Bugzilla – Full Text Bug Listing
| Summary: | Beta Homepage Feedback | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Product: | Community | Reporter: | Nathan Gervais <nathan> | ||||||||||||||||
| Component: | Website | Assignee: | phoenix.ui <phoenix.ui-inbox> | ||||||||||||||||
| Status: | RESOLVED FIXED | QA Contact: | |||||||||||||||||
| Severity: | normal | ||||||||||||||||||
| Priority: | P3 | CC: | ansarbasha.in, david, dominik.goepel, Ed.Merks, gamesbook, gunnar, irbull, Jon_Ball, juan.lanus, nathan, public, ralph, roger.dudler, wmitsuda | ||||||||||||||||
| Version: | unspecified | ||||||||||||||||||
| Target Milestone: | --- | ||||||||||||||||||
| Hardware: | PC | ||||||||||||||||||
| OS: | Windows XP | ||||||||||||||||||
| URL: | http://www.eclipse.org/home/index2.php | ||||||||||||||||||
| Whiteboard: | |||||||||||||||||||
| Attachments: |
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Description
Nathan Gervais
Page looks great! Eye Candy :-) But someone needs to fix those links for the Eclipse Plugin Central sites. All broken! :-( (In reply to comment #1) > Page looks great! Eye Candy :-) > > But someone needs to fix those links for the Eclipse Plugin Central sites. > All broken! :-( > Can you be more specific they all work for me. At 1280 x 1024 the main page looks a little cluttered. It looks better at a 1680x1050 resolution. Nice, good overwiew and most used stuff (download) in a dominant position :) The items at "Eclipse Plugin Central" shall at least give some 2-3 keywords about what a plugin is usefult for, so one gets an idea what plugin to explore. Some give hints in their name, others don't (eg CubicTest => for 3d GUI, Maths,...? Astyle => just a theme, or for CSS, or is it for source reformatting?). Give some more hints on the download page http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ as it's confusing for people not using it often. What is the SDK? All eclipse projects in one? For editing Eclipse itself? Eclipse Distros Downloads Page http://www.eclipse.org/callisto/downloads.php uses the term "Callisto" - tell in a few keywords what it is. At "Language IDE", 1) write full name of JDT (as all other language IDEs contain the language name as well), 2) maybe include the WDT and 3) provide a Link to http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/index_project.php (or the like) so projects not listed can be found easily. Keep on the restructuring, it's helping! :-) Although the page tells a lot more about eclispe now to newcomers, it 'looks' bad. I mean the design itself doesnt too good. Do you have to stick to the bluish purple? Some more colors would make it a lot more lively. first of all: congratulations for the overall layout, it scales nicely even on 1600x1200 and the iconified links give the page a nicer look. I'd like to suggest that you reduce the ammount of Information on the Front-Page though. It feels too crowded for me, and like i said, i'm on 1600x1200, i wonder how it looks on 1024*768. some change suggestions that would make it look cleaner in my opinion: Reduce the height of the purple area behind the download button by 50% and put the text right to the button, not above. Make the 'new to eclipse' Link a prominent Button, just like the download button. Increase the size of spotlight links (and their box) to make them stand out more Remove the epic feedbox, instead add another iconified link to it. Make Announcements and Communitynews feedboxes one box with different icons for announcements each type. (As an alternative, keep them side by side, like epic and community are now) Move the linkboxes from right to left and make their Headers textlinks, not only those [+] boxes. Keep up the good work! regards, Dominik The RCP category ( http://www.eclipse.org/home/categories/rcp.php ) badly needs: * reference to platform.rcp newsgroup * reference to platform newsgroup * maybe reference to platform.swt newsgroup ( since both of these newsgroups are under the Platform project, the .rcp one should probably also be present wherever the .platform group is -- like Enterprise developement ) * probably also "Platform" in "Relevant Eclipse Projects" (I don't see how this is more relevant to enterprise developement than RCP) * probably also link to "http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/Rich_Client_Platform" wrt comment 7, that link doesn't even do anything for me... All of the categories give me blank pages. Aside from that, this is making me generally happy (after 5 min of clicking around) In random order. - the little + links for say going to the commuity page are cool but the section title should also be a link - The "Eclipse in the news" section on the Community page (http://www.eclipse.org/community/) should have an RSS feed link (it does on the main page). Actually, perhaps that whole page should just have one feed for things that change in the community. - Hmm, strangely the new home page is now gone... Having the [+] with the link to the page is decidedly non-standard. The title itself should be clickable, not the plus symbol. (It wasn't great on the last one, either.) Also, you're going to need to harass the download projects to ensure that you can download without going through HTML redirects and annoying pages. Bug 134634 made the technique possible, but bug 138783 is the one that needs fixing on the actual download pages themselves. To be honest, there seems like there's a lot of information condensed into the main page. I'd question the benefit of having so much in one place; it's not like the main page should contain a link to everything. Overall, I think the new homepage is a nice improvement. A few impressions: * I agree with comment #5 that it's visually not very appealing, but it's not horrible either (I don't have a problem with the color scheme). * I get blank pages on all category links... * The horizontal navbar isn't very well thought out, IMHO: - There is no need for a "Commiters" link in such a prominent space. - OTOH, it actually links to a "development resources" page that looks useful (maybe the name for the link should be altered to "contribute" or something similar) - "Resources" is a terrible name for what appears to be a list of tutorials. - I think that the "Community" page should contain more pronounced links to the mailing lists and wiki (and it would be better if they linked directly there, without having to go through the aforementioned "development resources") - The "Projects" page would benefit from a tree graph displaying (and linking to) projects and subprojects. * One information I always look for when entering an unknown project site is the roadmap (but maybe this is a personal thing...). I would like to see a link to the summarized timeline (http://www.eclipse.org/projects/timeline/) on the homepage. * I agree with comment #9 that the + sign is nonstandard and I think it clutters the page a bit. *** Bug 117684 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. *** Cool!! Looks great. I really like the screenshot section. Newcommers will instantly see what they're getting. When clicking on any of the "..used for.." icons/links I get an empty page. Is this expected? The new page is too crowded with text and info or maybe its structure is not good to read, I have a headache when I look at it. My first impression wasn't: "let's look what is in", but it was "WTF, why is there so much text, this is not readable at all". If I would be the first time there I would be horrified. Let's say I would think is that so called Eclipse really so easy to use and friendly when it's home page has so "hard to find" look. Let's sum it up: New is messy and causes headaches. Sorry ppl for such feadback. Why yet another bug? It's difficult to track issues/comments raised in two separate bug reports. This is a dup of bug 158009. Should we start opening separate issues? I support all the comments about the business of the page. There is far too much information for the first time visitor. This makes the page looking too busy and cluttered. IMHO this cluttered look is supported through: * bold and colored links/headlines * the two