Subject: Re: Web Site Redesign
From: Jared Davis (abiword@aiksaurus.com)
Date: Thu Sep 27 2001 - 14:10:50 CDT
> For example, the current front page has two links to the FAQ and Dowloads,
> it would be great if we could centralise the dowloads, perhaps using a
> shared include file or other restructuring.
The new site includes a new architecture for downloads. Each platform has
its own sort-of page with instructions and download links. These pages are
not complete pages -- they are just some content. The main page attempts to
determine the user's platform and includes the appropriate page if
successful. The user is still provided with the ability to "view all
downloads for all platforms".
I suspect that this architecture will become more refined so that individual
download links are stored in an array and injected when necessary.
> There seems to be various devloper pages, i would like for there to be one
> definative startpage for developers, preferably at abisource.com/developer/
> with developer.html, and developer.phtml, etc being redirects to same so as
> not to break old links.
I don't understand. This is what happens on the new site, no?
> If possible any internal pages that you move or remove should be replaced
> with a redirect to an appropriate page or the relevant 40X Error code.
> Google is our friend, breaking old links is really really bad (just ask
> Philip Greenspun, checkout photo.net its a really simple but well designed
> site).
Good call. I can easily write a server-side redirects with PHP to do just
this. Thanks for pointing it out :)
> It would be really cool if the 404 Not Found page was customised...
Agreed, a searchable 404 page would be nice. I tend to think we should
install htdig on the site and provide a search engine in general. Of course,
this can easily backfire as demontrated by OpenOffice's search engine (which
to this day has never returned anything but 404's to me)
> How about not mentioning the evil Empire at All
> and using this text
>
> > AbiSource is developing seamlessly cross-platform, Open Source desktop
> > applications. The first is the AbiWord word processor, currently
> > available for free on Windows, Unix, GNOME, BeOS and QNX. We invite you
> > to try it for yourself.
>
> If it sounds shockingly familiar that's because it is (direct from the
> current home page). Id like to think a lot of thought went into it the
> first time, and theres no harm in keeping it.
I disagree somewhat strongly on this point.
While everyone here certainly knows what Windows, Unix, GNOME, BeOS,
and QNX are, I don't think that your common windows-user really has
ever heard of these. Even if they have, there is not much chance that they
have used these other operating systems or that they care if the word
processor runs on them.
The terms "seamlessly cross-platform" do not ring a bell with my church's
secretary. These are developer word, not in a user's vocabulary.
However, what most people *can* identify with is Microsoft Word. It's in
(nearly) every school and business, and also in many homes.
I'll agree that we should probably mention that we have less features at
present, and I will make this change shortly. But, I think that the analogy
to a lightweight Word is useful because it says to the user immediately what
the program is.
> And of course a way to bypass the autodetection (or a good default
> fallback) but from your past work i bet you've already thought of that. i
> often download stuff for other platforms while using windows because that
> is what is available in Unversity where i have much more bandwidth than at
> home.
Yes. If your platform is detected successfully, you will still be shown a
link to "view all available downloads" at the bottom of the page, from which
you can download for any platform you like.
> Isnt that a bug? But for the sake of simple people like me id go crazy if
> abiword suddenly started using all sorts of "unusual" keybindings and
> having to figure out what happended, and i suppose vi & emacs users are
> used to editing config files...
Seems to me that the config file is appropriate here, otherwise a setting in
the preferences dialog would do well with a (advanced users only) label next
to it. In any case, f12 didn't work, so it shouldn't have been in the faq.
> Hmm im getting a messed up copy of the download page again,
> http://abiword.aiksaurus.com/download/ im using Netscape, this time on
> windows last time it was on FreeBSD.
I've worked on this a bit, please do try it again and tell me if there are
still problems with it.
Thanks a lot,
Jared
-- Love all, serve all.
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