On October 31, 2002 04:26 pm, Andreas Mohr wrote:
I wouldn't be 100% against placing a Screenshot link on the main page
- it's a mere 99% only.
But with the current menu infrastructure, I'm about 150% against it. If we added a separate Screenshots menu item (which, by the way, I don't think is needed, since we do have that nice About page), then the whole page would grow overly long.
Agreed. I say, let's get some of the content in shape, and worry about the form a wee bit later. BTW, any web-design guys around, that may want to take on this task?
On Thu, 2002-10-31 at 15:30, Dimitrie O. Paun wrote:
Agreed. I say, let's get some of the content in shape, and worry about the form a wee bit later. BTW, any web-design guys around, that may want to take on this task?
Oh pick ME ME ME! :-)
Wait a minute, I'm already in charge of that. Must have been slacking off again.
Here's my idea. On the front page, add a new box above the WNN box, below the Latest Wine release box. This box would be a random screenshot pulled from the AppDB, (or a predefined list of available screenshots). I can whip up a new page/section/what have you called "Screenshots". This requires a new button for the front page. It should be linked to on the About page, and the screenshots page links back to the About page. A little cross referencing if you will.
Does this work for anyone. I can probably do this during the weekend in my "off" hours.
I don't volunteer my weekends often, so speak now.
On Thu, Oct 31, 2002 at 04:05:21PM -0600, Jeremy Newman wrote:
On Thu, 2002-10-31 at 15:30, Dimitrie O. Paun wrote:
Agreed. I say, let's get some of the content in shape, and worry about the form a wee bit later. BTW, any web-design guys around, that may want to take on this task?
Oh pick ME ME ME! :-)
Wait a minute, I'm already in charge of that. Must have been slacking off again.
Here's my idea. On the front page, add a new box above the WNN box, below the Latest Wine release box. This box would be a random screenshot pulled from the AppDB, (or a predefined list of available screenshots). I can whip up a new page/section/what have you called "Screenshots". This requires a new button for the front page. It should be linked to on the About page, and the screenshots page links back to the About page. A little cross referencing if you will.
Does this work for anyone. I can probably do this during the weekend in my "off" hours.
Two words: Earth-shattering idea ! :-)
(oh wait, there's just been an earthquake in Italy :-)
That's a very good proposal. I guess all that's left for us to do is to make sure About looks terrib^H^Hific :)
On October 31, 2002 05:05 pm, Jeremy Newman wrote:
Oh pick ME ME ME! :-)
OK mister, you're on! :)
I don't volunteer my weekends often, so speak now.
IMO we need to reorganize the front page a bit more than that. Namely: -- the big "Navigation" box is wasted space, because 1. It contains items everybody expects as a left-hand menu 2. Contains no real content -- while pretty, the layout is a non-standard, and is a wee bit too far away from the "least surprise" principle -- the news/announcements need a bit more space
So here is my suggestion: 1. Have a left-hand navigation menu, as follows: Home About Download Documentation Development Mailing Lists Screenshots
Look at http://www.gimp.org. It's not the nicest, but the home page is simple, and has a link to almost all relevant info: Download, Mailing Lists, FAQ, Docs, Screenshots, etc. You need only *one* click. In our site, you need 3-4 clicks, scrolling, etc. Vast majority of people don't have such a long attention span.
Look for example at http://mesa3d.sourceforge.net/, it's not pretty, but you can get to most stuff in *one* click.
2. The main area (in the middle) should be "Announcements" We should have there the last 2-3 announcements, and at the end a link to the archives. Each announcement gets a bold title, and a few lines of text. Here we'll have Wine releases (the few lines of text will contain the What's New stuff), WWN releases (for which we can lists the story titles), etc.
I'll stop here. What do you think?
On Thu, 31 Oct 2002, Dimitrie O. Paun wrote: [...]
IMO we need to reorganize the front page a bit more than that. Namely: -- the big "Navigation" box is wasted space, because
- It contains items everybody expects as a left-hand menu
- Contains no real content
-- while pretty, the layout is a non-standard, and is a wee bit too far away from the "least surprise" principle -- the news/announcements need a bit more space
I pretty much agree. I will also add a me too concerning screenshots: this is the first thing I look for and I'm pretty disappointed if I don't see any.