colored background gradients * too less spacing * too many horizontal lines Also note that none of the category links is working. IMHO it's also not a good idea to put a page into production if it's not fully implemented (even if it's declared beta). My experience is that this is not likely to raise the acceptance bars. Provide a link to the "advanced search" page on the main page. Maybe "search:" is the link to advanced search. Nice (second this year ?;-) general redesign overall. Seems, a bit like the page is a bit "Googlefied", at least from the 2/3 to 1/3 division of content in the main section of the page? And the complete removal of the Right-hand side Navigation Bar. Especially on "lower" resolutions (like 1024x768) the recent layout tends to exceed the horizontal scope of the browser. Which the new one seems to adress. Unfortunetely in 90% of the calls the new design made IE6 (on Windows 2000) CRASH!!!? (In reply to comment #16) > Why yet another bug? It's difficult to track issues/comments raised in two > separate bug reports. This is a dup of bug 158009. Should we start opening > separate issues? > The new bug was created because the comments in the old bug no longer applied since the page is very different then when it first was released in that bug. I'm trying to avoid people getting caught up in a discussion about a revision of the alpha homepage that isnt there any more. (In reply to comment #16) > Also note that none of the category links is working. IMHO it's also not a good > idea to put a page into production if it's not fully implemented (even if it's > declared beta). My experience is that this is not likely to raise the > acceptance bars. The code for the categories links are fully implemented, a change somewhere else in the code caused these pages to not display, since we have error messages turned off on the server it displayed a blank page. This IS the reason we called this a beta page because issues do come up. It was never our intention to only release half of a site. (In reply to comment #19) > The new bug was created because the comments in the old bug no longer applied > since the page is very different then when it first was released in that bug. > I'm trying to avoid people getting caught up in a discussion about a revision > of the alpha homepage that isnt there any more. If that is the case then it would be wise to indicate that on bug 158009. Otherwise people might make wrong expectations about their comments made in bug 158009. I suggest either WONTFIX (because some of the comments aren't and probably will not be addressed in the beta version) or otherwise. I like the Firefox-ish aproach, with the big "Download Eclipse" button that stands above the rest and pointing to what's really important, the main problem with the previous was not knowing what to do to download Eclipse. The design has more eye-candy and, above all, is much clearer in showing what Eclipse is about Much too crowded for my taste. I prefer the current home page. like: - Download button (a logo version would be even nicer) - screenshots - Eclipse is used for... section dislike: - cluttered: e.g. too much space given to list of EPIC plugins - ugly old grey tabs at the top - why not use the Lazarus theme instead - need more focus on the eclipse projects themselves My opinion: 1. Button "Download Eclipse" is too big, and long empty space on right side of button doesn't look well. 2. In old design, information was concentrated on the center of the page, with additional info in top and right menus. Now as I look, I see one big mess, with no structure which would be clear from first sight. One thing which could be done I think is to introduce something on the left side of the page (as it is in old design), so that content would not start from the edge of the screen. 3. Big four images with names "Enterprise development" look eating too much space overall. That's my first impressions. Created attachment 51418 [details]
mockup of new home page in Lazarus look
I played a little with the new home page and hacked together a mockup using the Lazarus look. It's not perfect but works for bringing some other ideas into the discussion.
(In reply to comment #26) > Created an attachment (id=51418) [edit] > mockup of new home page in Lazarus look > > I played a little with the new home page and hacked together a mockup using the > Lazarus look. It's not perfect but works for bringing some other ideas into the > discussion. > Too much whitespace for my tastes. I think that Nathan's crack at it is a little too dense (opposite problem), but is the lesser all all considered evils... (In reply to comment #13) > Cool!! Looks great. I really like the screenshot section. Newcommers will > instantly see what they're getting. Great. Glad you like it. If you (or anybody else) is able to contribute some fancy screenshots from alternative platforms (like the Mac), that would be great (attach 'em to Bug #12669) (In reply to comment #27) > Too much whitespace for my tastes. I think that Nathan's crack at it is a > little too dense (opposite problem), but is the lesser all all considered > evils... I'm not sure if it's the lesser. There are a lot comments here that the page looks cluttered/crowded/busy. I think it's because the too dense arrangement of the different sections makes it hard to easily differentiate them visually. But I agree, it's hard to nail it down because personal tastes vary. A bit overwhelming at first, but quite good when you have studied for a while. Be carefull not to add any more stuff! Otherwise you will just end up looking like godaddy and like - go have a look: http://godaddy.com ;-) If the browser window is less than 7-800px wide, then it starts to look a little messy. Very fine with >1000px. Created attachment 51435 [details] another mockup: Lazarus + left-hand nav (In reply to comment #26) Great mockup Gunnar! It looks much cleaner to me. A number of comments agree that the current Beta version is too cluttered, and I think Gunnar's mockup is much nicer, but maybe now a little too sparse at least at large sizes. Attached is yet another mockup to throw into the mix. I've hacked around Gunnar's mockup in a paint prog. The main change is to add back the left-hand nav column. The exact set of links to include there would be a little different (and "Projects" shouldn't be highlighted) but I think the main page would benefit from links like this, addressing my earlier comment about making the projects more prominent, as well as making the transition to other pages smoother. How about this for a motto, whatever the final design: Every eclipse project should be no more than two clicks from the main page. There is an issue that must be tackled, and these redesigns are the opportunities for to do it. The Eclipse site has a generalised problem in that is mixes users with developers. This is an Information Architecture (or call it your way) issue. It's the lack of a clear design what makes the front page end up as a hodgepodge of as-much-stuff-as-possible. IMO (and I have clear understanding of these issues) there must me two "roadmaps", and not only one as Rafael asks for in comment #11. In the building of the site a special excercise has to be done, that is thinking with the user's hat on. You can't leave your hat on :-) Thinking from the user's point of view is termed "User Centered Design", you know about it, and is a must at this point. The Eclipse site is not any more the cave of the geeks who build it. Well, it still is, but there are many more other people who cater from the site, fortunatelly. Millions may be! Think of Maria, a 18-years-old CS girl student who is coming to the site for to download Eclipse in order to use it for her first homework assignment. In Poland, Bolivia or anywhere else. How does she sort across all those references to plugin development? With a dubitious knowledge of the English language. This is not solves by simply setting a "download now and here" iconized link. Because Maria wants not only to download tha newest and greatest but also to look for appropriate tutotials. Not about using GEF for to develop a new