New home page

[Bruno Medeiros]

On 05/10/2010 02:13, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 10/4/10 18:54 CDT, Walter Bright wrote:
>> Brian Hay wrote:
>>> With all due respect to Walter, as a professional web designer I have
>>> to agree with Andrei. It's terrible for all the reasons mentioned ...
>>> and more. "1995 programmer art" sums it up.
>>
>> Ok, but on the other hand, mint.com gets high fives for its home page.
>> But I find it to be slow loading, the green-on-green text (near the
>> bottom) impossible to read, and the animated text slideshows irritating.
>>
>> Or maybe I'm just too old :-)
>
> I think you and I (as many programmers who aren't web designers) are in
> the "don't/don't" place (we don't know what we don't know). Getting from
> there to "do/don't" -> "do/do" -> "don't/do" is a long, arduous process.
> So we're essentially unable to predict accurately the likeability of a
> web page by only looking at it, and clearly we're not in the position of
> designing a good website.
>
> Having gladly acknowledged your interest in this topic (as I agree
> marketing is at this point essential), my overarching advice is:
>
> 1. Find a good professional.
>
> 2. Explain in broadest terms _what_ you are trying to achieve at the
> highest level (NOT "here's _how_ I want this to be, tweak it"). For
> example, instead of saying "I want three equally sized columns because
> nobody told me that that design is cr(ee|ap)py, and please color them
> like pee in a swimming pool while you're at it", tell them "I have three
> product lines, and I want them featured on the homepage in a simple and
> straightforward manner".
>
> 3. Let the (wo)man do h(is|er) job.
>
> 4. Pay h(im|er) a small fraction of the money you'd be losing in
> opportunity costs should you do all the work yourself starting from
> "don't/don't".
>
> 5. ...
>
> 6. Profit!
>
>
> Andrei


I totally agree with the "we're not in the position of designing a good 
website.", but I'm not so sure about "predict accurately the likeability 
of a web page"
Well, maybe not super-accurately, but I think most developers would get 
a good sense if a page is good or not. Especially since, in the case of 
D and DigitalMars, it is us/Walter who knows exactly what the target 
audience is, the purpose of the website, etc.. A hired professional 
might know that, but not as well.

I have an alternate suggestion. Go to an open source web templates (like 
http://www.oswd.org/), selected a few of them, and then choose one. The 
choose part can be either just Walter choosing, or maybe the community 
could vote on one, or maybe some other alternative in between (the 
community just commenting on what they think). But a simple process, not 
too complicated.

A new web design is nice to have, but frankly, I think much better would 
be a reorganization of the site, at least the D site. I won't go into 
much detail here, but just mention that I think it has too many links, 
and they are not very well organized. I much prefer the 
http://www.d-programming-language.org/ site for example.

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - Software Engineer