Doubts and Ideas
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Hey -www! :-)
Since long time I have this draft sitting on my MUA and
as I'm always trying to improve the text and collect all the bits
it is remaining here. Originally it was a reply to one of the
mockup threads, I decided to write a new mail based on the recent
event and on the constantly quoted website on all sorts of threads.
Ok, while we are at it, please let me try to solve some
long-standing personal doubts, because I would like to help more
with our website. I'm working in the website for a few years now,
and I really have some doubts about bugs and procedures and some
ideas that I should had shared before (sorry about that).
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About a redesign
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I think that should be done, from time to time, using
proper CSS, to show people that the Web Team is alive and working.
I'm not saying to put flash or any not *very* accessible material,
I"m just saying that from time to time (2-3 years) we could
re-arrange our CSS (and maybe layout) so people could come and
say: "COOL! Debian keeps surprising me!".
I'm not saying that our website is not very good, I really
like it because the huge amount of information, number of
translations and accessibility (text browsers and our concerns with
standards -- W3C, (X)HTML, CSS). But from what I've seen in the
last months, we have been maintaining the website more then
developing and improving it.
Even if we are not exactly a Web Team right now, I think
that if we keep the good work started by Jutta and others, we are
able to create space for more contributions.
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About XHTML, CSS and related stuff
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For quite some time, I"m really unsure if we should use
<br /> or <br>, if we should use a quote (") or <q>, if we should
check new pages when they come in and review it (even before
translators work on it).
I don't know if XHTML 1.1 or 2.0 is our long term goal,
or if is our goal at all. I'm unsure if we should start contacting
contributors and fix the long standing license problem of the
website.
I would like to know if we have a Web Policy or if we
should have one, some small lines, nothing complicate, just to
say:
"Hey, welcome to webwml, please check this recommendations before
your first commit and enjoy! Thanks for your contributions!"
- Our target is to have full XHTML support by Lenny.
- We are aiming to have CSS-aural by Lenny+1.
- Our procedure for out-of-date pages is this, the log of removed
pages is here.
- We have a translation robot that is working this way
- To add a new CSS discuss that on debian-www
I really think that we can work together with the release
cycle (imagining that it would take 18-24 -- x2 would mean 36-48
months), to have visual changes in the website, or to have
milestones being achieved.
Portuguese is someway behind in translations, so I'm
checking a lot of original documents, while I'm at this I see a
lot of things, specially wrong tags and unclosed ones, I would
like to know if we can start commiting changes to fix whole
pages, not sure if we can do that with smart_change, but I can
try.
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About "Who's using Debian" and CD Vendors
=========================================
It would be possible to have a very minimal system to take
care of those submissions, I think it would help a lot people doing
this job to keep track of what was already included and what still
needs to be done, the system could even send e-mails to -www-cvs.
Could it be written in PHP/Perl using a sqlite database?
NOTE: I wrote this a while ago, but it seems that it is now handle
by Request Tracker or other way, not sure, my main idea was
to remove it from the list and make it something like RT, so
we can track what is pending and what is not pending.
These are first ideas, I would like to hear from people
that are also contributing to the webwml, once we can have some
feedback on this issue, I'm volunteering myself to start working
on the english pages, probably by section in order to have
weekly changes and aiming to achieve a point where we can easily
handle graphical/visual changes.
I really think that we need to first change a couple of
core structures in the (X)HTML code and CSS and after we can
work on the logical and structural areas of the website. IMHO,
it is a long term goal for at least 6 months of improving the
underlayer until we can easier change our web face. :-)
Kind regards,
- --
Felipe Augusto van de Wiel (faw)
"Debian. Freedom to code. Code to freedom!"
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