Re: New LilyPond website

[ul]

Am 2017-02-09 13:43, schrieb John Roper:

> I changed the header size to be smaller. As for the overall design, 
> again, the front page of the website is supposed to make the user want 
> to take a look at it. A design such as this does that while a page full 
> of serif text and two images does not.

That's correct, and I think these are actually details that don't
necessarily have to be discussed to the end right now.

> 
> As for the separation of templates and content, that is the way any 
> other site generator works. Also, there has to be HTML in any generator 
> because no markup language like markup could do  any kind of advanced 
> layout like that.

I think you misunderstand Werner here (while he might have made his
point slightly more explicit). The issue is not that the templates
contain HTML, the issue is that they contain *content*. But I think it
would be trivial to make also the mentioned pages behave regularly, i.e.
have the content retrieved through variables.


> 
> No one expects the website to look like the output of a LilyPond 
> document. LilyPond does not make websites. Users expect the website to 
> show them (in a nice-looking way) what LilyPond can do from examples. 
> There is so much text. The standard human does not want to read that 
> much text. They want to see examples. On the current website, all the 
> images are hidden away under Introduction/Examples.

You're mixing two issues here, and with one (the one I brought up) I
think you're not right. The website doesn't have to look like a LilyPond
document. But it has to make a suitable frame for LilyPond documents.
It's one of the basics of typography to try finding a suitable text font
that doesn't only look good but transports the content adequately. You
wouldn't use Helvetica for a website selling cashmere pullovers, and you
wouldn't use Caslon to promote an electronics discount store. And while
I think the font you use right now looks beautiful and makes for a good
website it's just not ideal for a website *about LilyPond*.

The other point is the ratio of images and text.
I think you have a valid point here, but I also think it will be a
challenge to find a solution that everybody can live with. It's most
probably not an option to discard substantial amounts of content, so
this seems to require a new sitemap with significantly more individual
pages (given that we can't use JavaScript to show/hide content dynamically).
>From experience I can only recommend to approach this issue slowly,
discussing steps individually. Websites are a topic where everybody can
have an opinion about, and even a strong one, and if the community is
faced with a suggestion that changes 10 things at once they will
probably have much stronger objections than if the changes are done
incrementally.

In any case we will have to consider "remapping" the content when
copying it over to a(ny) new website structure.

> 
>>>> Indeed, sigh.  This is one of the reasons I don't like working with
>>>> HTML.  Hopefully Blended can be improved to completely hide such
>>>> issues for Joe User.
> 
> Yet the current LilyPond website is not responsive and does not work 
> with mobile (or some desktops).

Good point.

> 
>> Yep.  I was tagging the whole HTML generation chain as `Blended'
>> (*not* `Blender', BTW), which is a simplification.
> 
> It is Blended

Yeah, that was my initial typo ...

Urs