[ocaml-infra] Redesigning OCaml.org

[Amir Chaudhry]

On 6 Aug 2013, at 11:46, Christophe TROESTLER <Christophe.Troestler at umons.ac.be> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Thanks for the work Philippe !
> 
> On Tue, 6 Aug 2013 09:53:22 +0100, Anil Madhavapeddy wrote:
>> 
>> Feedback on the design would be most useful, as we can do a few iterations with the company that did the HTML/CSS/logo work and make sure we're all happy with the final result.  Personally, I love the new front page.
> 
> Maybe one can discuss first the front page.  Here are a few questions.
> 
> - Where should all the links of the current page go?  On sub-pages or may some of them (which ones) appear below "Learn",...?  If we move them to separate pages, what text must be put on the side of the four boxes?

It might be helpful to play with the interactive wireframe demo (link below) to see how content is laid out.  In order to make the site easier to navigate, there'll be additional 'landing pages', which is where the new headings will point to.  The links (and content) will be put on those pages.  The text on the side of the images will be descriptive.  See http://git-scm.com for an example.

In general, the aim of the front page is to be a lot cleaner and make it easier for people to figure out what content they're after and demonstrate that the OCaml community is an active one.

demo: https://ocaml.mybalsamiq.com/projects/public-demo/naked/0_home?key=b897ea86d8a8199c6e46b3295ddf630dfa33e5e1

Also, video walkthroughs at: http://amirchaudhry.com/wireframe-demos-for-ocamlorg/


> - Do we want the top menu stay as it is or offer drop-downs?  The latter reduces the number of clicks but one may prefer to always land on the dedicated pages.

I'm against drop-down lists.  They're really really difficult to navigate from mobile devices.

> - Is the current distinction between more permanent news (managed by hand) and RSS feeds enough?  Also, one would certainly like to add "Preliminary program is available" under "OCaml 2013".

This is something that I'd consider to be a new 'news' story and would be a bookmarked story (replacing the previous one).  Anything more than that starts to feel complicated with not much gain.  Do you feel differently?

> - Do we want a "Read more" button under "OCaml is an industrial..."?  Or rather a "What is OCaml?" under "Learn"?

This is probably a good idea but I'm extremely wary of adding too many links on the front page.  The more links there are, the less likely I feel anyone is to click them.  Having said that, a 'read more', or something like it, does make sense for the intro paragraph.

> - In the "Packages" table, do we really want an "author" column?  The "Package" column is already not wide enough.  One could also think about putting in a tooltip the single line describing the package.  Finally, I do not think OPAM has a "Category" field ATM.

I'm perfectly happy to drop the Author column in the package list, and probably Category too (I can't remember when/why I added that - I was probably thinking of tags, which we do want).  I'm expecting this table to be fairly easy to iterate on so I'm not too concerned about it at the moment (just as long as it exists)

ac