marvel, but on how to start a Java project. So IMO this newer start page is not suitable. As I see it, most users will be Marias and not developers. Because fortunately there are so many users, much more than developers and commiters. This calls for a suitable start page, or maybe two. See a case: ibm.com and ibm.com/developer are two clearly distinct entry points one for my aunt to find a notebook and the other for me. Should the ibm.com site show my aunt all that mainframe stuff she'd go compaq.com by sure (what? does not exist any more?). The entry point is to be clean and light, more like tha mockup in comment #26 but designed not starting from how it looks like but from what will it content be. For to illustrate the difference, think of a Java developer about to code clearly stated specs, compared to a VB developer who starts a project by dropping controls in an empty form. No offense intended, I enjoy using VB, the problem is using it (or any) before having a design. Once a sound desing has landed, then everything will go on rails, clutter will vanish and users will bwe happier. As another example, additional to that of IBM, see Mozilla. Firefox has a buzzing developers community, maybe it's the only program with more plugins than Eclipse, but when you go to their site it looks like a user's site, and the developer's corner is somehow in the back shop. Sorry for the lengthy ... (In reply to comment #32) I think Juan makes some important points on comment #32. Specially that, though cosmetic issues need to be taken into account, there are bigger problems - Eclipse's "information architecture" needs to be radically improved. I believe that the difficulties stem from the fact that Eclipse has a pretty complex architecture (beautiful, but complex) and the Eclipse Foundation also has a somewhat complicated structure. Quoting Donald Norman quoting Conway: "Organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations." Where I disagree from comment #32 is that I don't think it's necessary to start from a blank slate; iterative development can work for user interaction as well, IMHO. So, picking up the example hypothetical Maria, I'll make a few suggestions on how to improve the experience for her. First, I would rename "Download Eclipse" to "Get Eclipse" and it would lead to a more "task oriented" page. It could be a wizard or something like Rails' "Getting Started" page. The first step could be about grabbing the JDK, the second would be to download Eclipse itself, after that maybe some explanation of how to get more plugins (probably focusing more on the update manager than on directly downloading from the projects download pages), and the last step could be some links to "getting started" tutorials and screencasts. Maybe this wizard "experience" could be continued, so to speak, on the Welcome screen. I would suggest another hypothetical user, Mort, a reasonably experienced Java programmer that works with a proprietary IDE (I'm thinking of the one that ends with "Builder":) and wants to check out Eclipse. I think he would be well served by the "Eclipse is used for" links, but I'll repeat my suggestion of a link to the Roadmap somewhere. (Finally I would just like to say that I don't really know anything about information architecture or usability, please take my opinions with a grain of salt.) The new web page is way too busy. Spotlights, Announcements, Community News, Articles, Events Calendar should somehow be grouped together, as they are all variations on the same theme. I definitely like that EPIC is promoted, front and center, as it should be. I don't think this is a step in the right direction. - the use of horizontal lines seems exaggerated. My eye has trouble resting on any particular item. - can we somehow shed our fascist allegiance to purple ? Color can also be used to visually group, but color is severely underused as a grouping tool on this page. Keep the purple eclipse icon, but add some color ! - why 2 arrows on the eclipse plugin central listing ? the light grey arrow seems to be used for to mark the first line of the a feed item, but the red/green arrow marks new/updated. Can we loose the light grey one ? or collapse the two into one just as meaningful ? - would be nice for the "Download Eclipse" button to behave like a button with some kind of image swap mouseover onHover. - mouse over on the menu tabs at the top should have a stronger hover indicator. right now the text shifts from a dark grey to black... no real noticeable difference. - the [+] link to the page is non-standard, [+] is a standard expansion metaphor, not a link to a new page. Either change the image to something more "linky", or actually add a link to the title text for that section I don't mean to bruise any egos here, I can appreciate the work to get this together, but it really *looks* like this design lacked someone with design skills. Bring the search text box the the center of the screen like and address bar. It a bit obscure sitting in the top right corner Great work, the new site looks good and all information is easily accessable from the main page itself. Some of the links were not working but they seem to be working as the site is been developed. This is probably an old bug: The search by default includes the JavaDoc. Example: Search for EMF. There are a couple of links and then thousands of pages like "org.eclipse.emf.test.performance.deserialization". Please take Javadoc out of the default index and create its own category for it. I'd lke to see more use of CSS for doing the page layout; as oppposed to all the nested tables. It is doable and not that hard! (In reply to comment #39) > I'd lke to see more use of CSS for doing the page layout; as oppposed to all > the nested tables. It is doable and not that hard! I'm pretty sure the webmasters would love to accept contributions (aka patches) here. :) I stumbled across the new design today and my initial impression was good. Looking through this bug I agree with the comments about it being a bit crowded and think that the mock ups in comment #31 and comment #26 look good as alternatives. My general comment though is that whilst I think it's a good idea to ensure the website evolves, if the aim is for a consistent look and feel across the board then too much evolution can prevent this. From a project point of view it might be hard to keep up with the new changes. From a users point of view it can get frustrating and confusing if website layouts keep changing or if previously used navigation no longer works. Thanks to everyone who has posted feedback so far. This stuff is gold, so please keep it coming. (In reply to comment #39) > I'd lke to see more use of CSS for doing the page layout; as oppposed to all > the nested tables. It is doable and not that hard! If you look at our current home page, and all the other "purple" pages on our site, you won't find any nested tables for layout. To be honest, using CSS-only for layout had created unpredictable results across the diverse browser environments that view our site (MSIE probably the worst offender) -- so I don't see what benefits are yielded by using CSS-only for layout. I 'm not a fan of nested tables, but at least they work predictably for everyone, so for our homepage, IMHO, it's a wash between CSS and tables. (In reply to comment #38) > This is probably an old bug: The search by default includes the JavaDoc. > Please take Javadoc out of the default index and create its own category for > it. I think this is a good idea that would also speed up default searches. Please open a separate bug for this so we can discuss it there. Matt and Gunnar, thanks so much for investing time in creating mock-ups. We have a Phoenix call today and we'll be discussing all this feedback, and your mock-ups. D. (In reply to comment #39) > I'd lke to see more use of CSS for doing the page layout; as oppposed to all > the nested tables. It is doable and not that hard! > One of my biggest frustrations with IE/Fx and CSS is that you cannot stack divs horizontally well. Take for example the 4 icons we have. Since you can only float one item left and one item