[steering-discuss] Website status

Hi Klaus, :slight_smile:

I definitely think we should take the site live ASAP. You will see
that it will really dynamize work on the site and its content, and our
end users urgently need this resource. IMHO, the project has suffered
badly from the failure to put a credible website online *long ago* and
we should not wait any more.

The German community can work peacefully on its NL site, but the main
site really should go live as soon as feasible. We will benefit from a
lot of user feedback and participation, and will really bring more
life to the project.

Only small tweaks are *urgently* needed, and I will follow up on these
with Christian. Everyone will react with more immediacy and enthusiasm
when it's a "real" live site and not just some "dead" unvisited
staging thing.

IMHO, we need to switch over as soon as Florian is able to find the
time. Many things are depending on it.

David Nelson

Florian Effenberger wrote (19-12-10 23:44)

I'll try to make it before, but I can't promise. As we will release LibO
3.3 not before January, and during Christmas most people are away
anyways, I hope this doesn't cause too many issues.

I think the delay fits perfect in the delay with others of us, and the tasks.
So pls don't worry :wink:

  - Cor

Hi Klaus, Bernhard, Florian, all, :slight_smile:

So Florian can't bring up the website *now* - that's a great pity
(especially with regards to the immense work David put into the site during
the last week), but we can't do anything against it.

Florian's day is not longer than 24h - and his life doesn't consist of
LibreOffice alone.

Yes, I understand this. I hope very much he *will* manage it but, if
really he can't, I will dissipate my great disappointment and think
laterally.

PS: I understand Klaus-JĂĽrgen's comment as possibility to use the time until
the launch - not as an attempt to delay it.

Yes, well if ever Florian can't launch the site then we should think
positively and use the intervening time usefully. Xmas list.

PPS: I still believe, that the visible part of the main page should not
contain more than a few lines of text, a download button (can lead to the
download page) and links to the most interesting areas. Twitter and blog in
the "scrolling area" are ok, but I think a "news" area is more important
than those tow.

I will put at least a download button above the home page text, but
did not get around to it yet. You will notice that I *have* been
listening to people's comments, and complying with most of them.

The problem is that the current theme is very narrow, and limits what
you can place on the page quite a lot. That applies to the top menu
bar, the side menu and the actual content area.

IMHO, I would scrap the current theme and make a new one. I've never
done a SilverStripe theme before, but once you've hacked themes for a
couple of CMS's, you can hack them for another. I bet it would only
take me a few days. If one of you SilverSite CSS/theming gurus helped
out, I bet we could do it even quicker...

I would propose a theme based on the theme at
libreofficeaustralia.org. Take a look at screenshots [1] and [2]. The
design perfectly fits the current marketing color scheme and graphic
charter. It's simple but very Web 2.0. It's based on the Fusion theme
for Drupal. It gives a lot more space and scope for nicely laying out
the content, with lots of nice big screenshots, etc.

Florian, Christian, if you gave me access to SSH/FTP into
http://pumbaa.ooodev.org:7780/ then I could set a new theme up there
and work on it. Then Christian could install it on the
test.libreoffice.org/libreoffice.org site when it was ready.

What do you think, guys?

a) We'd get a lot more flexibility with the content.
b) If ever there is a changeover to a Drupal site, there will be no
visual break... the roll-over could be almost invisible.

PPPS: The graphic on the main page links to http:///download/ (not a
relative link...)

I know. I had to hack the HTML/CSS to make the shuffler look OK. I'm
waiting for Christian to deal with the fix I already requested. So
it's a temporary thing.

[1] http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/cgi_img_auth.php/6/65/Liboaustralia-screenshot1.png
[2] http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/cgi_img_auth.php/1/14/Liboaustralia-screenshot2.png

David Nelson

Hi Bernhard, :slight_smile:

PPS: I still believe, that the visible part of the main page should not
contain more than a few lines of text, a download button (can lead to the
download page) and links to the most interesting areas.

