Re: Feedback request: website home page revision

[Joram]

Hi,

all versions have the green background fading in on the top right edge.
I do not like that. In general there are too many different green
colors. I am not a designer but some more consistency would be helpful.

I appreciate your work very much and in my opinion the website improved
a lot by your contributions. Here are my comments on the proposals:

> 3B. (previously shared)
> - summary text is larger
> - removed “What is LilyPond?” bar and squiggle image 
> - news items are in separate boxes
> http://clairnote.org /lilypond-web-demo3/index3B.html

The boxes and the fact that some items are removed is good. As I said, I
like a white background more than the green color flow.

> 3C. (previously shared)
> - like 3B but with pondings on the bottom and stable/unstable on top
> http://clairnote.org /lilypond-web-demo3/index3C.html

Links on top is better, pondings below. -> Best version.

> 3D. (new)
> - simpler and more cohesive side bar (stable/unstable/pondings)
> - news items extend full width
> - summary text is justified rather than left aligned
> http://clairnote.org /lilypond-web-demo3/index3D.html

The simpler side bar is better, but the sidebar text too small. The
lines of the main text are wide enough already. I prefer 3C. Left
aligned is also better.

> 3E. (new) 
> - like 3D but without the left border (the vertical green line) on the side 
> bar 
> http://clairnote.org /lilypond-web-demo3/index3E.html

Not having this left border is an advantage, because it looks like a
mistake in all other layouts. However, I still prefer the extra right
column instead of wide text.

So I like 3C most. But as described, a combination of the advantages of
the four versions would be best, imho.

---

In general, I think, there are so many beautiful, modern, elegant and
responsive layouts on the web, that it would be best to find such a
layout or create it from scratch instead of infinitesimal changes to the
current design. To present a high qualitiy tool like LilyPond something
very elegant would be good – with notes (photography) like
http://blog.steinberg.net/2014/03/development-diary-part-six/
and probably instruments on the title page to attract musicians more
than nerds. Just to show what I mean:
http://klavierhaus-labianca.de/index.php/werkstatt
http://eu.steinway.com
There is nothing wrong with programming-interested people and LilyPond
profited a lot from many skilled ones, I just think “beauty”, “music”,
“elegance”, “artistic”, “perfection”, “tradition” should be mentioned
more prominently on the title page than technical things like
“stable/unstable”, “release”, “manual”, “bugs”, “crashes”.

Some more notes on the content (which is off-topic here, I know):
There should me more interesting content on the main page. All the
release announcements with their nearly identical wording get boring
very soon. In addition the list of contributors appears twice (for 2.16
and 2.18). This could be better done in some release log page decoupled
from the front page.

What I usually look for on such pages is: features, screenshots,
download, license.

What I would suggest:
- images of high quality scores (mainly showing the beauty of
traditional style typesetting but also some exotic ones) or only 1 or 2,
linking to http://lilypond.org/examples.html
- an (incomplete) list of interesting and new features
- notes on the latest release (but only this one)
- Keep the Best Edition award and the LilyPond Blog

Or (after one example image), three columns with:
features, examples, download.

Cheers,
Joram