right. That means 3 items that can be placed with divs. The 4th item (an we will be adding more) would be orphaned and would cause layout problems. If you have a solution that will scale up beyond 2 floats, i'm all ears. Some other points i'd like to hit upon that have come up in this bug. Our fascist allegiance to purple - I'm the first person to say that im not the biggest fan of our purple. One thing you may not realize is that there are alot of other companies that use that purple in their branding because it forms a link to eclipse. [+] signs - I agree, the next iteration will have no [+] signs. Lazarus Skin - I like the mockups we have here for Lazarus, the pain point here is that since we launched the phoenix skin about a year ago it has taken quite some time to convert the projects to using it. There are still some projects that are using the old blue skin. By changing the homepage to Lazarus, we'd be starting all over down that path, Main page / Mylar would be the only lazarus pages, we'd have a whole slew of phoenix pages in the projects and some old holdouts on the blue skin. This will only detract from the whole look and feel for the site. Overall Design - I've seen the comments about the page not following proper "design" aspects, and i would have to both agree and disagree with Comment 32. We are trying to make a site that server 2+ very different user bases. But i do not agree that the page doesnt accomplish this. The whole purpose of the category pages were to give users an easier way to find out about the projects that are relevant to what they do. Again i will remind you that there will be more then 4 categories. Wizard Style Download - While this sounds fantastic, i see this as a HUGE amount of work and resources. Think of how many different things Eclipse is used for. A seperate track would need to be coded for each task, RCP, Java, CDT, Webtools. This is just plain overkill. All this being said. I look forward to today phoenix meeting. (In reply to comment #43) > By changing the homepage to Lazarus, we'd be > starting all over down that path, Òh come on, that doesn't count. ;) AFAIK one key benefit of the Phoenix project was to be skinnable. So all existing Phoenix pages should be able to convert just by changing one line of could and even that could be done with a search & replace tool, shouldn't it? (In reply to comment #44) > Òh come on, that doesn't count. ;) > > AFAIK one key benefit of the Phoenix project was to be skinnable. So all > existing Phoenix pages should be able to convert just by changing one line of > could and even that could be done with a search & replace tool, shouldn't it? > In theory yes this should work. There are other issues, such as font-size issues that have recently been fixed there were a big issue that would pop back up. I like the lazarus skin, its really slick, but is hasnt been tested and built for the homepage of eclipse.org at this point. It is indeed trivial to switch between themes. Lazarus is just another theme of Phoenix (Phoenix the infrastructure, not phoenix the theme). The Phoenix project website has radio buttons to switch themes - we could even give eclipse.org visitors the choice... Regarding the font issue, Lazarus is based closely on the phoenix theme, so it's easy to update the font settings - I'll open a separate bug for that. Mylar, AJDT, and now Tools are using the Lazarus theme so it's gaining popularity :) Very gut! (In reply to comment #43) > Wizard Style Download - While this sounds fantastic, i see this as a HUGE > amount of work and resources. Think of how many different things Eclipse is > used for. A seperate track would need to be coded for each task, RCP, Java, > CDT, Webtools. This is just plain overkill. I think I wasn't clear, sorry about that. I wasn't trying to propose a major change to the whole download structure on the Eclipse web site - I think it's ok as it is, reflecting the natural complexity of the Eclipse community. But I thought that there could be a sort of "façade" to make it easy for a new developer to start out with Eclipse. I made a *very* crude mockup of what I had in mind... It is a "Getting Started" page that could be linked from the home instead of the big "Download" button that sits there now. Created attachment 51591 [details]
Mockup of a proposed Getting Started page
(In reply to comment #43) > Our fascist allegiance to purple - I'm the first person to say that im not the > biggest fan of our purple. One thing you may not realize is that there are > alot of other companies that use that purple in their branding because it forms > a link to eclipse. I thought about this and it's not the purple that forms a link to Eclipse. In fact, the original home page design was blue. We inherited this purple with the Phoenix skin. Anyway, the point is that the link to Eclipse is the Eclipse logo and nothing else, not even a text color. BTW, I also don't like that purple dominance. The screenshot thumbnail in the upper right corner has wrong size dimensions, which makes it being resized by the browser. Looks ugly sometimes. Also one or more screenshot thumbnails are too dark/gray (Java Browsing Perspective e.g. has a gray title bar.) I like that it's more tidied. Very easy to spot where the main parts are. The upper area with the short introduction text and the big download button is great. However, the download button could look a bit happier. The gray makes me sad. Perhaps something like a colored download-arrow within the button like sourceforge has it? I like the colored fadeof the upper background area. I dislike the "Eclipse is used for..." area: the cliparts look unprofessional, they do not fit together (two abstract squares and the other two are not square). The hard edge at the left and at the right, where the gray-faded background and the white main background crash. To hard - haven't seen that style anywhere in Eclipse. I love the Beta-Ad in the header. Esp. the word "BETA" in the background makes it look more interesting. Layout is bad, images sucks, lacks profesionalism. Overall bad design. (In reply to comment #52) > Layout is bad, images sucks, lacks profesionalism. > Overall bad design. > While I appreciate brutally honesty feedback here, I would appreciate it even more if the author had provided any suggestions or insight as to why they dont like it. That being said i will summarize the changes we will be making for the next Release Candidate of the homepage. - [+] signs will be removed - Increase use of colors for grouping of items (EPIC, Community News, Announcements - Arrow bullets for lists have been removed - Changed EPIC New/Updated Icons to be a different shapes - Balanced some of the too many horizontal line issues by creating bounding boxes that help contain data. - Massaged some of the CSS / Tables structure to ease some of the CSS issues. At this point we will not be moving to the Lazarus skin, The risk / reward for the skin change are too high at this point. It hasnt been tested as well as the phoenix skin for the site and at this point is not something that the Phoenix project is willing to undertake. That being said, i would be ecstatic to see more projects start using this skin. The RC2 changes will go live on monday and we will be moving from a 1/4 page views to 1/2 page views will see the page. Created attachment 51610 [details]
Eclipse homepage proposal
hi guys, just created a homepage with some other ideas, maybe you can use some of the ideas. greets
(In reply to comment #54) > hi guys, just created a homepage with some other ideas, maybe you can use some > of the ideas. greets Nice work Roger. I like the clean and easy structure combined with a nice design. This looks more like it just fits together. The gradients are smoother and don't look so aggressive. The "Quick Downloads" and the "Tip of the day" side items are great. Moving "Eclipse is used for..." into a side item is also an interesting idea. Created attachment 51613 [details]
Eclipse homepage proposal - Revisited
Here with some kind of special visual improvements ;-), maybe some of these would make appeareance of eclipse more friendly...