Please give me a suggestion for the "few lines of text" then.

Twitter and blog in
the "scrolling area" are ok, but I think a "news" area is more important
than those tow.

Christian, is there a dedicated news/blogging module for SilverStripe?

David Nelson

Hi David, *,

Twitter and blog in
the "scrolling area" are ok, but I think a "news" area is more important
than those tow.

Christian, is there a dedicated news/blogging module for SilverStripe?

Well - there is a blog module, yes (meant for providing blogs
yourself), and regarding news: You can of course add a news section as
well. Similar to how the FAQ-items are automatically collected, one
can collect news items.
And you can create a area on the page that shows the X latest news entries.

The basics on how to do it are laid out in the basic tutorials of silverstripe
http://doc.silverstripe.org/tutorial:2-extending-a-basic-site

If it is just about providing an RSS feed: You can turn pretty much
everything into a RSS feed with silverstripe...

The real questions is: Do we want to add news via the CMS or not.

ciao
Christian

SilverStripe? Is that something that will look a bit like the "ribbon-bar" in
the 2007-2010 MicroSquish Office?
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi David, *,

[...]
IMHO, I would scrap the current theme and make a new one. I've never
done a SilverStripe theme before, but once you've hacked themes for a
couple of CMS's, you can hack them for another.

You don't hack a theme for silverstripe, you create a css for nicely
created HTML :-))

The cms specific parts should be reduced to a minimum, as I think the
html it creates is semantic enough, and not layout-dependent :slight_smile:

I bet it would only
take me a few days. If one of you SilverSite CSS/theming gurus helped
out, I bet we could do it even quicker...

Well, I wouldn't tackle this.
Feedback from the marketing/design/branding front is rather sparse, as
very few people have time these days, so I fear that it ends up like
"Nice, you got a theme, but unfortunately it doesn't match our vision
for future branding" or similar....

I personally don't like the libreofficeaustralia theme as it is now.
Header much too high, language selection doesn't work (something
opens, but that something is covered almost entirely by grey
background, no selection possioble, etc.
Visit it with german locale and you're locked out basically, as it
then also doesn't even offer navigation, etc. So from first looks:
Nah, needs work.

Florian, Christian, if you gave me access to SSH/FTP into
http://pumbaa.ooodev.org:7780/ then I could set a new theme up there

No need to have access, the theme is in git:
https://github.com/tdf/cms-themes you can download a zip or tar.gz
there using the download button and you can create an export of the
site using
http://pumbaa.ooodev.org:7780/StaticExporter/export?baseurl=relative
This will get you a html.tar.gz - copy the cms-themes folder of the
git download into the html folder as html/themes

Then hack around. Don't bother about the silvertsripe templates, just
add the html you wish there would be, I can then adapt the templates.
The templates are included in the cms-themes as well, so feel free to
have a look, it needs some refactoring anyway, (move common parts to
includes, do less duplication), but they are pretty straightforward in
either case.
http://doc.silverstripe.org/templates

What do you think, guys?

See above. A redesign will very likely have to wait until people are
able to provide input. The discussion on how the navigation should
look for example didn't receive much feedback yet, so whatever you
would do, it would be on a very fragile basis.

a) We'd get a lot more flexibility with the content.
b) If ever there is a changeover to a Drupal site, there will be no
visual break... the roll-over could be almost invisible.

This is a non-argument. Drupal can adapt to whatever we create on
silverstripe, etc.

PPPS: The graphic on the main page links to http:///download/ (not a
relative link...)

I know. I had to hack the HTML/CSS to make the shuffler look OK.

Huh? What does the link have to do with it? You already fixed the
images, the link is completely independent of the
images/photo-shuffler. But I'll fix it nevertheless...

ciao
Christian

Hi :slight_smile:

I thought Joomla was far easier to use than Drupal and has a much larger &
faster community? SilverLight website looks very dated or is it just
starting-up?
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Please don't start trolling. 1st of all it is SilverStripe, not
SilverLight, 2nd if oyu know Joomla, Drupal, etc. Then you should know
that the look is independent of the CMS. What it looks like depends on
how you define the css.

