Re: Octave web update

[Daniel J Sebald]

On 02/26/2015 08:50 AM, Carnë Draug wrote:
> On 26 February 2015 at 08:32, Richard Crozier<address@hidden>  wrote:
> > On 21/02/15 15:11, Carnë Draug wrote:
> > > On 21 February 2015 at 13:45, Ben Abbott<address@hidden>  wrote:
> > > > > On Feb 20, 2015, at 22:27, Mike Miller<address@hidden>  wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > On Fri, Feb 20, 2015 at 12:57:25 -0500, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:
> > > > > > The web site is actually a CVS repo:
> >
> > > But even in a desktop, I don't really think the new design is better
> > > than the current one. What problem exactly is the new design trying
> > > to solve?
> >
> > Marketing? Not a problem if you don't care if anyone uses Octave I suppose.
> >
> > The new website makes it look like the project is well supported, including
> > by a wider community than just the core developers working on the code. This
> > gives confidence to new users in the viability and continuation of the
> > project, for which the website is the first point of contact with the
> > project.
> >
> > It is an unfortunate fact of the world that if you care about people using
> > your software you have to make pretty pictures and stuff to advertise it. It
> > gives the 'feel' of a project that's not just going to disappear to new
> > users, particularly enterprise, if this is a market you are interested in.
> > Unfortunately it's just not enough for the product itself to be great.
> >
> > The newer website looks amazing and was clearly produced by someone who
> > knows how to make a great (and professional) looking site. I for one think
> > use should be made of the fantastic effort, rather than throw it in the bin
> > and discourage anyone else with the relevant skills bothering to help in the
> > future?
>
> I guess you missunderstood my question.  My question was not why do we need
> a fancy and professional looking website.  My question was what on the
> current website is the problem? What design choices are we talking about?
> Because I don't really see the new one as looking better than the other.
>
> Compare the support [1, 2] and get involved pages [3, 4]?  The new one has
> a top bar instead of a side bar, much bigger fonts, and a blue top instead
> of white.  Which of these make it look more professional?  I just don't
> see it.
>
> So on my question "What problem exactly is the new design trying to solve?"
> please be more objective.  The new proposed website has a textwidth that I
> feel is too wide and makes it hard to read (I have a 23' screen with
> resolution 1920x1080).  The old one did not had this problem.  The text lines
> are also fixed and do not adjust with the window size (like wikipedia does
> for example).
>
> Also, the new website has this blue background with square lines, with the
> text on a white canvas.  Scrolling moves the canvas but not the background.
> Because of this scrolling then becomes weird near the top and the bottom of
> the page because you are not really scrolling the page.  It's unconfortable
> the feeling that the page itself is reshaping.
>
> I know design is a lot of personal opinion and taste but you need to be
> able to point the problems to improve.  "Make it look more professional"
> is not good, what is wrong with the current one that causes it to not look
> professional?  And does the new website addresses this problems?

I guess I'm with Carnë on this one.  The look of the proposed new 
website is fine, but it isn't drastically better than the current 
website, which I'm OK with.  That's not to discourage a new design, 
especially if that design is more maintainable because of some webpage 
layout software that makes it easy.  (I know little about how webpages 
are done these days.)  However, I think it is a bit too near V4.0 to 
move to a whole new design, especially when V4.0 itself is still taking 
shape.

For my taste, the proposed website has one or two nice elements, say the 
CAD-like blue background, but the fonts are too big and the main page is 
too minimalist.  I don't know where this trend started (maybe it ushered 
in with the iPod/handheld wave) but Fedora's webpage moved to this 
minimalist approach where all one sees is a bunch of feel-good photos. 
Where years ago it used to be screenshots, lists of software packages, 
discussions, road map, and so on, now Fedora's webpage is just a few 
sales slogans and "Download Now" buttons.  Perhaps developers went that 
direction because of how often they update version numbers these days, 
don't know.  The Gnome 3 environment falls in the same category. 
Presenting an overload of info is always a danger, but so is presenting 
too little.

That said, there could be plenty of work on the webpage for V4.0 because 
the webpage doesn't quite convey where V4.0 is headed.  Three things I'd 
like to see are

1) Actual Downloading
2) List/table of supported platforms (could be combined with download 
buttons) along with screentshots and possibly version number of the most 
stable version.
3) A description of the graphics toolkits options

Downloading:  The issue with the current "Download" page is that there 
isn't anything there that actually downloads the software.  It merely 
tells one where to go look for the software.  That's fine for me, but 
probably not for a new user.  It would be nice if the link for, say, 
SuSE actually brought up the SuSE installation application with the 
correct RPM.  I'm sure it is a lot of effort to maintain a Download 
page--for example, how is installation going to be dealt with on a 
system vs. user basis?  Maybe have one button for SuSE System and one 
button for SuSE User?

List of Supported Platforms:  It seems one of the big 4.0 
accomplishments is compiling on different platforms.  There are 
different hardware platforms, and different OS platforms upon those 
hardware platforms from the discussions I've seen.  Mac OS X, Mac Lion, 
Cygwin, WinGW, wasn't there someone who compiled Octave for an App or 
something?  If someone using each of the platforms updated the download 
link and screenshots on occasion, that's adequate.  As another category, 
include some screenshots of the legacy CLI version of the software (just 
linux, and that's already present on the main page of the current 
webpage).  Why version number per platform?  Because I think there 
really is some utility to branching per platform if that branch is kept 
away from stable/development.

Graphics Toolkits:  Just as with the platforms, it would be nice to 
convey info about the options with FLTK, gnuplot and Qt packages.  Some 
screenshots on Linux would do along with a description of the benefit of 
each (e.g., the gnuplot package gives appealing graphics output).  I 
think this is very beneficial to those who don't know what the options 
are and to those who want to utilize what they have in the past.

In other words, I like a webpage to provide a little guided tour of the 
software and know what my options are before I go through the effort of 
installing or choosing a machine on which to install.

Dan