So here is my suggestion:
- Have a left-hand navigation menu, as follows:
Home About Download Documentation Development Mailing Lists Screenshots
I proposed something similar in task 608 but did not have much feedback (though it was mentioned a couple of times before). Here's my menu tree proposal:
Top Level ---------
1. About 2. News 3. Screenshots 4. Application Database 5. How to contribute 6. Download 7. Development 8. Documentation 9. Bugs 10. Forums
The goal is to make important items like the Application Database, Screenshots, or How to contribute, more visible, and to make it easier to locate where things are.
I would also modify the home page to: - display the introduction to Wine (included from the About section 1.1.) - display a (small) screenshot (worth 10.000 words). Newman's idea is pretty good for that. - the Home page can be accessed by clicking on the WineHQ icon (but I'm not opposed to adding a menu entry)
Complete menu tree ------------------
You will note that there are sometimes 3 levels of 'menus'. The third level would most likely not actually be a menu but just sections on the page and an entry in the relevent table of content (task 605). I just included them here to clearly show where each item in the web site goes.
1. About 1.1. Intro 1.2. Why Wine 1.3. Wine myths debunked 1.4. Technical details 1.5. Status (or move this to the How to contribute or Development section?) 1.6. History 1.7. Alternatives 1.8. Who's who 1.9. Wine companies 1.10. Community 1.11. Contacts 1.12. Legal
2. News 2.1. Latest Wine release 2.2. Latest WWN 2.3. WWN back issues 2.4. Press
3. Screenshots General screenshots, typically full desktops. Also point people to the Application Database.
4. Application Database
5. How to contribute 5.1. Application maintainer 5.2. Bug triage 5.3. Web site maintainance 5.4. Development 5.4.1. Wine 0.9.0 task list 5.4.2. The Tasklist (bug 395) 5.4.3. The FIXMEs (bug 455) 5.4.4. The Tasklets (bug 406) 5.4.5. The most wanted bugs (a Bugzilla query returning bugs with the most votes) 5.6. Write regression tests 5.5. Support Wine-based products
6. Download 6.1. Binary Packages 6.2. Source tar files 6.3. Source tars for CVS 6.4. LXR 6.5. CVS 6.6. CVS Web 6.7. Other CVS modules (web site)
7. Development 7.1. Mostly references to the Wine Developpers Guide which is where most of the information should be. The distinction between this and the Wine Developpers Guide is that the guide should be more about general principles and less about which specific web server to connect to (although that's more a download issue anyway). 7.2. References Pointers to online resources (Win32 documentation, X doc, etc.) useful to Wine developpers.
8. Documentation 8.1. User Guide 8.2. Howto 8.3. FAQ 8.4. Developer Guide 8.5. API Documentation 8.6. Packager Guide 8.7. How to get commercial support
9. Bugs (Bugzilla)
10. Forums 10.1. Mailing lists 10.2. Newsgroup 10.3. IRC channel
Other relevant Web Site tasks -----------------------------
* 597 - How to get the web site files * 598 - Update the Who's Who * 600 - Add a Site Map * 601 - Add drop-down menus * 605 - Add 'tables of contents' * 607 - Add screenshots * 608 - Reorganize the Web site
On October 31, 2002 07:00 pm, Francois Gouget wrote:
This is a good start. Here are my comments, based on the following principles: -- while I appreciate (as a geek) the logical nesting of topics, I think they should be organized more around usage patterns. A common topic should be accessible with one click, a obscure one, with two. -- keep things simple, for areas that are of general use (i.e. used frequently by non-developers)
- About
1.1. Intro 1.2. Why Wine 1.3. Wine myths debunked 1.4. Technical details 1.5. Status (or move this to the How to contribute or Development section?)
I think this one should be top-level. I was fascinated for a long while by http://www.gnustep.org/information/progress.html, and I kept visiting the site frequently to monitor their progress.
1.6. History 1.7. Alternatives 1.8. Who's who
BTW, this one needs updating *badly*.
1.9. Wine companies 1.10. Community 1.11. Contacts 1.12. Legal
This menu should show as "About" on top level, and when clicked, should expand to the above structure. This is because it's long, and the items here (apart from Status) don't merit front-page status.
