Re: SEUL: New Image

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

In message <220fc73e.363256c1@aol.com>, eamorical@aol.com writes:
>Chuck,
>Here is my general ideas on things. There are links like 'About SEUL','FAQ',
>etc. I view these as peripheral links. We need to do a nice job on them, etc.,
>but they are not the main goal of SEUL which is to bring Linux to the end
>user. My idea on how to accomplish the main goal is through what I will call
>main links. Basically the main links will eventually be to everything required
>by the end user. Some of these links will be to SEUL site information and
>others will be to where ever the information is located. Now taking a look at
>latest 'New SEUL' , what I'm refering to as peripheral links are located on
>left side. This is an ideal location. Then where should what I refer to as
>main links be located. Since these are the links a site visitor is most likely
>after, I feel they should be located where the main text is currently located.

This is an excellent point -- seul has moved beyond the point where we have
to tell visitors what we're trying to do, and why we think we should try to do
it. Looking at gnome and debian, they still have a small section summarizing
their project -- 'seul is a project to bring linux to the end-user', or whatever
propaganda-esque slogan we decide to use. Following that should not be useless
information like 'omega is the leader' and 'we've got these things called
mailing lists'. Rather, we should have a list of resources that would be useful
to the visitor.

I think I would vote to retain the seul-announce subscription box on the front
page, though. There are 551 people on that list now, and that's because they
all sub when they arrive at the seul frontpage.

In addition to those resources, we should include more details of the seul
project. Do we need to compromise between resources that are useful to the
visitor, and things that we want them to read? I'm specifically talking about
the whatsnew/ and the todo list. The whatsnew/ is easy to solve -- we just
integrate it into the frontpage, as you suggest. I've tried to make the todo
not simply a list of "here's where we need help", but also a list of "here's
what we're done already, and how much progress we're making on each section".
So it's informative even to somebody not wanting to volunteer.

>its available. For now one last thought, I really don't think we should have
>the 'ToDo' link on the home page. It is fine for GNOME for example, because
>they are a single project. For us we simply have to many things going on. We

Ah. I had originally read this as 'we should not have a link to todo from the
front page', but I think now you mean 'we should not try to fit the todo page
onto the front page'. That's reasonable.

>should start thinking what are the peripheral links we want and I will try to
>come up with something for the main links. I hope this makes sense. Chuck, if
>it's not to much work could you try a message box with something in it. This
>way we can work through ideas and see how they look.
>
>Bob

--Roger