Hi Craig, Thanks for dropping in! I am fresh in this, too ;)... and sorry if I was not exact. Let me try to fix that. It is mostly a sketch, and any idea or critique you have would be great! Critiques are a great boost for creativity.
One thing I did not mention before, but I feel is very important. The User area focuses to communicate the image 'Inkscape is a powerful tool for graphics'. Therefore, in the User area we can see impressive artworks, tutorials, etc. More importantly, it shows Inkscape as a 'reliable tool', offering only those downloads that are ready for your or your company's workflow and allow your creativity take over from there. No frills. That means: only the latest stable release, only well laid out and documented palettes, well made templates, etc. that you can download without wondering which version you should get. For someone who is facing Inkscape for the first time, or someone not inclined to face the test versions, this would be the place to go. It is only a prominent link to the stable release, but certainly, a visitor should have a link to the Dev download zone for nightly builds, too.
...
About the nightlies... You are right, the nightly builds seem to fit both the Playground and Dev area. So, that page (nightly builds etc.) probably should be included in both areas. Dev & Playground.
...
About the Playground (still not sure about the title, if you have a suggestion...) It is good that it overlaps, to be somewhat 'gray' area, I think. :) Based on my experience, the following is often the case (formulated for Inkscape). There are always people that are purely into graphics, master tool wielders, but frankly, find all that developer stuff boring, too hard or just don't know how to get into it. On the other hand, often there are developers who have that magic of making amazing code and beautiful programming, but are less sensitive to the needs and purposes of the artists. The Playground would be an area that would allow those two to create together.
Some of those artists have brilliant ideas but don't know how to implement them, some programmers need graphics/prototyping and UI work that is, honestly, distracting them from what they do best.
From my experience, there is always a developer with amazing skill and
knowledge of advanced computing methods to create tools from the dreams and there is always an artist that has crazy ideas but no clue how to make a tool for it. You get the idea... :) The Playground would be a place where those two could meet each other and communicate. Safely. ;)
As you can see, I am not 100% clear myself about the exact shape of this, but feel free to send any idea, criticism or even affirmation. I think it would be great for Inkscape!
Alex
On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 4:47 PM, Craig Marshall <craig9@...400...> wrote:
Hi AJ,
Earlier in the year we chatted with Josh Andler about how the current website works and what a Drupal redesign/migration might look like. We suggested Drupal since that is what we specialize in
... if the community is willing, we'd love to get started soon.
That's great news! I am a mere newcomer to this mailing list (but a longtime basic user of inkscape) - thanks very much for the offer of time and work. After carefully reading through Aleksander's post (which was a great read, and I want to read more from him..) I have been thoroughly convinced that the current website is a confusing jumble of links with little organisation, so your offer to redo things should/could improve both the website exp'erience and enhance the look and appeal of inkscape as a project.
I particularly like the separation of roles: User and Dev - no comments there, I agree with all of that, and I think the separation would be a big improvement. I'm not too sure about the playground area though, there is kind of a grey area but I think there is too much overlap between the three areas (user, dev, playgroud) to try and mark each thing clearly.
e.g.: Where do nightly builds go? they could go in any of the three areas, but strictly and according to the reasons behind the separation, nightly builds should go in playground, but I think it's actually more important to keep downloads together for ease of access.
Thanks again! Craig
This SF.net Dev2Dev email is sponsored by:
Show off your parallel programming skills. Enter the Intel(R) Threading Challenge 2010. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-thread-sfd _______________________________________________ Inkscape-devel mailing list Inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/inkscape-devel