[Mono-list] New web site up

[David Waite]

On Jun 10, 2004, at 4:25 PM, Ben Maurer wrote:

> On Thu, 2004-06-10 at 16:59, Erik Dasque wrote:
>> As some of you may know, we're moving to a new site (the old one will
>> be phased out eventually) and to new content and design. We'd love
>> feedback on it before we push it out officially :
>
> First, I love this. It looks *GREAT*. Even if none of these comments 
> are
> acted upon, it will still be great.

I agree!
>
> Now, for comments:

I agree! ;-)

I'll add a few additional comments, take them with as many grains of 
salt as you like.

The navigation is not confusing, but is a bit overwelming. There are 
the main sections at the top, the navigation bar on the left, and also 
buttons at the the top right. None of these are 'authorative' - the 
download button for example goes to the 'about mono' tab look, but is 
not navigatable via the about bar on the left.

Also, the submenus on some items are hidden, which makes it confusing 
to find the 'licensing and patents' section for instance, without 
knowing it appears under the 'faq' section. The look of submenu items 
was not sufficient for me to realize (at first) that I was actually 
looking at a menu with embedded items. Also, clicking on the 'faq' link 
(without page content changing to show I was on a new link) was 
confusing to me, although I have used the internet for long enough to 
quickly figure it out.

Some links in the navigation system and buttons at the top send you to 
an external site; there is no visual indicator that this will happen.

The 'about' navigation bar could be flattened if:

The FAQ was moved to 'using mono', with the general section refactored 
into some sort of 'relationships' page (with novell, gnome, ecma, and 
microsoft)

Resources were moved to 'using mono', leaving 'The Mono Team' and 
'Contact Us'. Actually, 'resources' is not the best categorization, 
since the whole site is a meta-resource for four types of people.

Ok, I'll stop now, before I suggest changing it to four main categories 
(targeting each of 'person discovering more about mono', 'user of mono 
for end-user applications', 'developer using mono', and 'mono 
contributors')

-David Waite

>
> - The orange developers section looks way too bright. Todd commented on
> IRC that the using section green had once been bright but was changed. 
> I
> think a similar change for the orange would be good.
>
> - On the home page, the XML button does not match the blue color theme.
>
> - Without JavaScript, there seems to be no way to navigate the menu
> system.
>
> - On the `Contact Us' button at the top, I expected to see IRC contact
> information, and a link for bugzilla. Also, a link to the mailing list
> page would be nice.
>
> - http://www.mono-project.com/about/mailing-lists.html:
>   - mono-list is missing
>   - Could we cut down on the size of the mono-devel-list description. 
> It
> makes lots of stuff go below the fold
>
> - http://www.mono-project.com/downloads/index.html
>       * We should have an `older releases' page that has everything
>         before, say, beta 1.
>       * It might make sense to group like:
>                 Source
>                 	...
>                 Red Hat
>                 	Red Hat Linux 9
>                 	Fedora Core 1
>                 SUSE
>                 	...
>                 Windows
>                 	...
>                 Mac OS
>                 	...
>                 I think that would create less visual clutter.
>       * Does Fedora have its own logo? Should we use it rather than Red
>         Hat's.
>       * Does anyone need a (tm)?
>
> - The team page does not look as professional as everything else. Could
> we have a redesign of that to match the rest. Also, on this page the
> `tab' thingy at the top has a large gap below it.
>
> - In the menu system, there needs to be a sort of `you are here'
> indicator. For example, the current page could be in bold, and would 
> not
> be a hyperlink, or it could be a different color etc.
>
> - http://www.mono-project.com/using/emacs.html is a dead link
>
> - Where did the whitepaper miguel and I wrote about performance go?
>
> - http://www.mono-project.com/using/mcs.html is out of place in the
> `using' section. It contains almost nothing about using mcs. IMHO, the
> first few paragraphs of text should stay, and we should insert links to
> reference articles.
>
> - In the menu system, you are inconsistantly using Title Caps and
> Sentence caps. For example:
>       * Mono and Gtk# tutorials
>       * The Mono Runtime
>       * CVS Write access (this one has BOTH methods!)
>
> Just pick one and stay with it.
>
> - http://www.mono-project.com/contributing/compiling.html does not have
> `make bootstrap' documented
>
> - http://www.mono-project.com/about/applications.html should be 
> updated.
> For example, MonoDevelop is not on there. Also, obsolete programs (eg,
> the debugger, which is now inside MD) should be removed. It would be
> nice if the screenshots were all taken using Ximian's industrial theme.
>
> - I saw some instances of GTK#. It is Gtk#.
>
> Ok, I think that's all for now!
>
> -- Ben
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Mono-list maillist  -  Mono-list@lists.ximian.com
> http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/mono-list