Looks like NetBeans home page. Too many infromation. Too small text size. The ideas are good, but I think the main-page is too overwelming. There is too much info or you need to have accents. All seems to be as much inportant as other infos. The design a rework too. It looks like it's done by my old grandma (sorry). There is too much grey and the icons don't look professional. It needs a lot more freshness. (In reply to comment #54) I like this. I'd keep the existing top of the page, but then switch to this lighter look for below the header. However I am against having "Quick Downloads" for the Eclipse Java IDE because Eclipse is about more than just a Java IDE - a lot more. It would be like going to the Apache home page (http://www.apache.org/) and seeing "Quick Download for the HTTPD Server"; what about Struts and Spring and SpamAssassin and Harmony? (In reply to comment #59) > However I am against having "Quick Downloads" for the Eclipse Java IDE because > Eclipse is about more than just a Java IDE - a lot more. It would be like going > to the Apache home page (http://www.apache.org/) and seeing "Quick Download for > the HTTPD Server"; what about Struts and Spring and SpamAssassin and Harmony? I think there is a mistake in the mockup. The text says "Platform" which is not the IDE but the minimum download requirement (JRE doesn't count ;)) for Callisto. But the printed size are those of the SDK. I would only support Quick Downloads for the release train base, i.e. the "Platform" drop. (In reply to comment #60) "Quick Downloads" in the mockup is only a sample of downloads that could be listed there. Best would be to use the mechanism which catches the system information (currently used on downloads) and provides most downloaded projects there. would look like this: Windows - Eclipse SDK 3.2.1 - Eclipse RCP (Binary) 3.2.1 - SWT (Binary & Source) 3.2.1 > Show all projects > Show all versions (In reply to comment #56) > Created an attachment (id=51613) [edit] > Eclipse homepage proposal - Revisited > > Here with some kind of special visual improvements ;-), maybe some of these > would make appeareance of eclipse more friendly... > I do like what you've done here but there are some things that we have to place focus on that are lacking in this design We need to showcase more then just 2 categories, its important to what were trying to accomplish that we have the 4 categories currently and also room for more categories that we will be adding We cannot change the eclipse logo. So we do have to keep our current headerbar. I like what you've done with the EPIC section but having a search bar for EPIC and not for the whole website is lacking. I'll be putting RC2 of the beta page up soon, I don't want to take away from the efforts that are being put into this bug. I think alot of this goes back to the Phoenix Skin, and this maybe something that we tackle in the next 2 quarters. What were mainly trying to concentrate on is the content thats displayed on the page. First: overall - great job! The front page looks a bit too busy - too much information for the eye to gather. Can the sections be differentiated a bit more, similar to the current page where the sections have colored header bars? It won't fix the "too busy" issue, but it will help the eye to scan the page better. I *love* the "Eclipse is used for..." sections - they definitely scan much better and the information is organized in a very nice fashion: straightforward; simple. Excellent work! I'd like to see the "Useful links" et. al. boxes on the left-hand side. Those items feel more like typical web "menu" sections. The user eye typically scans from left to right and as web-users, we've been trained to look left for menus. Overall the design is pretty darn nice. Good work all! =) Roger, thanks for the mock-ups. They look great. There are some things that I really like about them: - the layout is clean and uncluttered. I think we still have too many horizontal lines on our beta - I like the "Quick downloads" section, but I'm not sure we can use it. We want folks to see the Distros/Bundles that are available from http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ , so having a one-button download would defeat that (It's also why our "Download now" button on the beta homepage doesn't lead to an instant download) - The EPIC portlet is clean and easy to read. I like the use of the plugin icon. We toyed with a Tip of the Day last year when we had the new Phoenix design, but kept it for another day. It remains a great idea, though. <--- RC2 Marker -----> I've just posted RC2 to the website and 50% of the traffic will be going to the new RC2 page. I've tweaked alot of things on this page. More Colour. Removed [+] Removed some content to get rid of clutter. Changed the EPIC sections to give more color. Removed alot of the horizontal lines and some gradients. I've put the marker at the top of my post so that all discussion below this marker should pertain to RC2. Thanks for all the feedback so far, keep it coming!. (In reply to comment #65) > <--- RC2 Marker -----> > More Colour. > Removed some content to get rid of clutter. Having every other line be a different background color adds clutter (in my opinion). Having every other box be a different background color would remove clutter. Created attachment 51740 [details]
Screen shot with misaligned section header
As you can see in the attached, the "Announcements" and "Spotlights" section don't line up. Looks very goofy.
I'm using Firefox 1.5.0.7 on Windows XP at 1024x768.