- News
2.1. Latest Wine release 2.2. Latest WWN 2.3. WWN back issues 2.4. Press
Hopefully we can fit all this in one page, with a clever 1,2 box layout, and we can drop the submenus.
- Screenshots General screenshots, typically full desktops. Also point people to
the Application Database.
Application Database
How to contribute
5.1. Application maintainer 5.2. Bug triage 5.3. Web site maintenance 5.4. Development 5.4.1. Wine 0.9.0 task list 5.4.2. The Tasklist (bug 395) 5.4.3. The FIXMEs (bug 455) 5.4.4. The Tasklets (bug 406) 5.4.5. The most wanted bugs (a Bugzilla query returning bugs with the most votes) 5.6. Write regression tests 5.5. Support Wine-based products
This should expand as "About" on click only. The 5.4.x items are a bit too deeply buried, considering that they are high visibility. Maybe we can link to 5.4 from the Status page. Or even better, maybe we can make 5.4 a top-level item, and rename it "Todo".
- Download
6.1. Binary Packages 6.2. Source tar files 6.3. Source tars for CVS 6.4. LXR 6.5. CVS 6.6. CVS Web 6.7. Other CVS modules (web site)
Too complex. I think only 6.1, and 6.2 belong here, and not as submenus, but part of the page. The rest should be moved under 7.
- Development
7.1. Mostly references to the Wine Developers Guide which is where most of the information should be. The distinction between this and the Wine Developers Guide is that the guide should be more about general principles and less about which specific web server to connect to (although that's more a download issue anyway). 7.2. References Pointers to online resources (Win32 documentation, X doc, etc.) useful to Wine developers.
- Documentation
8.1. User Guide 8.2. Howto 8.3. FAQ 8.4. Developer Guide 8.5. API Documentation 8.6. Packager Guide 8.7. How to get commercial support
- Bugs (Bugzilla)
What about this:
8. Support 8.1 FAQ 8.2 Howto 8.3 Bugzilla 8.4 Commercial support
9. Documentation 9.1 User Guide 9.2 Developer Guide 9.3 Packager Guide 9.4 API Docs
- Forums
10.1. Mailing lists 10.2. Newsgroup 10.3. IRC channel
On Fri, 1 Nov 2002, Dimitrie O. Paun wrote:
On October 31, 2002 07:00 pm, Francois Gouget wrote:
This is a good start. Here are my comments, based on the following principles:
[...]
- About
1.1. Intro 1.2. Why Wine 1.3. Wine myths debunked 1.4. Technical details 1.5. Status (or move this to the How to contribute or Development section?)
I think this one should be top-level. I was fascinated for a long while by http://www.gnustep.org/information/progress.html, and I kept visiting the site frequently to monitor their progress.
They don't have screenshots. What the hell is wrong with them? Ah, they hid them carefully like us... Anyway, I'm not sure 'Status' should be top-level and if you look on GNUStep's site it is in fact level 2 (it's a submenu of 'Information').
[...]
1.12. Legal
This menu should show as "About" on top level, and when clicked, should expand to the above structure. This is because it's long, and the items here (apart from Status) don't merit front-page status.
My thinking is that only the top-level items would be visible on the home page and then you can click on an item to expand it and go to its first page.
Gimp (http://www.gimp.org) is a good example of that. When you arrive on the home page you don't see the sub-items of the Documentation menu, and if you go to the 'Documentation' page you don't see the sub items of 'The Gimp'.
Actually, if we want to reduce the number of top-level menus in my proposal we could make 'Screenshot' a sub item of 'About' as long as About is expanded when you go to the site's home page. Again, see how it works in the Gimp's web site:
1. The Gimp 1.1. About The Gimp 1.2. Screenshots 1.3. About this site ... 2. Documentation 3. Resources 4. Download 5. Gimp Art 6. Important links
Once we have the menu hierarchy we can decide how to display them. I see four possible ways: 1. not pre-expanded left-side menus http://www.gimp.org/ 2. pre-expanded left-side menus http://www.gnustep.org/ 3. drop-down menus http://www.ca.com/ 4. two-level horizontal menu http://www.tcl.tk/software/
I vote for 1.
