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Re: [Chicken-users] Homepage design proposal


From: Mario Domenech Goulart
Subject: Re: [Chicken-users] Homepage design proposal
Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 22:14:52 +0000
User-agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3 (gnu/linux)

Hi Tim,

On Fri, 23 Jan 2015 16:24:18 +0900 Tim van der Linden <address@hidden> wrote:

> In the recent light of visual changes to the wiki, I have picked up an
> old(er) idea to have my go at a redesign of the homepage (landing
> page, front page, the-first-page, etc...).
>
> I, for one, find our CHICKEN site charming. Yet many new folks see the
> homepage more as the scrolling end credits to CHICKEN The Movie then
> an actual eye-catching, easy to pick-up page. Too much text, no
> pleasing, eye stroking candy.
>
> Do not understanding me wrong, I do not wish to push a Candy Crush,
> plastic, all bells & whistles design, yet I hope most of you agree
> that something needs to be done to attract new users (rather then to
> scare them away) and to try to get to information faster.
>
> The first thing I did on this journey was to take a peek at our fellow
> language pages, and see what they do to reel them in. A quick glance
> at other languages (like Python, Racket (!), Ruby, Erlang, ...) show
> the following common features:
>
> - See common, easy-to-understand code samples depicting typical language 
> features
> - Clear changelog timeline
> - Visual weight (visual importance, not one blob of text)
> - Big Download/Get Started now call-to-action
>
> Things less commonly see, but just plain beautiful:
>
> - The ability to run code in an interactive shell
> - A map of CHICKEN across the world
> - A list of real-life CHICKEN projects
> - An awesome photo of chickens
>
> For the design I thought it would be smart to give it a minimalistic
> approach...CHICKEN is a tiny language after all, and we want to tout
> it's simplicity, right?
>
> Before putting in to much design work, I thought I would throw it out early 
> in the process.
> So I have gone ahead and create a (very rough) design for the homepage
> only, using flat elements and hopefully a better approach then
> currently is the case.
> Mind that this is only a mock-up (nothing works!) and not all
> information is accurate. But it should give you a fairly good idea of
> the direction I wish to take...
>
> Also...if there are any *real* designers in the house...any help is welcomed 
> ;)
>
> Find it here: http://shisaa.jp/chicken/
>
> All input is greatly appreciated and I hope this will spark a few ideas here 
> and there...

Many thanks for your efforts to improve the CHICKEN landing page
situation.  Our sites (specially the wiki!) really need to be improved.
I think we need something to start, and you've provided a very nice
start point.

I should note that I actually like the information provided by the
current landing page, although, admittedly, the features section does
sound a bit Schemer-oriented (is it bad?). :-) I don't like the
center-aligned text, though.

Some comments on your proposal:

On "WHY CHICKEN?":

* I'd remove "An excellent maintenance environment; bugs can be
  corrected live, without restarting a single process.".  That's pretty
  much dependent on how applications are designed.

* "Programmers are capable of only so many correct statements per unit
  time. Scheme provides a vehicle to generate more correct statements in
  any given time period. Fewer bugs = Faster code." is more about Scheme
  than CHICKEN.  I'd move this one to the bottom.

* Generally speaking, I'd highlight in that list the following aspects,
  that I think are the big advantages of CHICKEN (and what I'd look for
  as a developer):

  - Focus on practical applications.

  - Simple, lightweight on dependencies and easy to install: you just
    need a C toolchain and GNU Make to build and install it on the
    supported platforms.

  - Active and supportive community of developers and users.

  - Portable.

  - Many extensions.

  - Good documentation.

  - Good cross-compilation support. <- this one maybe is not that
    important for most users, but since CHICKEN is a compiler and
    cross-compilation is hairy, maybe it's worth mentioning.

* I'd be cautious with "Works with third-party libraries written in C,
  C++, Java, Python, and Lua. Support for major databases."  C and C++
  are ok.  Although we have eggs to interact with Java, Python and Lua,
  those applications are not largely explored, as far as I can tell.

* "Supports Windows, BSD, Linux, MacOS X, and embedded platforms."  You
  mention a list of operating systems then "embedded platforms", which
  seem to be more related to hardware.  Since no hardware is mentioned
  on that item, I'd suggest either mentioning some hardware platforms or
  dropping "embedded platforms".

On "ALL FEATURES":

* I'd change the title to "MAIN FEATURES"

* s/Modulair/Modularity/

* I'd add a "Simple" section and kinda repeat the "Simple and
  lightweight on dependencies" thing.

* Somehow mention the scrutinizer and the benefits it offers.  Maybe too
  technical for a landing page?

* Add a section about the documentation and mention the API browser
  (api.call-cc.org).

* Not sure if it is a good idea or not, but most items have a
  corresponding chapter/section in the manual.  Maybe add a "read more"
  link pointing to the corresponding chapter/section in the manual?

On "LATEST CHANGES"

* Is this important on a landing page?  Maybe this can be removed?

On the top menu:

* Not sure where those links should point to.  Maybe somewhere in the
  wiki?  Do you have something in mind about this?

* The top paragraph about CHICKEN

I was told by "someone from the Internet" that "MacOS X" should be cited
as "OS X".  Yeah, I know the current page still mentions "MacOS X".

General:

* I'm not good at colors, but I suppose you tried to use the logo colors
  for backgrounds, right?  The color combinations look a bit strange to
  me.  Maybe we could just pick colors other than the logo ones and see
  if the logo still fits.  If we pick some light colors for the logo
  area, we could make its background transparent.  I'm just handwaving
  here.

* I don't think an online repl is feasible, if we consider it must be
  both safe and useful.  Besides that, it wouldn't depict CHICKEN as a
  compiler.  I'd just remove the repl.

Sorry if I sound too picky.  That's not my intention, really.  And those
are only suggestions, and not guaranteed to be good. :-)

Again, thanks for working on improving our pages.  Really appreciated.

BTW: is the background image a picuture of Alaric's chickens? :-)

Best wishes.
Mario
-- 
http://parenteses.org/mario



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