(In reply to comment #65) > <--- RC2 Marker -----> It's an improvement but I'm still missing some ideas found in attachment 51610 [details]. For example: * The download section doesn't need to span the whole page * Too much noise caused by * background colors * horizontal lines or borders * colored text (way too much IMHO) * EPIC section I have the feeling that you need those lines and backgrounds to make the reading of the page easier and to bring structure into it. Have a look at attachment 51610 [details]. It achieves this with lesser helpers. That looks alot like the CSS file hasnt been refreshed by your browser (In reply to comment #67) > Created an attachment (id=51740) [edit] > Screen shot with misaligned section header > > As you can see in the attached, the "Announcements" and "Spotlights" section > don't line up. Looks very goofy. > > I'm using Firefox 1.5.0.7 on Windows XP at 1024x768. > > (In reply to comment #68) > > I have the feeling that you need those lines and backgrounds to make the > reading of the page easier and to bring structure into it. Have a look at > attachment 51610 [details] [edit]. It achieves this with lesser helpers. > I assure you we have studied attachement 51610. There are a lot of things that i like about it but I will try to explain why we have not done some of the things you have mentioned. > * The download section doesn't need to span the whole page This doesnt work for the RC2 Because the side items are grey in the phoenix skin, it doesnt give enough weight to the the right side of the page (as the purple does in the attachement) and this causes the page to look lopsided. > * Too much noise caused by > * background colors > * horizontal lines or borders > * colored text (way too much IMHO) I'm not sure exactly how to fix these things so that every one will be happy. Background colors are used to group each area while maintaining visibility. I've drastically removed the amount of horizontal lines. and removing the borders seems to make the page feel messier. As for colored text, keep in mind that ANY link in the phoenix skin is purple, and the only other colored text ive used is orange for the version of the EPIC plugins, which I took from the attachement. > * EPIC section Im not quite sure what you mean by this comment. EPIC is still there maybe your referring to the searchbox. Which I beleive is not a good idea since I could see a lot of people trying to use it to search eclipse.org with it. On another note, I could mockup my page in Photoshop as well and it would look just as good. (You'd be surprised how much of a difference Anti-Alias'd text can make subconciously). With that in mind Roger's design is missing key content elements that we need on the homepage. Where is the community news to go?, What about Logos like Eclipse Summit Europe, Useful links, how for instance would you get to documentation, planeteclipse or the wiki without that section. Adding this content and keeping it readable is no simple matter. At this point I feel like were comparing Apples(RC2) to Oranges (Attachment 51610 [details]), when we should be comparing it to other Apples(current www.eclipse.org) I've used quite a few ideas from Rogers mockup, i also appreciate efforts to make the Phoenix Skin look better, but this bug is not the place for this. That is another conversation and bug that i'm sure will be as long or longer then this bug. Helen raises a good point in comment 41 - we need a homepage that has a consistent L&F with the rest of the site. We love Roger's mock-up as much as everyone; however, to use it would be a drastic change. As Nathan pointed out, we really did try to incorporate as many changes as we could with all the parameters we're confined to; not all of them worked for us. Those that did have made it in. I appreciate all the feedback we've received so far! Our beta home page is looking better and better, and we're rapidly approaching a "release". D. (In reply to comment #7) In case someone missed this comment, I've updated bug 155235 My two cents... I love the orange "Download Eclipse" button - can it be done as CSS (or a blank image) instead of a static png so other projects can use it too, a la "Download EMF" or "Download UML2" ? I like the orange "new" / triangular "updated" icons, and the categories pages, eg., http://www.eclipse.org/home/categories/rcp.php, though I notice that the entire modeling group of projects is conspicuously absent (with the exception of a nod to EMF in the "EMF goes RCP" article here on the RCP page). Could there be a Modeling category? I'd suggest adding EMF/UML2/EMFT under the appropriate existing category, but EMF works in all four spaces, so perhaps a Modeling category makes more sense. ;-) (In reply to comment #70) > > * EPIC section > Im not quite sure what you mean by this comment. EPIC is still there maybe your > referring to the searchbox. Which I beleive is not a good idea since I could > see a lot of people trying to use it to search eclipse.org with it. I was referring to the overall appearance. I thought it's so obvious but maybe it's just me that feels that way. ;) I'll try to list all the differences: a) The sections contains a small descriptive text (one line) below the headline b) The section headlines don't need the horizontal lines c) The plug-in icon is used instead of of abstract triangles and squares d) The entry format is <bold>plug-in name</bold> - <orange>version</orange> x days ago e) The rows doesn't have the iterative color background for odd/even rows f) There is a "Browse Plug-ins" link g) The quick-search box I would consider c+e and maybe d+f as improvements that should be integrated into the Eclipse home page. > At this point I feel like were comparing Apples(RC2) to Oranges (Attachment > 51610 [edit]), when we should be comparing it to other > Apples(current www.eclipse.org) The problem is that we only ever get one apple to comment on. Maybe you should publish the apples you throw away and not just present us the one you pick? It's quite common in web design iterations to have 3-5 variations to compare with. > I've used quite a few ideas from Rogers mockup, i also appreciate efforts to > make the Phoenix Skin look better, but this bug is not the place for this. > That is another conversation and bug that i'm sure will be as long or longer > then this bug. So when we agree that the Phoenix skin has certain design issues why do we continue to push something forward that makes it worse by exposing all of the issues in one page? Isn't it better to step back and try to understand and work on the root problem so that my product (i.e. the home page) will be much more successful from the beginning? Nathan, don't get me wrong. I agree with all the content requirements you set for the home page. I also like the progress you made with RC2. But I just don't think that is good to call a third public iteration "second release candidate". This makes it sound so final. You might have seen many iterations when moving from one release to another. However, we were only presented with one final snapshot to comment on. For example, spanning the download section over the full page. It's ok if you have a good argument against it. But it never came up in the development cycle. Maybe it would have been better to publish such a clashing version to let the people see that it doesn't work. Now it looks cool, looks like i have to take my words back :) . Can you make the images in non-png format, because in my/others browser its renderes half only (I user firefox browser). Thanks Thanks for all the feedback so far. Together we're building the best homepage eclipse.org has ever had! (In reply to comment #74) > I would consider c+e and maybe d+f as improvements that should be integrated > into the Eclipse home page. I disagree. Nothing in that list is a show-stopper. We may use some ideas at a later date, in incremental improvements, but nothing on that list is a "must". I do agree that we need to publish more of the iterations we create