You can make the site look like whatever you want. So please: Don't
argument pro/against a cms by the looks of the css. And yes, it is
starting up, and no, the design is not new, it is closely based on the
documentfoundation.org theme.
We're aware that it is not the nicest theme around there, but if you
want to be constructive, join the website@libreoffice.org mailinglist
and/or the design/marketing lists.

There have been various requests for comments, but people are too busy
to spend a considerable amount of time into it right now. There have
been a few proposals, but none of the drupal folks did comment on them
either, and the drupal team did not pick those up either.

So I don't consider the druapl site's theme any better in this regard.
"Closed-shop" work unfortunately. Instead of working on defining the
look of the site *right now* they prefer working behind closed doors
on the drupal site without providing feedback on the public
mailinglists. I don't like this at all.

It is good to see progress, but when this progress is on a completely
seperate track than the community discussion about the topic, then it
doesn't help at all.

Great. now this post turned into a rant again, but well, be it…

ciao
Christian

Hi Christian, :slight_smile:

Thanks for your reply. OK, I've noted about working with the git repo.
Let's see if there's any kind of go-ahead from Florian and Christoph.
If we wait for answers from everyone, we'll never get anywhere and the
subject will just drown in circular, endless discussions. My aim would
be to do something concrete real soon. Let's see what's said...

I personally don't like the libreofficeaustralia theme as it is now.
Header much too high, language selection doesn't work (something
opens, but that something is covered almost entirely by grey
background, no selection possioble, etc.
Visit it with german locale and you're locked out basically, as it
then also doesn't even offer navigation, etc. So from first looks:
Nah, needs work.

I'm only talking about achieving the same presentation as on that
site, so we're not really worried about what doesn't work on that
site. But it's a clean presentation that will allow us to make the
SilverStripe site and content look good quickly, and it basically fits
the graphic charter...

[1] http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/cgi_img_auth.php/6/65/Liboaustralia-screenshot1.png
[2] http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/cgi_img_auth.php/1/14/Liboaustralia-screenshot2.png

P.S. My advice would be not to get into arguments with stupid people
deliberately spamming the thread with irrelevant off-topic comments.
They do it deliberately to break up the intelligent discussion...

David Nelson

HI

I do agree with the comments in the screenshots but i thought it was
good-practice to avoid forcing a certain width and allow browsers to resize
things to fit the screen as much as possible? It is not always going to be
possible and it is less of a worry since 'everyone' is moving to wide-screen
nowadays but reducing the need to for side-scrolling makes the site easier for
people to use. Perhaps just keeping critical information that noobs need to the
left might satify both sides?

Regarding stupid comments; i think they are usually best dealt with off-list as
people may be new to the list and just asking questions to try to get on-track
quickly. While core-contributors may not have time there may be other people to
enlighten noobs.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi, :slight_smile:

Hi David, all,

once again, please don't think I would not appreciate your great work, even
if I try to improve the "look and feel" of the welcome page.

<snip>

Please have a look at Christoph's proposal:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/bbnG0Hny0SpccJIZsGp72A?feat=directlink

I must admit that, personally, I don't find this layout attractive at
all, although it gives some general indicators about content
positioning.

I'm sorry, that I can't design a mockup at the moment. Time is short even
for adding the short phases...

I *have* read your ideas, and will carefully read them and think about
them again as I finish off this first version of the site content. I
am doing my best to take account of your comments and the comments of
other people in what I'm doing. But, sometimes, the proposals and
reactions are so sharply contrasting that it is difficult or
impossible to please everybody.

The problem is that it is *extremely* difficult to work in the current
situation: it's a kind of contributive anarchy, with no-one having a
clearly-appointed lead role in particular areas of the project. Thus,
the only conclusion you can arrive at is this: the people that
actually *do* work are the ones that get to call the shots. If they
are good community members, they will do their best to take account of
other people's opinions. But, in many cases, one has to take a
decision, and the decision will inevitably dissatisfy someone.

