Re: [Axiom-developer] Front page esthetic

[Cliff Yapp]

On Monday 31 July 2006 11:22 pm, Bill Page wrote:

> > All of them appears to me to be quite simple -- and I like that
> > simplicity.  Especially that of Maxima.  It takes very little
> > time to display -- compared to Axiom's.

Heh - glad you like it.  I was the one who came up with the initial design for 
that site, although it has been helped quite a lot since then by others.  It 
uses one file for the menu and validates (or it used to) in the w3c 
validator.  It's far less sophisticated than the Axiom website though.

> When I look at
>
> http://maxima.sourceforge.net
>
> My first reaction is: Hmmm, that doesn't look so different than the
> Axiom Wiki FrontPage... The time to display seems quite similar over
> a high speed connection and a reasonably fast system (AMD 3500+).
>
> I don't find anything that makes the Maxima page seem simpler or
> that gives me the impression that information is more readily
> accessible. What am I missing?

It might be that the Maxima website is a bit more structured generally.  I'm 
probably the wrong person to compare how clean and accessible the two sites 
are since I had a hand in the Maxima website - I can try and offer specific 
suggestions if they are of interest.

> I did not see any posting to axiom-mail. In fact I haven't seen
> any real postings to axiom-mail for some time - only spam (about
> 10 to 20 spam message per day). I wonder if this list is working
> properly? Most people seem to prefer the axiom-devel list. Maybe
> we have too many lists?

For the number of people active now, I think we do have too many.  Maybe we 
could do this - make the other email lists "dormant" until axiom-devel begins 
to be overwhelmed with traffic that isn't dev related, and then re-activate 
them as needed.  Except axiom-legal - those discussions can get very long and 
we need a place to dump them ;-).

> Can you give an example of something that is exciting and/or
> appealing about Axiom that is not found on the FrontPage?

I know the question isn't addressed to me but I might suggest a bit of a 
different arrangement for the downloading information (guess that's not 
exactly front page though.)  I'll try and work on it some tonight and come up 
with a more concrete suggestion.

Cheers,
Cliff