[Lazarus] FCL-Web and new WebDesign packages

[Lee Jenkins]

I took minimalist approach because most new visitors will be
overwhelmed by things they have to read just to download the damned
thing. There are many reason why open source projects nowadays put a
big button on their front page just so anyone who visit the page for
the first time (either by word of mouth, googling, etc) can get
straight to it and try it the `product` right away.

What I meant wasn't being verbose or not, what I mean is to straight
to the point, sure Wordpress is popular but so does Google. Since its
early days Google took the minimalist approach to display just what it
the visitor would expect from a search engine, that is a place where
they can query the damned thing to get results, not some place where
the can read the latest gossip about Jennifer Anniston or fun facts
about gardening.

The download link, the three boxes ('What is it', 'Downloads',
'Developers'), and search form are within the "focus rectangle" of the
screen, a term in GUI study about user focus and flow. I put it there
in a concise manner but followed by a link so anyone, presumably the
ones who comfortable with Lazarus, or people who want to know more,
can follow it and get more information. The thing is, dumping
everything on the front page is not, IMHO, a good thing as it, as I
said earlier, overwhelmed the visitor both regular or first timer. I
think this kind of approach is refreshing and actually works because I
cant remember when the last time I have to read so many thing just to
get what I want.

As for 'Forum Postings' I took it from Lazarus front page. Maybe it
should be renamed to 'Recent Threads' or something similar, but I
think it is a positive approach as I didn't put the entire thread but
just the original poster and the title so it wont tax much space but
at the same time encourage experienced Lazarus developers to help
and/or take a look at the forum to answer any questions they found
interesting.

On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 10:36 PM, Bee Jay <bee.ography at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Feb 3, 2010, at 8:16 PM, Klenongan wrote:
>>
>> And here's mine, with more 'elegant' touch to it. I use large fonts
>> and white overall to make a neutral appearance --as I don't know have
>> Lazarus' "color"--.
>
> Yes, it look more elegant. It's a nice design, I must say.
>
>> The page uses less text as possible on the front
>> page, inspired by Mercurial, VLC, Wordpress website so that new
>> visitors wont be overwhelmed by it.
>
> It depends on the target audience. For visitors who already know how to get
> informations from the website, my design indeed look a bit overwhelmed as I
> put almost *everything* important on the first page. But for visitors who
> come for the first time, the lack of information would make them less
> interested because they're pushed to digg around the site to get the
> information they need. I made a compromise by putting the important links on
> the footer bar so they don't scare nor bore regular visitors up front, but
> new visitors would find those informations only a scroll-down away. This is
> also good for the search engine scrawler.
>
> We can't compare FPC/Lazarus with some thing that already very popular. It's
> a different case. Wordpress doesn't need to be too verbose because virtually
> anybody on the internet know Wordpress, at least ever heard of it once in a
> while. And their community is a lot bigger than ours.
>
>> The image at the front page taken from a National Geography wallpaper
>> featuring Cheetah. I cant find any quality image featuring a Cheetah,
>> so I use that one. It might be copyright encumbered but feel free to
>> use a substitute like screenshot of Lazarus in action, uncopyrighted
>> Cheetah image, etc.
>
> I suggest we use our own images. I already asked help from someone on the
> other thread to help us on this.
>
>> The texts are obviously mockup, I just want to show the design and to
>> engage others in discussion to this design. Any feedback would be
>> appreciated.
>
> Understood. Mine as well. My 2 mockups are intended to show the *layout* and
> content *structure* of the website that I proposed. They're not yet touched
> by any art works (images, colors, fonts, etc). They're just the skeleton of
> the design. I'm not yet discussing about the *real* content of it (words,
> sentences, etc), whether in the main page or in the deeper pages.
>
> The things I want to emphasize on my proposal are uniqueness (so we're not
> accused as being plagiat anymore) and newcomers friendly (to guide them on
> their first venture with FPC/Lazarus). The main goal is FPC/Lazarus gets
> adequate popularity and respect from other developers, both who comes from
> other pascal-variant languages (delphi, etc) and other languages (java, c,
> etc).
>
> --
>
> -Bee-
>
> ...making buzzes at http://twitter.com/beezing
> ...writing stories at http://beeography.wordpress.com
>
>
> --
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