www.squeak.org finally updated

Daniel Vainsencher danielv at techunix.technion.ac.il
Mon Jul 4 14:00:03 UTC 2005


I agree with this - the problem of out of date information is huge. Dead 
links look really bad, to any audience. The current squeak.org site is 
very slanted towards Squeakland type work. I think this was quite 
reasonable at a time when that was the main active project in Squeak, 
but things have changed.

Obviously, different projects will have their own sites, and its worth 
discussing how to provide enough visibility to them from the main page. 
abcde.squeak.org might also be a good idea. Another thing - I think its 
worth considering moving all the abcde.sqf.org to abcde.squeak.org, or 
else to *have* a squeak foundation. And how about moving minnow to at 
least seem to be at squeak.org?

We have a serious problem of fragmentation, even within things that more 
or less revolve around squeak-dev.

Another thing - I noticed that the existing squeak.org, and what I am 
hearing proposed for the new site, presents Squeak mainly through the 
cool things being done with it.

When I look at python.org, I see that they completely focus on Python 
itself and its developers, not mentioning its coolest applications. I 
don't think this is really appropriate for squeak, because I do feel the 
squeak community shares more than a language - we share at least the 
feeling that Squeak, as a language, base of code, and environment, allow 
us to do really cool things.

What we do with squeak is certainly part of the heart of the matter. But 
I think we also should present all the strengths of Squeak for a 
developer - Mature refactoring and testing tools, advanced code 
management (this is becoming a hot topic now, due to the linux kernel no 
longer working with the proprietary BitKeeper), .changes file (yeah, 
laugh, some people working in funny environments still can't see 
previous versions of methods), ways to interoperate with other 
environments (XML, OSProcess, .net bridge, FFI, plugins, wxSqueak), 
cutting edge frameworks like Seaside, Croquet and its free documentation.

Maybe each of those should have its own project, but if we care for 
developers to be able to get in a glance all the good reasons for them 
to join, that content needs to be in the new squeak.org, front and center.

netstyle should be able to link at seaside.st first, but they should 
also have a link for "and what is that built on", and the other side of 
that link can, and should, be impressive.

Daniel
PS - I can't see (or contribute to) squeak.org:7777 due to a stupid 
firewall issue. Any chance to alias it through some http port?

Avi Bryant wrote:
> On Jul 4, 2005, at 2:40 PM, Andreas Raab wrote:
> 
>> In a way I am but only because you made a major point of a company  
>> not linking to or mentioning Squeak.org because of a) the general  
>> look of the site and b) the content on the site. While a) might be  
>> fixable for most of the audience b) certainly isn't.
> 
> 
> Andreas,
> 
> I agree with you in general, but I don't think that (b) isn't fixable  - 
> or at least, I would claim that it currently needs fixing.  Look at  the 
> very first sentence on the current squeak.org: "With the Squeak  
> programming system, we have made some delightful and powerful  
> educational applets. "  For someone coming to Squeak looking to use  it 
> for business, that will be the first sentence and quite possibly  the 
> last they read - not because there's anything wrong with  educational 
> applets (there's everything right with them, in fact),  but because that 
> person will assume that this tool is not aimed at  them and go elsewhere.
> 
> I think it's just an accident of presentation, but that paragraph  about 
> Squeakland ends up being the defining description on the  squeak.org 
> home page because of its placement.  It doesn't surprise  me at all that 
> netstyle didn't want to link to that.  Move it or  downplay it or remove 
> it, and you'll remove about half the  reservations I would have about 
> linking to squeak.org.
> 
> For the other half:
> 
>>> Because may be squeak.org is dead anyway.
>>>
>>
>> Only once we start ignoring the contents for the looks of the site.
> 
> 
> The contents have been ignored, apparently, for about 5 years: the  
> "Where is Squeak Headed" section claims to be "coming soon" and  offers 
> "Entering 2000" as the latest material.  Anyone would think  that Squeak 
> has been stagnant or abandoned since the days of  superbowl ads for 
> online petfood... we need to fix this if we're  going to have any 
> credibility.
> 
>> By deciding what we choose to present on the website we will  attract 
>> a certain audience. Choosing a purely business oriented  presentation 
>> will certainly attract the business kind of guy and  (almost) 
>> certainly alienate the media/fun/education kind of  visitor. And quite 
>> possibly vice versa and that's the essence of  the question: Should we 
>> go broad, and risk that some companies  don't link to/mention 
>> Squeak.org because they feel it's too risky  or should we go narrow, 
>> catering to some particular subgroup (which  doesn't have to be 
>> business) instead? You seemed to make a point of  that the website 
>> should be done in a way that some companies link  to it - I just 
>> called this into question since I think the website  of the Squeak.org 
>> community needs to be broader than that.
>>
>> OTOH, a project (such as Seaside) might provide their own  
>> presentation and I think it's perfectly fine for a particular  entity 
>> (company or otherwise) to link to that project instead of  Squeak. 
>> This is commonplace in many other communities and  environments and I 
>> don't see why Squeak.org would have to subsume  all of these 
>> individual projects.
>>
>> The bottom line here is that I think we shouldn't be scared of some  
>> company/project saying "I'll rather link to Seaside/wxSqueak  instead 
>> of Squeak.org because it has a more business-oriented look  and feel" 
>> I think that's *good* since it allows Squeak.org to  remain relatively 
>> broadly focused.
> 
> 
> Yes, I agree.  The apache.org site is a good example here: there's  
> almost nothing on the top-level site, and everyone always links to  one 
> of the (many) project sites.  One thing that makes this feel a  little 
> more cohesive is that they are all something.apache.org.  I  don't know 
> if that's a can of worms we want to open, but in theory I  can see 
> having a very simple, general www.squeak.org with  tweak.squeak.org, 
> wx.squeak.org, and so on below it serving  individual communities.
> 
> At any rate, I see no problem with netstyle & co linking to  seaside.st 
> instead of to squeak.org.  We could, for example, put  download links to 
> Squeak VMs on that site too (there's already an  image download) so that 
> someone that was only interested in using  Seaside could get everything 
> they need from there.  But if we go that  route, one thing we do need is 
> prominent links from squeak.org to all  of the various sub-community 
> sites, so that if someone stumbles upon  squeak.org through some other 
> means they can find their way to the  right place.
> 
> Avi
> 
> PS - in this general vein, I think it's really unfortunate how common  
> it is for people mentioning Smalltalk to link to smalltalk.org, which  
> is more of a personal site than a community one; and conversely, that  
> there's no particular Smalltalk site that *is* worthwhile to link  to.  
> www.whysmalltalk.com is the best I know of; do others have  better 
> suggestions?
> 



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