- News
2.1. Latest Wine release 2.2. Latest WWN 2.3. WWN back issues 2.4. Press
Hopefully we can fit all this in one page, with a clever 1,2 box layout, and we can drop the submenus.
I don't think these can fit on one page. For instance the back issues cannot be on the same page as the current issue. So I think the most natural way to deal with this is to have sub-menus.
- Screenshots General screenshots, typically full desktops. Also point people to
the Application Database.
Application Database
How to contribute
5.1. Application maintainer 5.2. Bug triage 5.3. Web site maintenance 5.4. Development 5.4.1. Wine 0.9.0 task list 5.4.2. The Tasklist (bug 395) 5.4.3. The FIXMEs (bug 455) 5.4.4. The Tasklets (bug 406) 5.4.5. The most wanted bugs (a Bugzilla query returning bugs with the most votes) 5.6. Write regression tests 5.5. Support Wine-based products
This should expand as "About" on click only. The 5.4.x items are a bit too deeply buried, considering that they are high visibility. Maybe we can link to 5.4 from the Status page.
My thinking was that all 5.x items would be on the same page and that the 5.x menus would just point to the relevant section of that page. The 5.4.x would not actually be visible on the page and just exist as sections in the page. That's subject to that page not being too long of course but that should be ok.
Or even better, maybe we can make 5.4 a top-level item, and rename it "Todo".
No. I don't want to give it priority or separate it from the other extremely important ways to contribute to Wine.
- Download
6.1. Binary Packages 6.2. Source tar files 6.3. Source tars for CVS 6.4. LXR 6.5. CVS 6.6. CVS Web 6.7. Other CVS modules (web site)
Too complex. I think only 6.1, and 6.2 belong here, and not as submenus, but part of the page. The rest should be moved under 7.
Yeah, they can be in one or the other. The main thing to avoid is to duplicate them. The reason why I put them there is that they are about downloading or retrieving stuff while the Development page should be more about what to do once you have the source.
[...]
- Documentation
[...]
- Bugs
What about this:
- Support
8.1 FAQ 8.2 Howto 8.3 Bugzilla 8.4 Commercial support
- Documentation
9.1 User Guide 9.2 Developer Guide 9.3 Packager Guide 9.4 API Docs
Looks good. I like it.
On November 1, 2002 03:04 am, Francois Gouget wrote:
Anyway, I'm not sure 'Status' should be top-level and if you look on GNUStep's site it is in fact level 2 (it's a submenu of 'Information').
It is definitely a 'one-click' item. I get a instant surge of sympathy for projects (there are quite a few) providing this on their home page, just like the screenshot link. It means they did their homework, and they don't expect *me* to figure out their status (which is impossible, BTW).
The only way we can have it as a submenu is if the menu is automatically expanded, but I don't like that for many reasons. I really think this falls in the same category as screenshots. Give it a try, it will be within the top 5 pages hit on the site, which certainly warants top-level status.
On November 1, 2002 03:04 am, Francois Gouget wrote:
My thinking is that only the top-level items would be visible on the home page and then you can click on an item to expand it and go to its first page.
Agreed.
Actually, if we want to reduce the number of top-level menus in my proposal we could make 'Screenshot' a sub item of 'About' as long as About is expanded when you go to the site's home page.
I don't think we need to do that. I think we've reached a very nice top-level structure, no need to clutter it by automatically expanding the About menu.
Once we have the menu hierarchy we can decide how to display them. I see four possible ways:
- not pre-expanded left-side menus http://www.gimp.org/
- pre-expanded left-side menus http://www.gnustep.org/
- drop-down menus http://www.ca.com/
- two-level horizontal menu http://www.tcl.tk/software/
I vote for 1.
Me too.
- News
[...]
I don't think these can fit on one page. For instance the back issues cannot be on the same page as the current issue. So I think the most natural way to deal with this is to have sub-menus.
Not important, but we may not need submenus. Think of this: 1. Top, slim box with Stable/Development releases 2. Narrow box to the right with last 5 WNNs (like now of home page) with a link at the bottom "Arhives..." 3. A big central box with the last 3-4 news
In fact, come to think of it, we can make this the Home page. :)
My thinking was that all 5.x items would be on the same page and that the 5.x menus would just point to the relevant section of that page. The 5.4.x would not actually be visible on the page and just exist as sections in the page. That's subject to that page not being too long of course but that should be ok.
