Re: new Debian homepage: request for review
Hi
Sorry to answer so late.
Here's my feedback about the new pages:
1.
Congratulations and thanks for all the work. Below I focus on the things
that I don't like 100% or I need clarification, but keep in mind that my
feeling overall is very good, and I'm very conscious of how difficult is
to get oneself accustomed to a different thing than what I've seen for
years!
2. homepage:
* the list of news that is currently shown looks ok for me. I'd like to
write a blog post to be published in bits.debian.org about the renewal
of the homepage and the website in general, so it is included in the
list of news, so people looking at the new website can learn about the
story and why and how to browse the new site and what to expect in the
following months. BUT! Frankly I don't know if I'll have time to do this
soon, so let's go with this set of "highlighted news" and if I manage to
write the article, we can include it at the last minute.
For this initial translation of the homepage, translators can take the
titles of the corresponding news pages, if they are translated. For next
news, I'll try to make the titles go to a .po file using gettext (that
would be used both in the News section and in the homepage), so the
strings will be translated only once, and the translated homepages don't
get the "outdated" warning when a news title translation is missing.
* Until we have the new 'Get debian' landing page in place, I think that
the "Download Debian" button should provide the same link as now (debian
stable current netinst amd64) and the same text info too (so people know
what they will download if they click).
About the aspect, I don't like that the text is overlapped on the Debian
logo.
I would prefer a 'button' with image and text next to it, like this:
+-------------+------------+
| the Debian | Download |
| swirl | Debian |
| | (10.1 |
| |netinst etc)|
+-------------+------------+
I don't know how to do that, though :/
3. Footnotes
Currently all the subpages in www.debian.org have the following footnote
---
Back to the Debian Project homepage.
---
This page is also available in the following languages:
---
Menu
---
To report a problem with the website...
---
Last Modified, Last Build
Copyright
We need to include the language selector in the new homepage, why
debian, and "more" subpages.
The "Why Debian" subpage I think it should include the traditional menu,
too.
I will try to look at these during the next days, unless somebody beats
me to it, or somebody disagrees with my proposal about footnotes.
4. Header
I like a simple header with Blog, Micronews, Planet but:
* I would add at the beginning an "About Debian" item
* Maybe I would add a link at the end to the Debian Wiki.
So it would be: About Debian, Blog, Micronews, Planet, Wiki
If 5 items are too much, I would omit the Wiki.
The "alt" text of Planet shows "The Planet of Debian" and I think that's
not informative, I would use "Blog aggregator" or "Blogs of Debian
contributors" instead.
The breadcrumbs are not shown in the More and Why Debian subpages. I
will try to look at this too.
5. Why Debian subpage
I like the new rewriting, overall. The subsection "What our users say" I
think it's a good idea, but only printing there some quote with
referring who is saying, looks like we are writing about ourselves.
Ideally I would quote some of our actual users
(https://www.debian.org/users/), maybe some of the more recent ones (we
should include their submissions in the website first...). OTOH, I'm not
sure how to actually reference them without *naming* them (and the
unbalanced "promotion" that some user quotes would get against all the
rest...).
Maybe take the words from the /users section, and add a link. "Learn
more about who uses Debian" with a link to the /users section?
About the actual quotes to include, I would use, for now, these ones
(taken from the last "Who uses Debian" submissions):
"We choose Debian because we like its package management approach,
stable releases and ease of upgrades. Needless to say, we put extreme
value on security. Debian’s package update philosophy ensures a secure,
top-notch platform that minimizes bugs."
"We use Debian to test our software, web services and websites using
basically a LAMP architecture; for this Linux is very easy to use and
upgrade every day."
"While teaching our classes, our instructors and students use Debian OS.
[...] We choose Debian because of its great community and stability. Our
instructors love using Debian for teaching Linux to our teenager students."
6. "More" subpage
In both sections of this page, I can see a "gap" between the first 3
items and the rest of the items. Is this intentional? If yes, we may add
a sentence between the two groups, or a line instead, because that blank
gap looks confusing (wrong layout? something missing?) at least to me.
7. Ease translations
I will try to gettextize as much text as I can before calling for
translations, so all the strings that are reused from subpages or other
parts of the website, already appear translated.
That's all for now, thanks!
Kind regards
Laura Arjona Reina
https://wiki.debian.org/LauraArjona
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