlier in the website, such as on the About page. More worrisome about the features page, though, is what it doesn't contain - a user seeing a (seemingly) exhaustive list and actually reading it might incorrectly conclude that his particular program or device doesn't work. The features page is also prone to be out of date.
I'm also going to give the text on some of the content pages a focused rewrite. The About page and many of it's links are fairly wordy at the moment. I want to avoid losing any users who may potentially dismiss us as amateurish or too complicated based on our web site.
Thanks, Scott Ritchie
Small suggestion from me: On the index page, change "Information" into "About". * About is a keyword used in many apps that means: "info about this program" * The icon already tells you it's information. * "Information" is very broad. Most of the site is information. Remco
Remco wrote:
Small suggestion from me:
On the index page, change "Information" into "About".
* About is a keyword used in many apps that means: "info about this program" * The icon already tells you it's information. * "Information" is very broad. Most of the site is information.
Remco
Heh, I had already sent this patch in by the time I read this. I also changed all the smaller text to use imperative verbs. So, I agree of course ;) Thanks, Scott Ritchie
On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:08:53 -0700 Scott Ritchie <scott(a)open-vote.org> wrote:
I'm also going to give the text on some of the content pages a focused rewrite. The About page and many of it's links are fairly wordy at the moment. I want to avoid losing any users who may potentially dismiss us as amateurish or too complicated based on our web site.
You should also take a look at the "Debunking Wine Myths" page, particularly Myth 6. Touting Office XP as an example of a "fairly new" application that works in Wine does not inspire confidence. -- Rosanne DiMesio <dimesio(a)earthlink.net>
Rosanne DiMesio wrote:
On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:08:53 -0700 Scott Ritchie <scott(a)open-vote.org> wrote:
I'm also going to give the text on some of the content pages a focused rewrite. The About page and many of it's links are fairly wordy at the moment. I want to avoid losing any users who may potentially dismiss us as amateurish or too complicated based on our web site.
You should also take a look at the "Debunking Wine Myths" page, particularly Myth 6. Touting Office XP as an example of a "fairly new" application that works in Wine does not inspire confidence.
This has been on my agenda for a long time. I've got about half a rewrite in progress. My first target though is the About page, since it gets more hits. I'm also trying to cleanup anything that suggests our website hasn't been updated in 5 years. That means, for instance, removing the link to the interviews that are all from 5 years ago ;) Thanks, Scott Ritchie
Rosanne DiMesio wrote:
You should also take a look at the "Debunking Wine Myths" page, particularly Myth 6. Touting Office XP as an example of a "fairly new" application that works in Wine does not inspire confidence.
Sounds like that should be moved to the wiki. Documents probably belong on the wiki, in general. - d.
David Gerard wrote:
Rosanne DiMesio wrote:
You should also take a look at the "Debunking Wine Myths" page, particularly Myth 6. Touting Office XP as an example of a "fairly new" application that works in Wine does not inspire confidence.
Sounds like that should be moved to the wiki. Documents probably belong on the wiki, in general.
I agree of course. It's already on the wiki, but we don't yet link to it from the main page. I'm going to put all the articles the About page points to on the wiki, and then set the About page to point to them. This includes writing a new one I think we need, about project organization. Thanks, Scott Ritchie
Scott Ritchie wrote:
I'm also trying to cleanup anything that suggests our website hasn't been updated in 5 years. That means, for instance, removing the link to the interviews that are all from 5 years ago ;)
I do not think we should remove/hide the links to old articles like our interviews. Part of the greatness of the web is that historical information can be preserved.
Jeremy Newman wrote:
Scott Ritchie wrote:
I'm also trying to cleanup anything that suggests our website hasn't been updated in 5 years. That means, for instance, removing the link to the interviews that are all from 5 years ago ;)
I do not think we should remove/hide the links to old articles like our interviews. Part of the greatness of the web is that historical information can be preserved.
Oh, I definitely agree we should keep the content available. But putting links to 5 year old interviews right on the front of the about page doesn't seem like the right way to do that -- it would be better some place a bit less conspicuous, like the WWN archive. Thanks, Scott Ritchie
On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 2:08 AM, Scott Ritchie<scott(a)open-vote.org> wrote:
2) Remove the unmaintained porting status page: http://www.winehq.org/status/porting - I don't believe this data is useful to anyone, and if it is it should be imported into the wiki so it can actually be updated.
Not sure if it's useful to anyone, but it's still relevant. NetBSD's build is broken in inetmib, last I checked. Cygwin build is busted in a few places as well. -- -Austin
participants (6)
-
Austin English -
David Gerard -
Jeremy Newman -
Remco -
Rosanne DiMesio -
Scott Ritchie