website mockups, what is fedora?

[Máirín Duffy]

On Fri, 2009-08-21 at 21:07 -0400, Ben Boeckel wrote:
> We *should* make the transition from the dominant operating 
> systems today as painless as possible. This does mean that we 
> should offer defaults. But not at the expense of putting other 
> alternatives behind a door. 

I disagree that having a default option and an 'others' option is
putting the non-default options behind a door. Please explain why you
feel this is the case.

The loudest critiques of the new design are hailing open suse as the way
to go:

http://software.opensuse.org/

Looking at this screen, I see no mention of GNOME or KDE? How is this
screen giving me a choice of default desktops? Can someone fill me in as
to what is going on here? Has the new design not debuted yet, or
something?

Either way, requiring people to fill out a form to download something is
full of FAIL. Let me show you what a OpenSuSE's current download page
looks like for us mere mortals:

1) Select Type of Computer

  (o) weio3u4t983gh4wt5gh
  ( ) dslkghrelkghndkfngkdsng
  ( ) skdjfkdsgfkdsglkneg

2) Choose an Installation Medium
  (o) DVD
  ( ) aaaaahftri4ehgtlo9h4egkhgtr
  ( ) afhr4f34ekgtrh (Experienced Users Only)

3) Choose a Download Method
  (o) 3hgwiehigu4krgtj
  ( ) iugfel4whfihy4wifh

4) Start Download here 

  _Installation DVD_
  _eargegr_ _aergeagr_ _argearg_

  _Extra Languages _
  _iehglekjlgjesrlgj_

That download button is awful small. Doesn't even say download. I had to
scan the page several times to figure out how it worked.

> Pre-empting the argument that this choice overwhelms users, I 
> argue that these users are the ones who would ask for help in 
> installing Fedora anyways.

My younger brother had absolutely no problem installing Fedora on his
own once given a direct link to the ISO that would work for him. The
installation is fairly straightforward unless you run into a bug (which
is common enough but even folks who can interpret the o3whjgrofheighlreg
usually need help in those situations as well.)

> In order to be considered an Edition, the team would work to 
> provide a complete Fedora experience. This includes 
> documentation, a testing team, support, timely bugfixes, and 
> possibly a critical path-like QA process. Spins would be derived 
> from Editions and be geared towards a specific use-case (as they 
> are today).

Problem is only the Desktop spin meets these requirements right now
AFAIK. All our docs are written for GNOME and as far as I know KDE has
no testing team (I could be wrong on the latter.)

Your point about there being a difference between desktop environment
focused spins and actual specialized use case spins is a very astute
one. The specialized spins like Art Studio, Security Lab, and Electronic
Lab have clear purposes and use cases and users will clearly know what
they are meant for. XFCE and KDE spins really offer no compelling reason
to download them other than 'it's different.'  It might be worth
separating out the spins on the spins site as being either use-case
oriented or desktop-environment oriented, but I do not think we have
enough spins to justify this classification. I can give it a shot in the
spins mockup though.

> This separation should help to fix the problems with the mockups 
> of the download pages. 
> 
I'm sorry, but it really does appear the problems run quite a bit deeper
than that. You mock me up a page that incorporates this editions idea,
and in the process I think you'll see what I mean. 

If you want to push editions as the solution, then I think what you're
really going to have to do is have an entirely separate website for each
edition. That's probably a better way to go. But I really don't want to
balkanize our spins... I think it's important they have Fedora branding.

~m