Re: WebSite: navigation to bug reporting

[address@hidden]

Hi Riccardo and others,

Some initial remarks first: I appreciate the effort you’re making to get us a better website. But I think before we lose ourselves in details of the menu structure, we should think about which audience we want to carter.

Is it developers? Is it users? Is it both? Is it something to be discussed?

And I think there are examples again from which to learn. Take for instance our „competitors“ GTK/GNOME or QT/KDE. Both consist out of a Framework/API and a desktop environment.

Let’s look at GTK/GNOME first (also because QT is a commercial venue which in turn has some other interests too) 

Clearly, their framework GTK carters to developers: have a look at https://www.gtk.org/ : their site is concise and clearly structured, they have a claim „Create apps that users just love“. Their website consists out of a „head“-section in black (claim, one sentence introduction, „Learn GTK“-Button and Downloads with versions). Then more detail sections follow: „Work with the language of your choice“, „Apps built with GTK“, „A feature-rich development tool“ and so on, you get the idea.

Then there is their user website: https://www.gnome.org/ which is also clear and concise but for a completely different audience. Compare both and you’ll see. 

The same can be said about https://kde.org/ (which forwarded me to a localized version: https://kde.org/de/ (nice, but not necessary))

Am 20.02.2024 um 21:51 schrieb Riccardo Mottola <riccardo.mottola@libero.it>:

Hi,

H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:

Indeed. Placing a prominent "Bug" button in front will carry the message that the Software is "buggy"... So it may have an unintended negative effect.

But "Help"/"Support" is much better, IMHO.

You have a point and I agree. I made a new proposal, I pushed it to the first page only for now, as a test (we don't have unfortunately a test website where to test a branch). So check http://home.gnustep.org

I had a look and it looks improved compared to the current version at https://gnustep.github.io/ But I would refrain from renaming the menus „For Users“ and „For Developers“ to „Experience“ and just „Developers“.

„Experience“ is such a mushy word, it can mean everything and nothing at the same time, but definitely nothing I would click on. Also, if we want to carter to both users ands developers a the same time, I wouldn’t „hide“ this fact in such small menus which are easily overlooked but make it way more prominent.

Never forget, we are „insiders“ who know GNUstep like the back of our hand. Others (our audience) don’t. What is clear to us, needs explanation for them.

I found we had some similar content in different places, I rationalized it to one place and created a new menu "Support" which has a link to the Mailing List and to Bug reporting.
Thus now "External" Is really just a menu to various resources.

While I understand what you want to express with „External“ I think it is totally unclear what it means in this context. External what? Maybe use „External Resources“. Also, I think it is completely irrelevant to the user whether those stuff listed there is external to the website, it is not „external“ to the project.

I think it is not a big evil to have 4 menus, we have decent screens and it encourages browsing items (and thus encourages discovery, not needing to put everything in the text).

„encouraging discovery“ doesn’t work if you ask me, our website shouldn’t be an adventure game. Instead this mostly leads to visitors leaving the page.

What do you think?

We could also think of moving the items in "External" with some forcing to the rest of menus.
* GitHub project: under developers
* Wiki : e.g. to support or experience
* Related Sites: under Experience
* Donations: under support (it is support... for us)


Awaiting your comments before propagating the change.

I hope you consider my critique not as harsh or unfriendly. I am trying to find the weaknesses in our current approach towards a good solution for GNUstep as a whole.

If you don’t like this, please let me know!

Riccardo

best regards,

Lars