Redesign of the www.rockbox.org front page

[DancemasterGlenn]

particularly to new developers unfamiliar with our work. 

Honest question... do you get a lot of those? I feel like most developers who come to Rockbox alreay have some idea of its purpose and workings. It just seems weird that a prospective developer would just stumble across this site on a lark.

[Llorean]

Where else would new developers find useful information about Rockbox?

I'd imagine the typical process is "hear about Rockbox from friend / article, visit website, learn more about it." I doubt very much the developer learns much more about it before they get here. There's not too much familiarity it's possible to have before you visit the site.

[GodEater]

And I doubt very much that said prospective developer would reach the front page, see no evidence of svn activity, and assume the project was dead and there was nothing going on.

If we have a link to this suggested "dev" pages right there on the front page, I'd imagine they'd probably follow it.

[Llorean]

There is still the point that some users have sounded off about being interested in SVN activity.

And it makes it very clear to someone even just skimming that we're still quite active, and very recently so.

An SVN log doesn't have to be obtrusive. Just the last 5 updates, toward the bottom. It's definitely more interesting to users than "Wiki changes" and the mailing list are likely to be.

[GodEater]

There is still the point that some users have sounded off about being interested in SVN activity.

And all of those users know where to find it even if it's not on the front page.

And it makes it very clear to someone even just skimming that we're still quite active, and very recently so.

Interesting that so many other OSS projects manage to do without it right there on their home page. I really don't understand what's so special about our svn activity that it has to be there as the very first thing a new visitor sees.

An SVN log doesn't have to be obtrusive. Just the last 5 updates, toward the bottom. It's definitely more interesting to users than "Wiki changes" and the mailing list are likely to be.

Yeah, I don't think they should be there either to be honest. Not in any more obtrusive a way that the dynamically hidable way macku's currently done it for subversion anyway.

[Llorean]

Yes, current users will know to look for SVN activity on some other page if we remove it now. New users on the other hand may not even be aware it exists.

What exactly is the harm in having an updating activity log visible to users?

[GodEater]

There isn't any harm in it - I just fail to see why it needs to be on the front page.

[Llorean]

At a glance it shows any new person that we're a very active project.

The other alternative is having someone manually update news often enough that we're never more than a week without at least something on the front page to show work is going on.

It may not be meaningful to the majority of users, but it *does* have a recent date and they can at least infer there's a lot of activity going on without any real technical knowledge.

[GodEater]

My fear is that now that we have a "friendly face" to Rockbox, with the Utility for doing nice easy installs, and release versions that are actually up to date - we risk scaring new users (especially non-technical ones) with what they will likely see as a constant stream of techno babble on the front page.

At least with it hidden in the drop down as it is currently in macku's design it's still available to those too lazy or in someway unable to bookmark a specific svn activity page, but it's hidden from a new user in a way which keeps this new friendly face of rockbox intact.

[Llorean]

I think if you just called the table "Development" rather than "Subversion" it's not likely to scare too many people away. Especially if it's down at the bottom.

I imagine the casual response by those who don't know what it is would be to see the word development, and pay it no further attention.

I don't really buy that extra information is "scary" even if it is development related, as long as there's not an overwhelming amount of it. Just the SVN table, presented as incidental information (maybe even dropping the touched files so that it's just a date and a comment) is, in my opinion, a good way to show people development is very active.

I think a list of recent changes has varying degrees of positive value to all users, including potential ones.

[pondlife]

I really like the dynamic-width version, very nice.

A couple of very minor points (both IMHO):
- The lifebelt icon for the manual seems odd - a book or PDF-ish icon would be better.
- Could the subversion stuff fit alongside the wiki and mailing lists? Just include the timestamp and description (adding revision and user if there's room).  That would give a consistent 3 column layout for most of the page.

pondlife

[DancemasterGlenn]

The other alternative is having someone manually update news often enough that we're never more than a week without at least something on the front page to show work is going on.

For what it's worth, I think this would be a very nice idea. It might be beneficial to people (both people not familiar with svn, and people who haven't checked back in a while and don't have time to wade through it) if more announcements were made of changes to the code. While touting bug fixes and experimental features in the daily builds might (possibly) wind up having more inexperienced people borking their players, anyone who sees something they have a problem with fixed in the announcements might be more likely to test said features out, rather than just installing the latest stable.

EDIT: This is obviously not to say that EVERY update would be announced, just anything deemed critical by the devs (assumed to be larger bug fixes, but that's up to the implementer of said idea)

It has the potential to backfire, and might not have been what you meant by keeping announcements up to date, but it's what was in my mind when you said it.

As a final note, I would say that svn is more important in being easily accessed than the wiki changes, but that's obviously as a non-developer. Even if my opinion mattered there, I don't think svn would fit where wiki changes is on the mockup, and especially not beside it... it's going to need a lot of horizontal room to display right, even if you take out everything but the description and submitter. I still like the roll-out menu very much.

[saratoga]

My fear is that now that we have a "friendly face" to Rockbox, with the Utility for doing nice easy installs, and release versions that are actually up to date - we risk scaring new users (especially non-technical ones) with what they will likely see as a constant stream of techno babble on the front page.

Is that really a problem?  Do we care if we scare away a few non-technical users?  Is there any possible consequence to intimidating whatever small percentage of people are uncomfortable around SVN web interfaces?  I am willing to argue that there is not.  I am willing to argue that such people are irrelevant.

Conversely, there is a very clear negative impact to this project if we make it any less friendly or accessible to new developers or even new technical users who are not yet developers.  The front page should be accessible to everyone, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be aimed at technical users and developers.    The web interface should help people who may not have done open source development, who have not used SVN or who are not familiar with what kind of work we do get a look at how our project is run and perhaps decide to look more carefully at it.

[froggyman]

Is that really a problem?  Do we care if we scare away a few nontechnical users?  Is there any possible consequence to intimidating whatever small percentage of people are uncomfortable around SVN web interfaces?  I am willing to argue that there is not.  

I don't think it will scare away the nontechnical users away. I have gotten a ton of my friends to use rockbox (that are definitely not good with computers) and they found it somewhat interesting seeing what kind of development is going on with rockbox. There were also a few who saw it, didn't understand it and didn't care about it/ignored it. I even know some people that know absolutely no programming but still liked to see that the rockbox's software is being updated several times a day.

I do like the idea of putting something by the subversion area saying that it is part of rockbox's development and think that would help people at least make sense of what it actually is if they do get confused about it.

[saratoga]

i dont mean to do this but what if we had a wiki page link like how ipodlinux does? i do like how it is on the front page though as thats the first thing i check when i go to rockbox.org. I dont mean to compare the two because there different programs but i do like how rockbox tells you what it is on the front page as ipl does not. maybe its not a good idea what i proposed?

I cannot parse this.