So lets say we do it

[Francois Gouget]

On Thu, 31 Oct 2002, Dimitrie O. Paun wrote:
[...]
> IMO we need to reorganize the front page a bit more than that.
> Namely:
>   -- the big "Navigation" box is wasted space, because
> 	1. It contains items everybody expects as a left-hand menu
> 	2. Contains no real content
>   -- while pretty, the layout is a non-standard, and is a wee bit
> 	too far away from the "least surprise" principle
>   -- the news/announcements need a bit more space

I pretty much agree. I will also add a me too concerning screenshots:
this is the first thing I look for and I'm pretty disappointed if I
don't see any.


> So here is my suggestion:
>   1. Have a left-hand navigation menu, as follows:
> 	Home
> 	About
> 	Download
> 	Documentation
> 	Development
> 	Mailing Lists
> 	Screenshots

I proposed something similar in task 608 but did not have much
feedback (though it was mentioned a couple of times before). Here's my
menu tree proposal:


Top Level
---------

1.  About
2.  News
3.  Screenshots
4.  Application Database
5.  How to contribute
6.  Download
7.  Development
8.  Documentation
9.  Bugs
10. Forums

The goal is to make important items like the Application Database,
Screenshots, or How to contribute, more visible, and to make it easier
to locate where things are.

I would also modify the home page to:
 - display the introduction to Wine (included from the About section
1.1.)
 - display a (small) screenshot (worth 10.000 words). Newman's idea is
pretty good for that.
 - the Home page can be accessed by clicking on the WineHQ icon (but I'm
not opposed to adding a menu entry)


Complete menu tree
------------------

You will note that there are sometimes 3 levels of 'menus'. The third
level would most likely not actually be a menu but just sections on the
page and an entry in the relevent table of content (task 605). I just
included them here to clearly show where each item in the web site goes.

1. About
  1.1. Intro
  1.2. Why Wine
  1.3. Wine myths debunked
  1.4. Technical details
  1.5. Status (or move this to the How to contribute or Development
section?)
  1.6. History
  1.7. Alternatives
  1.8. Who's who
  1.9. Wine companies
  1.10. Community
  1.11. Contacts
  1.12. Legal

2. News
  2.1. Latest Wine release
  2.2. Latest WWN
  2.3. WWN back issues
  2.4. Press

3. Screenshots
   General screenshots, typically full desktops. Also point people to
the Application Database.

4. Application Database

5. How to contribute
  5.1. Application maintainer
  5.2. Bug triage
  5.3. Web site maintainance
  5.4. Development
     5.4.1. Wine 0.9.0 task list
     5.4.2. The Tasklist (bug 395)
     5.4.3. The FIXMEs (bug 455)
     5.4.4. The Tasklets (bug 406)
     5.4.5. The most wanted bugs (a Bugzilla query returning bugs with
the most votes)
  5.6. Write regression tests
  5.5. Support Wine-based products

6. Download
  6.1. Binary Packages
  6.2. Source tar files
  6.3. Source tars for CVS
  6.4. LXR
  6.5. CVS
  6.6. CVS Web
  6.7. Other CVS modules (web site)

7. Development
  7.1. Mostly references to the Wine Developpers Guide which is where
most of the information should be.
       The distinction between this and the Wine Developpers Guide is
that the guide should be more about general principles and less about
which specific web server to connect to (although that's more a download
issue anyway).
  7.2. References
      Pointers to online resources (Win32 documentation, X doc, etc.)
useful to Wine developpers.

8. Documentation
  8.1. User Guide
  8.2. Howto
  8.3. FAQ
  8.4. Developer Guide
  8.5. API Documentation
  8.6. Packager Guide
  8.7. How to get commercial support

9. Bugs
   (Bugzilla)

10. Forums
  10.1. Mailing lists
  10.2. Newsgroup
  10.3. IRC channel



Other relevant Web Site tasks
-----------------------------

 * 597 - How to get the web site files
 * 598 - Update the Who's Who
 * 600 - Add a Site Map
 * 601 - Add drop-down menus
 * 605 - Add 'tables of contents'
 * 607 - Add screenshots
 * 608 - Reorganize the Web site


-- 
Francois Gouget         fgouget at free.fr        http://fgouget.free.fr/
                         "Utilisateur" (nom commun) :
        Mot utilisé par les informaticiens en lieu et place d'"idiot".