Forum > Suggestions
Suggestions for Lazarus web site
jwdietrich:
Please discuss possible improvements for the Lazarus web site (and possibly also the Free Pascal site) here, rather than at http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/topic,20388.msg117875 .
Dibo:
Pascal formatting in <code=pascal> tag from old site
jwdietrich:
I think, the first step should be to redesign the home page.
A re-implementation of the forum system is a possible later step, however it would require a large effort. As the current, SMF-based solution ist not bad, I wonder if it would be better to invest this time in the continued development of Lazarus and Free Pascal.
nsunny:
As JuhaManninen said in this topic there are lots of suggestions here: http://www.mail-archive.com/lazarus@lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/msg05702.html
In the messages I see a common suggestion that we should focus on the new users or potential users. We should focus on the features of Lazrus:
- Cross platform
- Drag and Drop Form designer
- Easily deployable (No frameworks needed)
- Variety of Components ready for use
- Full UTF-8 compatibility
- Modern, Object oriented language
- Human readable coding style
- Easily Extendable
We should focus on the ease of use of Lazarus. Remember, that Delphi, VB6 are not good IDEs according to some expert programers, but it succeeded. (Some software lives in the hearts of the users. For example people still use photoshop 6 when CS6 is latest.) Why? Because it is easier to learn. People still use them because they love them. ... Everybody wants to code and it should be encouraged. And it is not a bad thing. Because everybody has unique ideas that need to be expressed through their practical implementation.
We should also compare with other IDEs available. For example, Lazarus does not need any 20-300mb bulky frameworks... like M$ .net based softwares do... Lazarus is cross platform... etc.
The website developers should also look at the other IDE websites, such as:
http://netbeans.org/
http://www.eclipse.org/
http://projects.gnome.org/anjuta/
http://www.codeblocks.org/
http://qt-project.org/doc/qtcreator-2.6/
http://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/office-dev-tools-for-visual-studio
We should focus on features, as many we can in the homepage. Once the users grow significantly, we can skip some and focus on our main strengths. Websites need change over time, because users' perception changes over time. Web devs should realize that.
jwdietrich:
--- Quote from: nsunny on March 29, 2013, 12:49:58 pm ---We should focus on features, as many we can in the homepage. Once the users grow significantly, we can skip some and focus on our main strengths. Websites need change over time, because users' perception changes over time. Web devs should realize that.
--- End quote ---
You are right.
After looking at a lot of web pages of open-source projects including ubuntu.com, suse.com, debian.org, postgresql.org and the examples you provided I arrived at the conclusion that we should in a first step rebuild our home page. We have a lot of content, e.g. in the Lazarus Wiki that is hard to find, therefore a fast entry point would be useful.
I would suggest to divide the homepage in four areas in horizontal layers:
1: A systematic link bar, in some way similar to a menu bar
2: One or more screenshot and a large message (e.g. "Write once, compile anywhere")
3. Three blocks with a short description of Lazarus, current news, and a project of the month
4: Featured links (What's New, Case Studies, Services, Wiki, Bug Tracker etc.)
The following mock-up should demonstrate how this could be achieved. I tried to retain the traditional colouring scheme. However, this is, of course, one possibility of many.
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