internally so that you can see what works and what doesn't. Then again, what doesn't work for us may work for you, and vice-versa. It's all very subjective - in comment 73 Nick likes the triangle icons for the plugins, but you prefer the plugin icon. Both solutions are good. I also agree that the Phoenix skin does have its quirks, but as Nathan pointed out, that's a discussion for another time. (In reply to comment #73) > though I notice that the > entire modeling group of projects is conspicuously absent Nick, check out bug 155235. I believe the Modeling projects will be under Application Frameworks, but do feel free to comment on the categories over there. Your insight will help us better categorize the Modeling projects. (In reply to comment #73) > My two cents... I love the orange "Download Eclipse" button - can it be done as > CSS (or a blank image) instead of a static png so other projects can use it > too, a la "Download EMF" or "Download UML2" ? > In the spirit of openness i will be publishing all of the .psd files that i have created for the homepage when we release the final version. Feel free to hack away at the button then. (In reply to comment #75) > Now it looks cool, looks like i have to take my words back :) . > Can you make the images in non-png format, because in my/others browser its > renderes half only (I user firefox browser). > > Thanks > I've tested the site in IE and fx with the PNGs and they seem to display fine for me. Would you mind attaching a screenshot to the bug with the rendering problem? I have put up a new iteration based on some of the recent feedback that can be seen here http://www.eclipse.org/home/index3.php - Removed bounding boxes on sections - Removed iterative colors backgrounds - Added More links at the bottom of sections. This page is not in rotation on the main page. Feedback on this new iteration would be appreciated. Please reference index3 in your comments. Created attachment 51892 [details] homepage.png Re comment 70 response to attachment 51610 [details]: >> * The download section doesn't need to span the whole page >This doesnt work for the RC2 Because the side items are grey in the phoenix >skin, it doesnt give enough weight to the the right side of the page (as the >purple does in the attachement) and this causes the page to look lopsided. I don't understand the bit about grey side items and lopsided look. Here's a mockup starting with the new iteration from comment 79 and simply moving the Download button to the right of the intro text using MS Paint. (In reply to comment #80) > Created an attachment (id=51892) [edit] > homepage.png > > Re comment 70 response to attachment 51610 [details] [edit]: > >> * The download section doesn't need to span the whole page > >This doesnt work for the RC2 Because the side items are grey in the phoenix > >skin, it doesnt give enough weight to the the right side of the page (as the > >purple does in the attachement) and this causes the page to look lopsided. > > I don't understand the bit about grey side items and lopsided look. Here's a > mockup starting with the new iteration from comment 79 and simply moving the > Download button to the right of the intro text using MS Paint. > We're not talking about moving the download button itself but instead moving the right hand items (eclipse summit, articles, useful links section, up to the top of the page and giving the whole download section the same width as the tracks/ news items. (In reply to comment #79) > re: index3.php > - Removed bounding boxes on sections > - Removed iterative colors backgrounds I liked the bounding boxes before. I like the no iterative colors backgrounds now. Apparently there's no pleasing me... Quite nice look and feel. Some better introduction to the content topic as before. As a direct hit, I miss the callisto access as a direct link and priority position somewhere. You should point out some more what the meaning of callipso is and why it's a good start for getting the right configuration for a specific purpose. If you don't point this out from the main page already, the strategic intent is blurred. And I also agree with the loading of the frontpage issue that another comment had pointed out. If you show the headline news a little more condensed with a 'more..'link to get to the complete newsfeeds, you could show some more content related links that cover more of the Eclipse purpose. Internet Explorer repeatedly crashes for me when accessing the new site. I had to restart IE 5-6 times before it would load the home page. I'm using IE 6.0.2800.1106 on Windows 2000. (In reply to comment #84) > Internet Explorer repeatedly crashes for me when accessing the new site. I had > to restart IE 5-6 times before it would load the home page. I'm using IE > 6.0.2800.1106 on Windows 2000. > I have experienced this a few times myself and i beleive it is the PNGs that are causing it. I will switch those images out for GIFs in the near future. I find it frustrating that this new home page seems to present a bias that doesn't portray all the projects on an equal footing. It also doesn't seem to be in a style incompatible with all the other pages at the site. I suspect that most folks don't just use the platform all by itself, so although it's easier to get the platform all by itself it isn't easier to find anything else. Where do I find Callisto from this page to be able to download all the things that have been released together? If anything, it's even more difficult to find things once you start to look under the seemingly arbitrary categories. As Nick points out, I can't find EMF, GEF, nor the modeling project. It's as if rose coloured glasses have filtered out 1/2 of what Eclipse is all about. We would like to proceed with the changes made in http://www.eclipse.org/home/index3.php and at this point i am asking for a vote on the changes up to now in accordance with the Phoenix process. Commiters please +1 / 0 / -1 this bug. Voting will end on Thursday 19 Oct 4:00PM EST (In reply to comment #87) > http://www.eclipse.org/home/index3.php +1 +1 > Where do I find Callisto from this page to be able to download all the things > that have been released together? If anything, it's even more difficult to find > things once you start to look under the seemingly arbitrary categories. Good point, we will try to add the Callisto link to the download page. As > Nick points out, I can't find EMF, GEF, nor the modeling project. It's as if > rose coloured glasses have filtered out 1/2 of what Eclipse is all about. > Unfortunately, we have nto finished all the categories. We planned to do 7 in total but simply ran out of time. I hope we will add three more categories in the next couple of weeks. These include 1) Rich Internet Applications, 2) Application Frameworks and 3) Tool Builders. I am sure EMF would show up in Application Framework and Tool Builders. The intention of the categories is not to duplicate or replace the top level projects. That is why I don't think it makes sense to have a Modeling category. I would hope that the Modeling top-level project is providing a great web site for all things modeling related. Just like the BIRT project does for BI& Reporting. (In reply to comment #87) +1 -1 (In reply to comment #92) > -1 Ed, two things - one, you're not a Phoenix committer and two, unsupported vetoes are ignored. If you want to have a legitimate veto, you'll need to provide some justification. And three, all solutions to something like web site design are compromises. index3.php contains design elements I do not agree with and yet I am voting for it because I feel that it is the best we can get right now. This is not a cast-in-stone thing and I hope that the Phoenix team and the community continues to improve the home page and the entire site. But for now, this is it; not what I wanted, but good enough. Sorry for voting when I shouldn't have. I did explain in this bugzilla and several other bugzillas over the past few weeks the detailed reasons why I am not happy with the