My WineHQ menu structure proposal

Andreas Mohr andi at rhlx01.fht-esslingen.de
Sun Nov 3 08:24:14 CST 2002


On Sun, Nov 03, 2002 at 02:28:54AM -0800, Francois Gouget wrote:
> On Sat, 2 Nov 2002, Dimitrie O. Paun wrote:
> 
> > This is my proposal for the WineHQ menu structure,
> > based on the discussions I had with Francois.
> >
> > The Home Page should just be our news page. Many
> > projects opt for this, and I think it's good:
> > News are 'zero' click items.
> 
> I think the home page should be targeted to people who may not know what
> Wine is. Thus it should *answer* the question 'What is Wine'. The Gimp's
> web site (http://www.gimp.org/) is a good example in that respect. The
> first paragraph of the page answers the question 'What is the GIMP?'.
> 
> Thus I think there should be a link to the News page but no more. The
> news page is for returning visitors and if that's what they care about
> then they should bookmark that page rather than the home page.
I think nobody does that.
Whenever *I* visit a page, I'm visiting it in order to know the
latest facts about a project.
And let's face it, there are only so many n00bs compared to long-time
Wine users.
I'd be willing to bet that 60% of WineHQ traffic is caused by long-time
Wine users, and the rest is newbies.
And what long-time users want is *news*.

> Other things I have now realized:
> 
>  * I said before I prefered a non-expanded menu (again, ala Gimp) to a
> fully expanded one. Now I changed my mind. If the menu is not fully
> expanded from the start then it's hard to figure out what the heck is in
> the unexpanded items. Proof: the current WineHQ site. Other proof, The
> Gimp's web site. Click on Documentation. Wow! Eleven items appear!
> Before expanding the menu, did you know that mailing list was in
> Documentation rather than in Resources? No? Well, you had no way of
> knowing anyway.
True. IMHO we should try to have two levels by default, and a third hidden
level if need be (on the resulting page).

>  * That brings me to another point. I like the menus in Bugzilla and the
> Application Database:
>    http://wine.codeweavers.com/bugs/
>    http://appdb.winehq.com/
>    I vote for using the same system for WineHQ. This would also bring a
> better unity of style. Each top-level menu is a 'box' that contains all
> the level two menu items.
Sounds good (if it's doable).

>  * Who cares about an 'Applications Database'? What's that anyway?
> Would a potential Wine user want to have dealings with a database?
> Nah. Must be for geeks. What users want to know is what applications run
> in Wine and thus that's how the menu entry and the thing itself should
> be called: 'Supported Applications'. Even if the truth is that it lists
> applications that do not work too.
True. Application Database is somewhat non-descriptive.
Well, why not call its item "(Non-)Supported Applications" then ? ;-)

>  * I'm moving the Who's Who to the development section. Now it seems
> clear to me that people trying to have an idea about what Wine is don't
> care about Who's Who. On the other hand, developpers, i.e. people more
> involved with the project, would certainly be interested to know
> more about their fellow developpers (in fact it's almost a developper
> list).
No, it's a developer list ;-)

>  * Contributing is important. I'm glad Dimitrie agrees with me. But now
> I'm not sure we should have a menu entry for each of its sections. So I
> moved it to 'About Wine'. This means it gets nearer where people new to
> Wine (i.e. who are not involved in Wine yet) are. Maybe that compensates
> a bit...
I think that that one *at least* also needs a link on the Development section
if we don't have a separate Contributing section.

>  * In the same spirit there are things that must be there but that fewer
> people would look for. So I created a 'Misc' top-level section which
> would be the last section to regroup these and unclutter more important
> sections such as 'About Wine'.
>    As a guiding principle I tried to imagine someone new to Wine who is
> not a developper, determine what he will want to see first, and put
> these first. Then come potential developpers but I know they will zoom
> in on the 'Development' and 'Forums' categories and go there.
> 
> 
> So, here goes:
>
> Home
> (no menu item for this one, just click on the Wine logo)
> 
> 1. About Wine
>    1.1. Introduction
>         a. Intro
>         b. Why Wine
>         c. Myths
>         d. Technology
>         e. History
>         g. Companies
>    1.2. Screenshots
>    1.3. Supported Applications
>    1.4. Contributing
>         a. Application maintainer
>         b. Bug triage
>         c. Website maintenance
>         d. Development
>    1.5. News
>    1.6. Press
> 
> 2. Download
>    2.1. Binaries   (installing from binaries)
>    2.2. Source     (installing from source)
>    2.3. CVS        (installing from CVS)
> 
> 3. Support
>    3.1. FAQ
>    3.2. Howto
>    3.3. Bug Tracking
>    3.4. Troubleshooting
>    3.5. Forums
>         a. Mailing Lists
>         b. Newsgroup
>         c. IRC Channel
> 
> 4. Documentation
>    4.1. User Guide
>    4.2. Developer Guide
>    4.3. Packager Guide
>    4.4. API Docs
> 
> 5. Development
>    5.1. Developer Hints
>    5.2. Submitting Patches
>    5.3. TODO Lists
>        - 0.9/1.0 TODOs
>        - Tasklist/bug 395
>        - FIXMEs/bug 455,
>        - Tasklets/bug 406
>        - most wanted bugs
>    5.4. Status
>    5.5. Resources
>         a. LXR
>         b. CVS Web
>         c. Who's Who
>         d. Tools
>         e. Win32 Documentation, X doc, etc.
> 
> 6. Miscellaneous
>    6.1. Community
>    6.2. Related projects
>    6.3. Contacts
>    6.4. Legal

Hmm, (almost) everything ok so far, but can't we do away with Misc ?
Misc is so horribly non-descriptive.
IMHO as last entry, it might be better to have "The Wine Team",
which then includes Community, Contacts and Legal.
I'm not sure yet about where to put Related Projects (probably About would
be best), but apart from that...

I'm prepared to see my comments ripped to shreds ;-)

Andi



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