[Lazarus] Reconstructing Lazarus Website 2: the content

Klenongan ziphims at gmail.com
Thu Feb 4 17:15:25 CET 2010


> I don't like this design at all. Bee's design is much better.
>
...
>
> What you expect on a home-page is links, links, links and a few lines
> explaining things. Because every new-comer has a different reason to
> come to that page. Some like screenshots, and decide what this product
> is on those. They'll look at the page and search for the word
> 'screenshots'. Some others just want to download and try it. They look
> for 'download'. Some want to see a tutorial to see what it is, those
> will look for 'tutorial'...
>
> What do I think when I look at the page with the cheetah. First I think:
> Cheetah, maybe some site about animals? Then underneath I see, What is
> Lazarus. Then I think, what does Lazarus have to do with animals? And
> the text below it doesn't solve my problem.  I can read the FAQ, but
> reading an FAQ just to see what the page is about... no...
>
> Then on the right, where I would expect an advertisement or something. I
> can read what Lazarus is. 'Lazarus is an IDE blahblab pascal gpl blah
> windows, mac, linux.' Too much text, telling me nothing.

Well that's interesting, you don't know what Lazarus because you do
not want to read the text, which right next to a big picture. A text
below the name 'Lazarus' made bigger than the rest of the page, well
placed to be seen first, not only that I took it straight from the
Lazarus' "About Lazarus" dialog box. Thank you for your critics, but
I'm lost at words.

> This page is just a lot of text.

A text is rendered faster than image. Add to the fact that my ZIP file
is only 70K~, that includes everything to image should tell you
something about my preference to use bandwidth effectively.

> Further, search is not where you would expect it (on the top). The news
> section is only boring text.
>
 ...
>
> Oh, and there is recent news. (Not important what the news is,
> offcourse)
>

Bee has recent news and I have 'Latest news'. I might be wrong, but I
get the feeling you slated them both, is there any problem with you
reading text? I know it sounds provocative, and I sounds like
attacking you personally (which I am not) but really, what is it with
you and a little bit reading?

> Then the text below 'downloads'... It's happy/small talk. It does not
> add anything usefull. I know what a download is. And the developers
> area... same. There's one difference though. In this case it's important
> to know if it's about developers of Lazarus/fpc, or developers in
> general. Well, this is not told in the happy-talk text below it.

A placeholder mind you, I don't know what `technically-correct` to
describe "a Lazarus download" `concept` and yes I admit the
"Developers" can be interpreted into two things, my fault. I digress
the overused 'Lorem Ipsum Dolor Sit Amet ..' text. Of course, if the
actual web-admin would like to change it, then be it.

> Now imagine someone looking at the 'bee'-page. He'll think:
>
> This website is about lazarus, a cross platform software studio. Then:
> Lazarus is an IDE, FreePascal a pascal compiler. They are really
> cross-platform. (Without reading the text at all) There are releases and
> I can download it or look at the features.

It would be much easier for me to learn if you post, at least, a
mock-up. Not necessarily in HTML but a picture like bee's would be
good. All you saying is something that should be good, but the details
like placements, colors, overall design aren't there. Without reading
the text would mean more icons, visual cue, which is the luxury we
don't have because I assume there is no budget to order customized
icons from a professional artist; other than that then we're stuck
with the overused Tango icons.

I failed to imagine what exactly that you want, please elaborate.

> That's because people do not read text on websites. And this website has
> a lot of text exlplaining .... things. Booorrriiinnnggg.. No-one reads
> that.

You are creating YOUR description of every Lazarus website visitors.
I read texts, I read books, novels (and whatever spurs my curiosity),
given I have a certain threshold but I'll read text if it is not too
long. I would also say that every Lazarus visitors are just like me,
they read texts if they are not too long, but that is MY description
of Lazarus website visitors not the factual description because nobody
can tell anybody about that without research.

> We'll maybe I should have a look ehm... tutorials.
> (screenshots/overview/FAQ...)

As for proposals, of course it would be better to leave Tutorials to
Wiki, much suited for the purpose. As for screenshot page, hmm.. I
might add that one, thank you.

> And completely below I can read some jumbo-jumbo about css, ie6.. not
> informative at all.

to --^ and Hans-Peter Diettrich's :

> I hate "Best viewed" footers, they only indicate that the developer *knows* about possible (platform specific) problems, but does > *not care* about such visitors.

For "Best viewed with .. " comment, it is not fair to expect the
designer to come up with a design that will be rendered exactly on
every web browsers out there, not to mention the lack of information
of the web browsers (and its version) used by visitors of a website.
If you given the task to design a website the best bet is to adhere to
standards closely, that's why I put the "Best viewed with .." part. It
function as a disclaimer that the designer uses standards, and if your
web-browser doesn't support standard you should expect lesser
`experience` --whatever that is.

@ Graeme
>The big cheetah image makes me feel like I'm on a wildlife website and not
>a software tools website.

>PS:
>I had a good laugh at the year range in the copyright notice. Very
>optimistic that Lazarus will still be around. If it is, I wonder if Lazarus
>would have reached v1.0 by 2024? I guess not. :-)

Its a concept, any non-copyrighted replacement image would be fine.
Given a nice image and imagemagick commandline you can replace it in 1
minute.

Again, the texts are placeholder, that includes the footer too. I'm
too tired to laugh when designing that. :D

@ waldo kitty
> no preview there... both are the same image and look like a lottery thing calling out "upload and earn cash" :?

Strange, I can see the images just fine. Maybe something wrong with
your proxy, or network settings? The xs.to is one of my bookmarked
image host, I choose it because i can call it out of my head, being
just 'xs.to'. No.. I'm not trying to profit from the link.




The one I'm working so far, with better Downloads page:
http://rapidshare.de/files/49103284/lazweb.zip.html

I'll work on the "Screenshot Page" concept, but it is a little bit
sketchy because I don't know what is the best structure. Do you guys
want it to be structured by revisions, version, widgetset, or OS?




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