Hi Steven,
Steven wrote:
Also as part of this exercise, I tried to "survey the current
landscape", looking at similar projects, other open source efforts.
This led me to
developer.gnome.org <http://developer.gnome.org>
developer.apple.com <http://developer.apple.com>
developer.redhat.com <http://developer.redhat.com>
developer.ibm.com <http://developer.ibm.com>
developer.microsoft.com
develop.kde.org
gtk.org
a comment on this would be that I don't see these as similar projects,
but sites of multi-million dollar companies with very diversified
products or large project backed by big companies.
We are not such, nor we compare directly with "gtk", but somehow a mix
between gtk and gnome.
Just as an exercise I went to a couple of other projects.
https://www.msys2.org : just a "dev" section, everything is quite
techincal and textual, as expected from such a project. However there
are many first top-level directories for organization. Interesting.
http://x.cygwin.com/ : different project from the above, but somehow
cousin. Again just a crude "devel" subdirectory. Not a very nice design,
but quite structured. Screenshots.
https://xfce.org/ : no specific "developer" subdomain either. Very busy
look, I would not like something like that. Yet still easy at the
top-level: docs, wiki, archive...
https://wxwidgets.org/ : no specific developer subdomain either.
Interesting layout although i don't like the "style sheet". I consider
the project similar to ours in many aspects and even the organization is
similar.
Wiki, forums, documentation, developer section.
I don't like it looks but it has interesting points.
Taking the time to check these out gave me feed for thought.
Also, clicking around other suffer from similar issues we have. Check
for projects used list...a nd links are dead & obsolete or things like that.
A big difference is the homepage: it can be either a presentation of the
project (explanation, terms, screenshots...) or something which instead
acts more as a navigation guide with quick links to parts of the site
which may have also menu points or a longer navigation to get to it.
We have more the former style (a bit like xfce). In the past it was even
worse, with people continuing to add things, in the urge to "explain
everything at the first glance". We tried to combine both the urge "it
must be immediately write/show XXX" as "immediatley one click to YYY".
We need something more relaxed and balanced, in my opinion.
have a nice evening,
Riccardo
