Re: [Chicken-users] Homepage design proposal - part 2

[Matt Gushee]

Hi, Tim--

On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 11:27 PM, Tim van der Linden <address@hidden> wrote:

> 1. Images of real life chickens

> 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.

I think it is a nice idea to use this kind of image, but there's
somewhat of a conflict between using a "meaningful" background and
emphasizing the content. Not to say you can't do it, just be aware of
the issue. That's why graphic design is harder than people sometimes
think ;-)

But assuming you want to stick with the chicken-photo background: what
I would do to make it work better is:

* Desaturate the image (a bit) - i.e. make it somewhat greyish
   I'm not sure what you mean by "brighter" - to me that
   word means more saturated (i.e. more colorful), which
   would make the image more distracting. I'm going to
   guess you meant lighter. That might be okay, but if it is
   too much lighter it can give the page a kind of "washed-out"
   look. That's why I'd go with desaturation.

* Blur it a bit
   If you look at great portrait photos, oftentimes
   the subject's face will be sharply in focus, while
   the background is out of focus (i.e. it is shot with
   a shallow depth of field). That's the kind of effect
   I'm thinking of.

Presumably you have access to GIMP, if not Photoshop? If so, both
these things are easy to do.

> I feel a bit uncomfortable with picking a different color scheme as I think 
> this would fight the logo very quickly.

Not necessarily. Contrast is good if you pick the right contrasting
colors. Unfortunately I am slightly red-green colorblind, so I'm not
the best person to select colors (and that's one reason I became a
"developer with design skills" rather than a "designer").

> 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.

Agreed. I think a good compromise would be a "carousel" display of
several well-chosen code samples with their results.

> 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?

Oh, you said that already. OK.

> 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.

I agree. I think it is also useful for people who have an ongoing
interest in the language but are not closely involved in its
development.

> 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.

Yes. In fact, it seems to me that Chicken has by far the best
selection of extensions (and the best system for managing them) of any
Scheme implementation. That's one reason it's the only Scheme
implementation I've seriously used. Well, Racket is comparable, and
stronger in some areas, but it is also not calling itself "Scheme" any
more.

--
Matt Gushee