Such is the case in what I'm presently doing. I observed how, after
long discussions on the mailing lists and various conference calls,
the website team had failed to put any IA together, and had failed to
put even as much as 10 words on any single page. So I jumped in and
started working on my own. Even when I asked for quick and concrete
contributions, I only got help with content from a couple of people
(apart from lots of patient technical support from Christian).

I do want to get feedback from people, and to take account of their
ideas, but I don't have time or patience to be spending all my time
writing to mailing lists. I actually want to *do* work *now*.

I'm aware that the content I've put on the site is not perfect, and
that it's open to revision in the future. But it does have the merit
of *actually existing* and being sufficient to roll out the site.

I'm determined to finish off what I started, but I do ask you to
remember that I, too, only have 24 hours in my day, and also have a
life to deal with outside the project. So please forgive me for any
shortcomings you perceive in what I produce. :wink: We can look at things
again in the New Year.

I will be doing my best to take account of all I've read. :slight_smile:

I'm currently negotiating with Florian, Christian and Christoph to see
whether to proceed with changes to the SilverStripe theme, or whether
to set this issue aside for someone else to decide about at sometime
in the future.

I hope you understand my position, guys. :wink:

David Nelson

Hi :slight_smile:

I like the way the website is at the moment.

I also quite like the proposed screenshot except that i would prefer the
download button on the left so that people can access it without having to
scroll sideways.

Ok, it may not be perfect for everyone but what we have got works well. It
might be a good time to stand back from the website and look at what we have
while we push forwards in other strategic areas.

Perfection is a great goal but we need to get basics in place first and we seem
to already have more than that with the website. It is pleasant, informative,
uncluttered and fast. It is easy to reach the download buttons. Do we really
need it more perfect than it is already? I think congratulations are due to
everyone involved and it is great that we have ideas building up and being
finalised but i am not sure we have to action them hastily?

Anarchy? My background is mostly in co-operative organisations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative
but i agree that getting work done can be more important than discussions as
long as there is room to make changes or revert to previous versions
after-the-fact.

I don't see this as a contradiction but many people new to co-operatives or
other non-hierarchical structures often assume that discussion about every tiny
point is vital. It isn't. Getting the job done is usually far more important.
The wider group may set policy or determine "house/company style" based on early
experimentation.

Anyone 'should' be free to express an opinion and "stupid questions" may reveal
a possibility for useful innovation but the people doing the work have to be
free to get on with the work. Ideas and suggestions are good if they help get
the work done but if they are not immediately useful they 'should' be ignored or
allowed to grow into something more useful later.

Anyone 'should' be free to do sundry jobs under the direction of the main
worker(s) as though being mentored for a while if that helps get the work done.
It sometimes helps to split into 'temporary' roles such as one person/group
working mainly on content and the other mainly on look-and-feel, each able to
make suggestions to the other team/person.

Note that 4/5 (80%) of new businesses FAIL in the first 2 years when they are
set up in a "traditional" hierarchical format with 1 top boss dictating and
no-one else feeling like they have any ownership of the project. By contrast
only 2/5 (40%) of new worker co-operatives fail in the first 2 years.
Innovation is crucial and we seldom get that from 1 single leader. The trick is
getting people empowered, perhaps helping finding/developing their best area, so
they can work on the projects too.

I don't really think we need to discuss this now and it might be disruptive to
do so. It is worth considering that we need a more fluid dynamic here than most
people are used to in the outside world.

I hope this helps otherwise just ignore it!
Good luck and regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi Tom, :slight_smile:

Interesting thoughts. :wink: But, actually, the site under discussion is
http://test.libreoffice.org

What are your thoughts on that one?

David Nelson

Hi David :slight_smile:

I prefer
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/bbnG0Hny0SpccJIZsGp72A?feat=directlink
because it has less information and looks prettier.