new home page design. The fact that it seems inconsistent with the look and feel of all the other pages (no navigation bar; different look to the tables), the fact that the categories seem arbitrary and buzzwordy, and the fact that things like GEF and even Callisto seem to be unreachable, just don't seem to me to be a step in a better direction. I can accept that others will differ in their opinion... (In reply to comment #94) > I am not happy with the new home page design. Me too. But, like I said, I think it's as good as we're going to get for now. > The fact that it seems inconsistent > with the look and feel of all the other pages ... So you would prefer that we do a major change to all the pages at the same time rather than incremental improvements? That seems counter to an agile development process? We have to start somewhere and we figured that starting with the home page was a good thing. I believe that Nathan and Denis and the rest of the Phoenix committers will work their way through the rest of the pages bit by bit. > and the fact that things like GEF and even Callisto seem to be unreachable, They are? I click on "download" and it takes me to the same old download page. The first item on that page is Callisto and then there are the "By Project" and "By Topic" items... Perhaps you mean that the four buzzwordy "Eclipse is used for..." do not include enough modeling projects? +1 (In reply to comment #94) Ed, I opened bug 161105 to make Callisto more obvious from the download page. Mike grilled me over this issue too, so it must be a valid one ;-) At first, I didn't like today's look of the beta site, but comparing it to the current non-beta site I think it is a definite improvement. I had a few issues. Some of these issues may be problems with the theme or the content and not the structure of the page. - There is no spacing between the introductory text and the screen shot--there should always be at least an en or an em. In my browser the gap at the smallest is a single pixel. With the old page the gap between the text and the Eclipse Summit graphic is 5 pixels. - I found that the introductory text on the main page is too wide at most resolutions that I use--1440x1050 on my laptop, 1600x1200 at the office, 1920x1200 at the home office. I found that after adjusting the width of the window so the width of the text didn't extend further than the "About Us" tab made it not annoying to read--minimal eye-movement. - If the window is made narrower, the tabs at the top of the page start to wrap and overlap with the introductory title. This happens on the old page as well. - The upper tables on the four pages from the "Eclipse is used for" section have too small column spacing when the heading text is wide--Homepage is too close to Newsgroups. - The header row of the lower tables on the four pages seems to be a different style than the header row of the upper tables. The lower tables are using a larger font and there is a thin left border and a thin right border on the header row that is absent from the upper tables. Grammar Issues - Numbers when part of a title should not wrap without the preceding word. Non-breaking spaces should be used, e.g., "Part 1", "Eclipse 3.2" and "WTP 1.5" should use 0xA0 instead of 0x20 for the space. - Ellipsis vs. colon. "Eclipse is used for:" is better than "Eclipse is used for ...". An ellipsis is used to indicate omitted items or text. A colon is used to introduce. (In reply to comment #94) > The fact that it seems inconsistent > with the look and feel of all the other pages (no navigation bar; different > look to the tables) FWIW, it's a common practice for a site's homepage to have a different layout than the rest of the site while keeping visual cues and identifiers intact (colors, logos, etc). We do maintain consistency across our site by preserving the top banner, nav bar and bottom footer. As a purely random example, take this site: http://www.ibm.com/us/ Notice that the home page is totally different than all the other pages, but retains the top banner, colour scheme, logo, etc. It's a marketing thing, I guess. (In reply to comment #97) Scott, you make some interesting points, but right now our home page is frozen. I will work with the members of the team to rehash all the comments in this bug report and open bugs for those issues that need to be investigated further. > - There is no spacing between the introductory text ... +1. I'll open a new bug once the home page is live. > - If the window is made narrower, the tabs at the top of the page start to wrap Bug 126675 is open for this. At this point, we don't know how to fix it without ditching CSS positioning in favor of tables. > - The upper tables on the four pages from the "Eclipse is used for" section > have too small column spacing when the heading text is wide--Homepage is too > close to Newsgroups. I personally don't think so, but can you please add this comment to bug 155235? Thanks. > - The header row of the lower tables on the four pages As per the above... > - Ellipsis vs. colon. "Eclipse is used for:" is better than "Eclipse is used > for ...". An ellipsis is used to indicate omitted items or text. A colon is > used to introduce. +1. I'll open a new bug once the home page is live. Why colors for links are the opposite of most browsers' defaults? It should be blue for unvisited, and purple for visited links, except if you really want to confuse people... In terms of grammatical correctness of ":" verses "...", as far as I understand it from Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style" page 7, it states that a colon should not separate the preposition from its object, so terminating a clause ending in for with a colon is less correct than the ellipsis, which is eliding the words "the following:". Voting is now closed. Bjorn +1 Mike +1 Ian +1 Denis +1 Looks like we've got a go. Commiting changes. Just a quick note on the new webpage: On the old one, the "Article" section listed the 3 most recent "Eclipse Corner Articles". On this site, the 3 articles listed are not even hosted on eclipse.org. Was this done on purpose? When you click on "Article" you get a different list than seen in the main page. This seems a little inconsistent. Another quick point: Eclipse is an open development platform Eclipse is an an open source community... Should the site not say "Eclipse.org is an open source community...", while Eclipse is a development platform. (And yes I realize how big this can of worms may be and I am not looking for a philosophical discussion of "What Eclipse is to You", but defining Eclipse two different ways on our main page may cause confusion). (In reply to comment #57) > Looks like NetBeans home page. ...which is a more intuitive design, I think. Honestly, the site does look better. I'll close this bug as "fixed" as the new homepage is up. Many thanks to everyone who helped us design a nice home page, and to those who have submitted ideas for futire revisions. It's not perfect for everyone, and it never will be, but it's much, much better than the previous home page, and it will only get better with time. I have opened bug 162412 to isolate comment 103. If there are any other issues with the home page, please open separate issues so we can tackle them accordingly. Denis, What do I need to do to ensure that EMF shows up in the categories that are there already today? It should certainly show up for Enterprise Development and Rich Client Platform, and perhaps also in Embedded + Device Development too, but that seems somewhat questionable... We really, really need to get the other three categories up, as described in bug 155235. You can currently add your projects to any category by using the Project Category Associations link in Committer Tools. All you need to do is provide a short descriptive text that would help our users understand why your project is associated with the category. Denis, Cool. Probably someone already explained that too me and I forgot. Thanks! Moving to Community/Website |