[Chicken-users] Homepage design proposal - part 2

[Tim van der Linden]

Hi All

Forgive me for skipping out of the running Homepage design proposal thread with 
top posting a new message. I simply want to distill the great comments I got so 
far (thanks everyone!) on the first rough draft of the homepage, so we can keep 
all the information together.

Let me run over the major points.

Design
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1. Images of real life chickens

The image I used on the homepage is a random image of chickens (not from 
Alaric) but carries a creative commons license which allows free commercial 
use. The only thing we need to do is to add some sort of credit to the 
photographer on the site.

Yet, Alaric, if you are listening and able to shoot some pics of your chicks...?

Yaroslav pointed out that the picture is currently a bit attention demanding, 
so I will see to tone it down a bit. Maybe a different (brighter?) picture 
might seek less attention.

2. Still much text

As some have correctly pointed out, there is still a load of text (amount did 
not change that much over the original), yet I intentionally did not touch the 
actual content. I am in no (technical knowledgeable) position to edit the text.

I am fully aware that the text, especially the bullet points and feature 
listings, is much too long. They are not "punchy" enough, not (dare I say it) 
commercial enough. A powerful bullet I like (short, to the point) is: "Very 
supportive community, with a wide intellectual background.". I think this 
should be an example for the other points.

So I reach out to you guys to help reshape these texts into a more to-the-point 
and accurate form. Mario already provided some good alternative texts.

3. Colors

Almost everyone pointed out that some texts are not very readable with the 
current color scheme. I agree (sorry for that ;) ). Also, Mario, yes I tried to 
incorporate the colors of the logo into the site, simply because I like both 
the logo and its colors. It just feels right. It's playful and yet professional.

I feel a bit uncomfortable with picking a different color scheme as I think 
this would fight the logo very quickly. On the other hand...my main focus is 
not design...so I could just be talking gibberish here. 

Or...do you also mean we could change the actual colors of the logo, Mario?

If there are any color-aware folks in the room to comment on this....please do!

Features
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1. Interactive shell

As I understand it this would be not as feasible as I first thought, and, in 
hindsight, for good reason (Thanks for pointing out why everyone). So, let us 
assume we do not get an interactive shell...yet I do find it important that we 
show some code examples right on the front page.

Maybe three or four (or more!) samples depicting typical features of CHICKEN. 
These samples could be easily "flipped" through with a few navigation buttons, 
they would carry a clear title per sample and a few comments inline of what 
this code is about. Programmers love to see beautiful code...right?

2. Map of CHICKEN around the world

Hmmm...Peter made a good remark about privacy...and apparently this has been 
attempted before and has already seen its exit. No map then.

3. Latest changes

Mario was not very favorable about the "Latest changes" section on the 
homepage...yet this is something I see with a lot of languages and end-user 
tools. To me, it shows that there is progress going on. If I see no version 
numbers/release dates I tend to get suspicious. If there is a clear timeline 
that shows that the project is alive, however, it boosts my confidence in 
giving it a try. Or does that sound too naive?

4. Eggs list

Peter mentioned a link to the eggs list...actually I did not think about that 
at all, but it is indeed very important to show some major eggs right on the 
front page. Eggs are what can make the language more interesting to more higher 
level users and to show that a lot of tooling is already available. CHICKEN is 
not only a compiler for/dialect of Scheme, but an impressive tool belt as well.

General
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1. Structure

Matt wrote a very insightful reply towards how we should approach this beast. 
First, Matt, don't feel hopelessly outclassed...I wrote but two eggs which I 
consider to be the basics of the basics. I shamefully haven't touched CHICKEN 
and wasn't present in the community for the whole 2014...

Next, the reference to the Open Dylan is very nice. They have the exact 
features I was looking for. Yet their design is, regretfully, a simple 
Bootstrap theme.

Finally, I also agree that only reforming the homepage, only to fall back to 
the current design for the remainder of the site, only adds insult to injury. I 
too think it is therefor important to try and get a picture of how the site is 
currently structured (sitemap?) and see how we can (and if we need to) 
restructure the information to be better accessible and digestible.

Moving the Download button more in sight and presenting more apparent top links 
to relevant parts of the site was my feeble attempt at restructuring. Yet, 
again, I agree this has to be done in a more structural way. Any ideas anyone?

2. Gathering it all

Do you all think the mailing list is the perfect spot to discuss and progress 
with a possible new site overhaul? As many different topics may need to be 
discussed, ideas presented and alterations made...it may be difficult to keep 
everything organized with mail. Ideas?

Cheers,
Tim