Sadly, that seems to be what people want. Information confuses people and seems
to need to be on subsequent pages. Also the picture on

http://test.libreoffice.org
took ages to appear and people don't seem to have patience beyond a couple of
milliseconds and when it appeared the first image was 'horribly' complicated.
Isn't it a gif? Could it be less size byte-wise?

By contrast competitors websites show almost nothing and give almost no
information. We see pictures of smart people in suits looking at a flashy
computer. We see pictures of grannies leaning over toddlers both engaged with
whatever is going on on a more sensible looking computer. We see a young
attractive 'housewife' sitting on over-large creamy coloured sofa either posing
sexily or demurely (or both) and looking at a flashy laptop. If we ever see the
screen then there is some simple pie-chart of bar-graph or sometimes they risk
showing a line-graph (for business users).

Personally i do like the narrower format because i have not yet followed
'everyone else' to widescreen. Also for me personally (probably fairly
typically for a linux user) i do prefer having useful information right there
fast without having to dig around for it and the picture is what i personally
like as a linux-user because it show me useful stuff. The info was well
written, compelling and succinct, telling me exactly the sorts of things that
people ask whenever they find me using OpenOffice (one that still has the Sun
logo). However, while it may be great for existing linux-users we are not
typical of the general population out-there that we need to reach.

I do think both are great and both do the job of easy access to the download.
The text needs to be somewhere on the site and preferably just 1 click away or
reached when the page is scrolled down, something easy.

I would say keep the one we have already or switch to the one that is closest to
completion whichever one that is.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

PS this is only my opinion and i might be a little bitter and twisted nowadays

Hi Tom!

Hi David :slight_smile:

I prefer
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/bbnG0Hny0SpccJIZsGp72A?feat=directlink
because it has less information and looks prettier.

Sadly, that seems to be what people want. Information confuses people and seems
to need to be on subsequent pages. Also the picture on

Well, there is no "the people" ... there are people having different
requirements and living/working in different environments. Some guys
want to have in-depth information in advance, some consume basic
information and just want to give things a try.

Thus, it is not about hiding information, but to provide it step-by-step
- managing the concept what people can grasp. That is why I think that
we miss the requirements of quite some users at the moment ...

http://test.libreoffice.org
took ages to appear and people don't seem to have patience beyond a couple of
milliseconds and when it appeared the first image was 'horribly' complicated.
Isn't it a gif? Could it be less size byte-wise?

Same for me ...

By contrast competitors websites show almost nothing and give almost no
information. [...]

I do think both are great and both do the job of easy access to the download.
The text needs to be somewhere on the site and preferably just 1 click away or
reached when the page is scrolled down, something easy.

Yep.

I would say keep the one we have already or switch to the one that is closest to
completion whichever one that is.

I'd say ... whatever helps us to satisfy the needs of the majority of
our users. So even if it might take some additional work, it seems worth
the effort.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

PS this is only my opinion and i might be a little bitter and twisted nowadays

Sorry to hear that :-\

Cheers,
Christoph

Hi Tom, :slight_smile:

It was an interesting and thoughtful perspective, and thank you for
taking the time to recount it.

I prefer
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/bbnG0Hny0SpccJIZsGp72A?feat=directlink
because it has less information and looks prettier.

Sadly, that seems to be what people want.  Information confuses people and seems
to need to be on subsequent pages.  Also the picture on

Well, that is the way we'll probably go. This content was an
"emergency job" intended to allow the site to be launched, and
everything will be up for review.

http://test.libreoffice.org
took ages to appear and people don't seem to have patience beyond a couple of
milliseconds and when it appeared the first image was 'horribly' complicated.
Isn't it a gif?  Could it be less size byte-wise?

It's a .png. I did all the other screenshots as high-quality .jpg
files because they are half to a third of the size, but the site's
lead admin prefers .png because of resizing considerations.

