Re: New iteration on the Emacs homepage

[Brian Burns]

Hi Nicolas,

Thanks a lot for working on this - I really like the look of the first page and the text, though the page doesn't fit well on my screen (1366x768, Firefox on Windows). If it adapted to all screen sizes so the "Learn More" button was at the bottom of the screen it would be great, but maybe that's hard to do with CSS?

One thing that might help draw people in is screenshots - they're quicker to grok than reading text - maybe the first half-screenshot could be a full one on a carousel, and the user could click through different ones emphasizing all the interesting aspects of Emacs with a brief blurb of text underneath? I like the look and size of that initial half-screenshot - it's very readable.

Spacemacs just came out with a new design which has 5 screenshots, though it automatically flips through them, and the text is too small to read - http://spacemacs.org/. But it seems like there could be several really interesting ones for Emacs, including the things you emphasized with the circles. And for the circles I still liked the version with the icons instead, but that's just my view :).

Have you thought of having a background for the main content to sit on, i.e. along the edges? Like a dark gray? It might look good, or might not...

> Emacs 24 runs on several operating systems regardless of the machine type.

Should this just say GNU Emacs, not Emacs 24?

> The main ones are: GNU, GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, OS X, MS Windows, and Solaris.

I didn't actually realize GNU existed as an OS - maybe that could link to something about it. And should it say Microsoft Windows instead of MS Windows, or just Windows? I realize in documentation there's possible confusion talking about windows, but here it would be clear.

> GNU Emacs contains code for supporting several other operating systems and machine types. For more details, see the MACHINES file, which is also distributed with GNU Emacs.

Maybe could say

Other operating systems and machine types are also supported - for more details, see the MACHINES file, which is also distributed with GNU Emacs.

- just briefer.

> Emacs 24 has a wide variety of new features, including:

Might want to reduce the spacing after this line, and increase it before the "For more information" line.

And it would be great to have a little bit about upcoming new features in Emacs 25, so readers will know what's being worked on - just a list with some bullet points.

Thanks again for working on this - if you need help in working on it I'd certainly be willing to help out - maybe you could put it on GitHub and take issues and pull requests? I could take a stab at a screenshot carousel, if that would be good to have.

Brian