WineHQ Idea

[Dimitrie O. Paun]

On 20 Mar 2003, Jeremy Newman wrote:

[I've Cc'ed wine-devel since I've just reposted the questions there]

> On Thu, 2003-03-20 at 15:57, Dimitrie O. Paun wrote:
> > I was looking at the main page of the new WineHQ, and I was thinking
> > of the following changes:
> >   1. The menu at the bottom of the main "About" box is mainly
> >      duplicating the the left-side menu. Let's get rid of it.
> 
> In this case I think the duplication is good. From a newbie aspect, the
> first place they will read is the text on the home page. And the extra
> clarification helps.

This is a good point, but I feel that the benefit is not worth the cost.
It takes up a lot of space, and really the _same_ options are available
on the _same_ page. What kind of newbie are we talking about that can
read "News" in one place, but can't read the exact same word 2 inches
to the right?

We are light years clean / simpler navigation than the old site, lets
not exagerate.

> >   2. Move the theme selector somewhere else, like another box on
> >      on the left, below "Developemnt"
> 
> Yeah, for this beta, its there for now, I think I will make a
> "Preferences" link somewhere in the nav. 

That's cool.
 
> >   3. In place of the "Change Theme" box, let's have an "Announcements"
> >      box (like the KDE/GNOME/etc pages) where we can place the
> >      latest and greatest things, such as Wine releases, News releases,
> >      interviews, etc.
> 
> See, that would be duplication. We already have news. It's WWN. Adding
> announcements that don't get updated as often as WWN seems lame. Leave
> that to other news sites.

I beg to differ. WWN is more like a magazine. It is wandeerful, and has
a good purpose, but that it's not for announcement. People don't wait
a month to read the latest news, they watch TV or read the newspaper.

The WWN appears weekly (sometime lest often), and is concerned mainly
with development topics). An Announcement section would be updated
whenever something important (from a user standpoint) happens:
  -- A new Wine version is released
  -- A new WWN is released
  -- An important event happened in the community

So the two differ in all aspects (WWN vs. Announcements)
  1. Audience: Developers vs. Users
  2. Update Strategy: Weekly vs. Real Time
  3. Content Focus: Development Issues vs. Events

And the proof is in the pudding: most major project sites have different
sections for the two. See www.gnome.org, www.kde.org, www.gimp.org, etc.

For better or worse, people _expect_ things organized in a certain way.
Like the "File" menu to the left. Even if we think our idea are better,
we should follow the Principle of Least Surprise in these matters, unless
we can make a _strong_ case against it. In this instance, it seems to me
it makes sense to follow the status quo.

-- 
Dimi.