By contrast competitors websites show almost nothing and give almost no
information.  We see pictures of smart people in suits looking at a flashy
computer.  We see pictures of grannies leaning over toddlers both engaged with
whatever is going on on a more sensible looking computer.  We see a young
attractive 'housewife' sitting on over-large creamy coloured sofa either posing
sexily or demurely (or both) and looking at a flashy laptop.  If we ever see the
screen then there is some simple pie-chart of bar-graph or sometimes they risk
showing a line-graph (for business users).

Maybe you're right. We'll have a think about it over Christmas,
because it looks like the site won't roll out until January.

Personally i do like the narrower format because i have not yet followed
'everyone else' to widescreen.  Also for me personally (probably fairly
typically for a linux user) i do prefer having useful information right there
fast without having to dig around for it and the picture is what i personally
like as a linux-user because it show me useful stuff.  The info was well
written, compelling and succinct, telling me exactly the sorts of things that
people ask whenever they find me using OpenOffice (one that still has the Sun
logo).  However, while it may be great for existing linux-users we are not
typical of the general population out-there that we need to reach.

Well, where I live, very few people have wide screens. So what you say
in that respect is an important consideration. I'm glad you liked the
content. Maybe I'll just move it off the front page to another
location, as you suggest.

I do think both are great and both do the job of easy access to the download.
The text needs to be somewhere on the site and preferably just 1 click away or
reached when the page is scrolled down, something easy.

See above...

I would say keep the one we have already or switch to the one that is closest to
completion whichever one that is.

There are actually going to be two sites. One for LibreOffice, the
software, and one for The Document Foundation, the "umbrella
organization" fostering the project.

PS this is only my opinion and i might be a little bitter and twisted nowadays

Your thoughts were interesting and very enlightening. Please do stay
around the project.

If you'd like a suggestion of an area to get involved in, you might
like to consider the documentation team. Do sign up for the list at
documentation+subscribe@libreoffice.org if you have time to give.
We're a small team, but we are acquiring some fine members - we don't
discuss quite so much as on the other lists, but the team members are
cooperative, friendly people who quietly *produce* high quality work.
:wink:

Thanks for your feedback, and read you next time. :slight_smile:

David Nelson

Hi :slight_smile:

I think it is more important to tantalise our target market, to get them keen to
try it. Satisfying people is unhelpful as we need people motivated rather than
complacent.

Curiosity enticed me into trying Linux and then outrage at the realisation of
the amount of time wasted for me by MicroSquish systems (that are designed to be
vulnerable and difficult to fix) encouraged me to stay. The question is how can
we encourage others to try OpenSource? Perhaps a similar route to mine or a
different one per person. How do other products market themselves? Our/your
product is better but how do we get people to want to try it?

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi, :slight_smile:

PS this is only my opinion and i might be a little bitter and twisted nowadays

My favorite cartoon is Dilbert [1] ... At least one knows one isn't
alone in one's views. ;-D

[1] http://dilbert.com/register/

David Nelson

Hi David :slight_smile:

Thanks :slight_smile: I have a very specific agenda at the moment and got side-tracked by
the website issue because of the sites i work on. The ones here look great.

Images
I really dislike jpgs because of the distortions they go through in editing.
Png seems to get much less errors in compression and allows transparency and
animation (obviously) and it's not a proprietary format but it is large. I tend
to keep originals in png or high-quality jpg. Gif is very light-weight better
for websites and is usually best for logos but its colour-range and other
limitations means it can't always be used. With Gimp it is usually quite fast
to "Save As.. " png first and then as gif so that you can fall-back on the png
if the gif goes pixellated or weird.

I hesitate to show the site i work on because my bosses actually prefer some
very clunky and nasty things and i still haven't quite worked out how to sort
templates in joomla so that article pages are restricted into the page defined
in the template. They are fun to work with and a very noble & worthy cause tho
:slight_smile:
http://www.cecf.co.uk

Hmm, now you wont respect me lol. My criticisms of that site would fill
volumes.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile: