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GNU Guile site redesign
- jeffjose 11y agoNicely done. Interesting how a website design will make people take a second and consider that's being presented. I remember going to the old website and immediately dashing out thinking this was something beyond me. The current design is tasteful, and well executed.
- agumonkey 11y agoguix design is 'fresh' too but a lot less inviting :)
- jolux 11y agoYou mean http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/ http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/? Looks ugly as sin to me...this new Guile site though. It looks more like an Apple product than a GNU project ;) (in a good way)
- jordigh 11y agoWhat about the GNU Octave site? Ugly as sin or uglier? http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/ http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/
- walrus 11y agoA few suggestions: - The front page needs some short code samples and their output. Also, maybe showcase some libraries or projects the Octave community has created. - Make 'Documentation' a top-level menu entry. - Provide some 'Getting Started' documentation. I know there's a section in the manual for that, but I don't dive into the manual when I'm just trying to get a feel for what something is. - The download page should have distro-specific installation instructions (e.g., apt-get install octave, pacman -S octave). For Windows, link directly to the exe. For OS X, link directly to the dmg. Other than that I think it's fine. The design on the navigation menu looks a little dated, but it's not a big deal.
- jordigh 11y ago> For OS X, link directly to the dmg. Heh, as soon as we can find someone who can create one...
- opk 11y agoIsn't it really rather pointless to show distro-specific installation instructions. Someone who can program in scheme or octave really doesn't need help on using apt-get. There's many options if you want to cover a good range of distributions. Someone that clueless will probably not realise the commands need running as root, either. It only makes sense for Windows and OS X.
- Retra 11y agoSomeone who is learning scheme or octave may not know these things. This may be their first time installing something like this.
- walrus 11y agoI disagree. As someone who knows how to use my system's package manager, it saves me from having to figure out the name of the package and whether or not I need to enable a 3rd party repository. Also, I know at least two people who use Octave that aren't comfortable with their system's package manager. Both of them use Ubuntu for their research because it's easier to get compilers (Fortran and C++) working properly, but they use Windows for general (non-research) computing. One of them is a biophysics graduate student and the other is a chemistry undergraduate.
- chadzawistowski 11y agoIn terms of site design, I prefer Guile > Octave > Guix.
- jolux 11y agoNo, it looks much better. The drop-shadows are a bit cringey but again, the colors make sense and for what it's worth it's an honest design. This is clearly the homepage of a free software project.
- Maken 11y agoProbably most Octave users (including me) prefer to use the command line client, but I don't think the new GUI is so terrible to not show it in the front page.
- Nadya 11y agoMinor UX issue: Your side nav `buttons` should be able to be clicked from the sides. Not just the text. Similar to the `continue` button in the donate section. http://i.imgur.com/WgWwuRG.png http://i.imgur.com/WgWwuRG.png
- agumonkey 11y agoI said 'fresh', as opposed to vanilla vintage gnu layout (http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/ http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/), not beautiful or good :)
- jolux 11y agoHonestly I think that the "vintage" GNU site looks better than that one. Clean typography, sensible colors, it's even flat-design and it's not even trying! It's honest about what it is. Designers aren't going to be downloading Guix or probably GNU Screen. The older page is much more aligned with the FSF's brand, which is utilitarian and emphasizes freedom above all else. Guix's site looks very corporate, like a dead startup from the late aughts.
- talideon 11y agoIt looks more 'corporate' because they paid more attention to the site's information architecture[1]: rather than presenting you with a wall of text like old sites do, you're presented with what it is, why you should care, what it's like, and all in straightforward terms. That's easier to consume than the dense paragraph of material you get in the likes of the GNU Screen page. If you squint, you'll see things clearly: the page is broken up with whitespace into distinct sections, and there are no gigantic blobs of text. In contrast, the GNU Screen page is basically one big black blob of text between a header and a footer. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_architecture
- denniskane 11y agoMaybe. But at least the information on the Screen page is the god's honest truth... This site, however, is a load of pure propaganda. > With Guile you can create applications and games for the desktop, the Web, the command-line, and more. You can create applications on the web with Lisp? Really?!? And tell me about all of those wonderful command-line games! But then there is always the "more". Whatever the hell that is. Holy shit, the world has just gone completely insane.
- na85 11y ago>well executed IMHO the execution could be better. Doesn't render properly on my Nexus 5.
- talideon 11y agoCompared to what was there before, it's much better.
- sdegutis 11y agoWebsite snapshot from October 13th: http://web.archive.org/web/20151013161308/http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/ http://web.archive.org/web/20151013161308/http://www.gnu.org...
- userbinator 11y agoI'm going to disagree with most of the others here and say that I definitely do prefer the look of the old site. The simple, clear paragraphs of text give me a feeling of "take your time, relax and learn; there's plenty of interesting things to read here." In contrast, the new site feels like in-your-face flashy distracting "TRY OUR AMAZING PRODUCT NOW!!" marketing, which just evokes a visceral "go away, leave me alone" reaction not unlike that I experience from seeing ads. In addition, I had to scroll far more in the new site to read everything than the old one. For being basically decorative, those pictures are huge.
- sdegutis 11y agoMaybe I'm just broken, but lots of paragraphs scares me off. The new site breaks everything down by section, and that makes it much less intimidating for me to skim and even read fully.
- timtadh 11y agoIn comparison to the new site the first sentence on the old one throws me off: Guile is the GNU Ubiquitous Intelligent Language for Extensions, the official extension language for the GNU operating system. Oh, so it is a language for writing plugins in. Kinda cool, but Python seems more newbie friendly than scheme for the same purpose. Might have a niche for some more scientific applications... Compared to the new site: Guile is designed to help programmers create flexible applications that can be extended by users or other programmers with plug-ins, modules, or scripts. That sounds much more general purpose. Maybe you would write the whole application in guile not just part of it.
- comex 11y agoI like how the download page refuses to mention not only proprietary OSes, but also Arch (naming Parabola instead), and only grudgingly names Debian.
- paroneayea 11y agoA lot of Guix devs use Debian as our host distro. Debian's main website doesn't mention Arch or Guix either.
- civodul 11y agoAnother lot of Guix devs use GuixSD, I think. ;-)
- MadcapJake 11y agoThat's by design. It only mentions fully free OSes.
- skybrian 11y agoIt seems like the link to "for the web" should go somewhere explaining what web support is built in. (Is it just server-side or is there also JavaScript compilation?)
- cabbeer 11y agoI love simple, hand drawn images on websites. Something about it makes the website/service appear much more user friendly. www.dropbox.com/ and www.basecamp.com/ seem to agree..
- jordigh 11y agoI wonder if I could convince the one apparently responsible, Luis Felipe López Acevedo, to make us a better website for GNU Octave too.
- nhf 11y agoIt wouldn't have the cool art, but it wouldn't be too difficult to produce a first approximation of a similar website using existing frameworks like Bootstrap.
- amelius 11y agoI have nothing against it per se, but it seems that there is a trend in which "serious stuff" is graphically designed as if it were meant to be used by only children. There are many examples. One good example is carbonmade [1] which is a website to showcase professional portfolios (quite "serious stuff" if you ask me). I genuinely wonder where that trend is coming from. Is it because the current generation of engineers grew up watching cartoons? (Just guessing) Or is it because it is a simple way to make difficult stuff appear more friendly? Anyway, I like the design, and I think the designers did a good job. [1] https://carbonmade.com/ https://carbonmade.com/
- knubie 11y agoI had noticed this too, when docker.com seemed to slowly become more and more cartoony and juvenile, for lack of better words. I don't quite hate it either, it certainly makes the technology seem more approachable, but I think they may have taken it a bit _too_ far.
- paroneayea 11y agoIt's a worthwhile question. I'm a huuuuuuuge supporter of the current design though! This conversation came up on the guile-devel list, and I gave my response there too: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-devel/2015-09/msg00017.html https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-devel/2015-09/msg00... Basically, I think that Lisp and Scheme have a reputation for being unapproachable. This reputation partly comes from how we structure our communities, who we reach out to, and etc. But it also depends on how we message ourselves. There's a very conscious decision in the new design to make things look playful and inviting, to encourage experimentation. I think that's super important. It seems like it's having some effect on encouraging people to become engaged, and it certainly doesn't seem to be doing any harm to those who are already into hacking parentheses. :)
- riffraff 11y agothis is a fantastic design.
- djblue 11y agoI think the consensus is that the site looks great... I have to agree :)
- bch 11y agoThe first little programmer looks more like the BSD mascot (Beastie) [0] than (presumably their intention) a gnu. Otherwise, a nice site indeed. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_Daemon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_Daemon
- mcepl 11y agoNice redesign, just it would be fair to note number of applications who are locked into Guile and they are desperately trying to get rid of it ;) (I know for sure GNUCash is in this category).
- davexunit 11y agoWhy would they be desperately trying to get rid of it? It's immensely good.
- sigjuice 11y agoThere are also applications that are not like that. gdb and GNU Make added Guile support recently.
- oib 11y agoCould you elaborate on that? I can't find anything about the GNUCash developers trying to get rid of guile. What made you believe so and why would they get rid of it? What other applications besides GNUCash did you have in mind?
- 885895 11y agoI agree the site looks nice. One thing though, the cosplay guy in the illustrations on the page had me immediately thinking of Beastie which I found surprising seeing as GNU has a bit of a different ideology from BSD. GNU has long been using a gnu as their mascot so I guess the suit might be supposed to resemble a gnu calf. Edit: Specifically I think it is the cover artwork of Kong's 2007 book Designing BSD Rootkits published by No Starch Press [1] combined with the FreeBSD logo [2] that caused me to think of Beastie when I visited the new Guile site. [1]: https://www.nostarch.com/rootkits.htm https://www.nostarch.com/rootkits.htm [2]: http://www.FreeBSD.org/logo.html http://www.FreeBSD.org/logo.html
- bitwize 11y agoI love the design. The little kid in the Where the Wild Things Are style gnu costume gives me a warm, Katamari Damacy type feeling. And that's what Guile needs, because it's so comfortable to use but there's no marketing suggesting that it would be better to use than, say, Perl (ugh) or Python (less ugh, but scoping rules=fail). Though I do wish they had used the slogan "Guile goes with everything"...
- johnhattan 11y agoVery nicely done. Most of the Gnu pages look like relics from 1995. Hopefully whoever did that page has plans to reskin the rest of the Gnu pages.
- tennix 11y agoHere are the source code for the new website, and it is written in guile itself http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guile/guile-web.git http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guile/guile-web.git
- systems 11y agois guile a general purpose programming language? or is it mainly an extension language? like lua for example
- zeckalpha 11y agoYes. It can be embedded, however, since it is a Scheme, it is also general purpose.
- fphilipe 11y agoGreat redesign. Too bad they didn't bother with higher resolution images as it does look quite blurry on a retina screen. At least the logo could be an SVG.
- radarsat1 11y agoWhenever I try to get into Scheme, this is one of the things that really blocks me: > (use-modules (srfi srfi-19)) How am I supposed to remember what modules contain what utilities, when they are named like that?
- draven 11y agoThe list of supported SRFI is here: https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/manual/html_node/SRFI-Support.html https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/manual/html_node/SRFI-Sup... and the name SRFI means Scheme Request For Implementation, the process of managing them is explained there: http://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-process.html http://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-process.html
- brlewis 11y agoIf you're trying to get into a new language, aren't you looking in the documentation all the time anyway? If not, try keeping an emacs buffer open to http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs?action=browse;oldid=SchemeComplete;id=scheme-complete.el http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs?action=browse;oldid=SchemeCom... Also, you might learn Scheme better by focusing on the core language first before you get into SRFI libraries.
- Gonzih 11y agoAs cute as illustrations in "Schemer" book series. Love it.