Re: to make newbie more comfortable and easier to glance: suggestion on change frontpage of gap

[Zhang Weiwu]

Riccardo Mottola wrote:
> I understand what you want to change and appreciate your effort, but it is
> confusing to me. I prefer without the descriptions. Furthermore, imagine
> when new applications will be added! A real mess! In the future maybe some
> kind of categorization will be needed.
>   
You are right that it could be messy with a lot of applications. It is 
not my intention to put all applications with description on the front 
page. However general website design suggest links without description 
will not be clicked at all. When I visit GAP the first time I wasn't 
aware there are so many good things on it because it's not conformable 
to click through where half are not interesting to me.

It is like some websites put a photo of all team member without 
explanation, in the end, only visitors who happen to know the team 
member in person would click that photo. But the team could be unaware 
of that because they know who is one the photo.
> If you want a page that acts more of a guide with short descriptions, a page
> were a whole "GAP based"  environment setup is descripbed is more
> appropriate, so the user can read, pick what he needs and go in to deeper
> details.
>   
I guess visitors want to see such a page. Putting too many links on a 
front page has the side effect that if people are not interested in one 
of the links they walkaway thinking there are nothing further 
interesting to them, which is exactly what happened to me 2 years ago. 
It took me 2 years to come back to gnustep project again and check in 
detail what's going on, which happened last week.
> I also disagree with hiding non-released projects, they are maybe not
> dormant, just unreleased. For example the Browser Vespucci had quite some
> talk, so it should be correctly represented on the front page.
>   
Agreed. I'd rather say instead of hiding non-released projects, projects 
doesn't have a page should either have a page (even if very brief, in 
one sentence what the project does and contact person) or gets hidden. 
Otherwise they look like deadlinks. Deadlinks gives visitor impression 
that no management is going on and people are not serious about it, 
which is exactly how I felt 2 years ago. In last 2 years I learned to 
not to consider opensource project like commercial projects: in 
opensource projects better poke in and ask a lot of questions to see 
what's going on. But there are people like me nowadays.
> Actually, some of our projects miss a page and some screenshot, I'll work on
> that.
>   

You will do everybody a great help by putting pages on the not-released 
projects. Thanks!