OK, as long as we don't have a third menu level. Top-level, and sub-menu is plenty.
Or even better, maybe we can make 5.4 a top-level item, and rename it "Todo".
No. I don't want to give it priority or separate it from the other extremely important ways to contribute to Wine.
Fine. As long as we provide a link from Status... :)
- Download
[...]
Yeah, they can be in one or the other. The main thing to avoid is to duplicate them. The reason why I put them there is that they are about downloading or retrieving stuff while the Development page should be more about what to do once you have the source.
But the question is why download. It's clear that the vast majority targets developers, let's not confuse regular users with those options. And no, we don't need to duplicate them, that for sure. We need a simple download page (with links to tarball, .rpms, .debs) for users. The CVS access, LXR, what have you belong in the development section IMO.
On October 31, 2002 05:05 pm, Jeremy Newman wrote:
Oh pick ME ME ME! :-)
OK mister, you're on! :) IMO we need to reorganize the front page a bit more than that.
That's a little more than a weekend of work.
Here's what I will do. I will start a new design, I will put it up at: http://lostwages.winehq.org. A very rough draft of the home page alone with new nav should be online late (very very late) sunday night, pending real life (TM) does not get in the way.
I'll probably even start a new branch in the winehq_com cvs tree for this.
On October 31, 2002 11:47 pm, Jeremy Newman wrote:
Here's what I will do. I will start a new design, I will put it up at: http://lostwages.winehq.org. A very rough draft of the home page alone with new nav should be online late (very very late) sunday night, pending real life (TM) does not get in the way.
Excellent. This is what we need, a little bit of experimentation is needed here. BTW, how can I contribute to the WineHQ CVS? Can I get access to it?
On Thu, 31 Oct 2002, Dimitrie O. Paun wrote:
On October 31, 2002 11:47 pm, Jeremy Newman wrote:
Here's what I will do. I will start a new design, I will put it up at: http://lostwages.winehq.org. A very rough draft of the home page alone with new nav should be online late (very very late) sunday night, pending real life (TM) does not get in the way.
Excellent. This is what we need, a little bit of experimentation is needed here.
Yep, it can only help :-)
BTW, how can I contribute to the WineHQ CVS? Can I get access to it?
See http://www.winehq.com/development/
Check out Winehq_com.
Actually you can also get the same info there: http://www.winehq.com/download/
Argh! Duplication, bad, bad, bad (597).
On Thu, Oct 31, 2002 at 11:18:56PM -0800, Francois Gouget wrote:
On Thu, 31 Oct 2002, Dimitrie O. Paun wrote:
BTW, how can I contribute to the WineHQ CVS? Can I get access to it?
See http://www.winehq.com/development/
Check out Winehq_com.
Actually you can also get the same info there: http://www.winehq.com/download/
Argh! Duplication, bad, bad, bad (597).
IMHO, the CVS docu should *all* be moved into Wine Users Guide (basic CVS download only ! with pointer to Devel Guide) and Wine Developers Guide (generating patches, applying diffs, ...), and then have only *links* on WineHQ point to the static links in the HTML versions of these documents.
I've been planning to do this for quite a while, but, ya know, time and stuff... ;-)
There wasn't much to be said about Winehq_com here, but I just wanted to point out that CVS docu in general is very suboptimal.
Am Fre, 2002-11-01 um 00.09 schrieb Dimitrie O. Paun:
-- the big "Navigation" box is wasted space, because
- It contains items everybody expects as a left-hand menu
- Contains no real content
-- while pretty, the layout is a non-standard, and is a wee bit too far away from the "least surprise" principle -- the news/announcements need a bit more space
I disagree. Although there may be room to improvement, I see no point in making winehq conform to that "standard". There are already way too many web sites looking all the same. Winehq has a top navigation bar, and that's perfectly fine to my taste.
You need only *one* click. In our site, you need 3-4 clicks, scrolling, etc. Vast majority of people don't have such a long attention span.
Sorry, people who consider 4 mouseclicks too many will not have the patience to setup wine, not even after your 0.8 release.
Martin
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Andreas Mohr -
Dimitrie O. Paun -
Francois Gouget -
Jeremy Newman -
Martin Wilck