[Webteam] Frontpage revised

[Brad Fuller]

I bet everyone is just busy (too bad "webteam" doesn't pay!). I just had 
a few minutes myself - so I hope I can keep up my involvement.
maybe if we had a written agreed goal (just a sentence or two) of what 
we want the home page to be, we'd have an easier time agreeing. 

For our purposes, I think the java site is good and represents some of 
the items that I believe are relevant:
http://java.sun.com/
I think they have a good order too.
I like the "Spotlight" section at the top. Highlighting "what's cool and 
current". I like it because I like to see what others are doing and what 
I might be able to use too.

Next is "What's New". Both of these rotate frequently to show activity.

Next is "Community". Hmm... we have something like that!

see inserted comments below.

goran at krampe.se wrote:

>Hi!
>
>I am still listening for views in the thread "Some ideas to make it..."
>and will not comment in full before at least a few more chime in with
>their thoughts. I myself is still weighing different approaches in my
>head, I don't find it as "clear cut" as Brad and Michael does. Btw, for
>some ideas on what others do:
>
>slate.tunes.org
>  
>
nicely organized. But, it's too static. No reason to go back to it. 
Doesn't show activity nor invites me to learn more about what goes on. I 
don't get a feeling of community. Mostly an information page.

>www.iolanguage.com
>  
>
good example of a static, uninteresting site. I don't know why people 
would go back to it.

>www.ruby-lang.org
>  
>
This is cluttered. It's hard to find where to start.

>www.perl.org
>  
>
nicely organized. I can see everything at a glance. I like how they 
arranged the "Current Release" in the top left. Nice to have a brief 
description of "What is Perl" in the left, too. It's a bit sterile, and 
reminds me of older search sites (like Alta Vista) - but very clean and 
seems to present all that is needed for novices to experts. If they 
worked on the right a bit, it could be a great site for what they do.

I like it.

>www.gwydiondylan.org
>  
>
Don't like the long description of "what is" up at the top. Doesn't show 
active participation.

>www.haskell.org
>  
>
although it has pseudo-section, it really isn't organized well. Just too 
much text to find what you are looking for.

>www.retroforth.org
>  
>
don't like the equal split screen. I don't know why i don't like it. 
Just a bit busy, I suppose.

>factor.sourceforge.net
>  
>
Confusing. Too much text on the left and not organized on the page 
sufficiently so you can easily read it. "Ideas" is not clear to me.
When you click on the graphic below right, it looks like it's a slide 
show. That's kinda neat. But, when you click the buttons, you quickly 
realize it's just a bigger graphic from what you selected. Confusing: 
why do that?

>As you can see the approaches are different so I am definitely less
>"decided" than Brad and Michael seem to be. Time for *you* to speak up!
>:)
>
>What I have done though is to revise the current frontpage according to
>my last ideas trying to making it shorter - you can see it on
>wwwtest.squeak.org. Don't publish this, I just wanted to show it
>  
>
I think it's still too long.
Oh, sorry, I didn't mention this before. I don't particularly think this 
is good to say:
"You may be familiar with other open source languages like Ruby or 
Python, but Squeak takes these concepts much, much further offering a 
true uniform fully reflective environment"
It makes it sound like Smalltalk came after Ruby and Python and uses 
their concepts.