Hi

On Jul 3, 2005, at 1:57 PM, Andreas Raab wrote:
>
>>> PS. And I find your claim about companies not mentioning Squeak   
>>> "because of the website" very, very strange. If that were true  
>>> I'm  not sure that those companies do understand very much about  
>>> Squeak  and its strengths.
>>>
>> Sure tell that I'm lying if this is what you want to imply. You  
>> can  say to netStyle people that they are idiot too.
>> But this is what they are living daily. May be adrian will reply  
>> on  this one?
>>
>
> This would indeed be very interesting.

It's true, we do not show the Squeak website (and if they do not ask,  
we just say that we use a free open-source Smalltalk) to potential  
customers for one simple reason: it can give them a very simple  
reason to shoot us... Let's imagine a bank evaluates our proposal and  
others for some business critical application. If one guy there does  
not like us because of whatever reason, he has an easy way to  
argument against us since the website is the only thing a manager  
will see about Squeak. If it does not look professional then this  
definitely will raise questions.

I think, the new website looks much better compared to the old one.  
 From the business point of view, I'd even vote for a new logo.  
Anyway, I know that there are other groups of users and there are  
other guys that love the mouse etc. so I don't even think about  
proposing it. I don't want to start arguing why the old web page is  
bad (apart from the general look). But, just as an example: the  
tutorials part of the documentation page (http://www.squeak.org/ 
documentation/) has 5 dead out of 11 links; or, "Squeak and the  
Internet" mentions that we have "a very basic telnet  
client" (wow!!!), but there is not one word about Seaside!

Andreas, you say that maybe we do not understand the strengths of  
Squeak if we do not mention it because of the website. I don't think  
that's why, but what is rather the case is that we fear that the  
*customer* does not understand it which seams to be likely (how  
should he from looking at that website? Do you really think, he  
believes that Squeak is capable of managing his bank if he looks at  
http://www.squeak.org/features/ ?).

I think that the same argument also holds in respect to potential new  
developers. From the website one has the impression that Squeak is  
dead and I guess that there are quite some people that do stop there.  
Again, you can say, well, they do not understand its strengths. Yes,  
but how should they if they do not get into it when they stop because  
of the website?

It's just not enough to be good and cool today - one also has to sell  
it. At least, if one of our goal is to attract new people to Squeak  
(is that a goal?). As a side mark, a more modern look of Squeak would  
be good as well. Not for me (I'm really used to it now) but for new  
users.

So, an appealing website which is up to date and provides relevant  
and interesting contents does not only serve for selling some  
contracts but also, and that's important as well, to attract new  
users, which, I think, has been neglected so far.

Adrian


___________________
Adrian Lienhard
www.adrian-lienhard.ch
www.netstyle.ch