Re: GTK+ Web site overhaul

[Tim Janik <timj imendio com>]

On Mon, 23 Apr 2007, Martyn Russell wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I recently commented on the mailing list [1] about improving the GTK+
> web site so that .html files don't include formatting. The idea was to
> make it easier for developers and anyone else contributing patches to
> focus on content and not have to worry about style. For a while now, I
> have thought that the GTK+ web site is in dire need of updating, to give
> it a more professional look and feel.
>
> I spent some time looking into the structure of the gtk-web SVN module
> to familiarise myself and formulate some questions, so before I continue:

rock, thanks for signiing up for the task at http://live.gnome.org/GtkTasks
please coordinate with Tshepang who's also been doing some gtk-web shuffling
recently.

> Cleanups:
> =========
> ÿÿ Do we need to reference the GTK+ 1.2 tutorial now even though we
> publicly state we don't support GTK+ 1.2?

yes, some people are still running it, despite us not supporting the
version. i'm also still linking to it when giving my standard replies
to simple gtk questions.
we don't need to prominently link to it at this point, but still have
the content available and maybe linked to it from some "historic pre-2.0"
page.

> ÿÿ We list some applications like GIMP, Dia, etc on the site front page,
> shouldn't just link to the www.gnome-files.org? For one thing, Dia isn't
> exactly one of the top applications I would list here, mostly because it
> doesn't see as much action as GIMP or some of the others.

right. for beast for instance, i have a subpage with a section that lists
"related projects":
   http://beast.gtk.org/related-links
that's whare similar app links can go, this is definitely not front page
matter...

> ÿÿ The screen shots of GTK+ on BeOS are of v1.3 which is out of date
> really, shouldn't this be removed?

maybe, but maybe a note that these are outdated would suffice?

> ÿÿ Some of the .html files have executable attributes set, is this
> intentional?

no, that's bogus CVS attribs usually. nothing in the module needs to be
executable.
my homedir scripts on gtk.org contain an executable copy of gtk-web/install.sh
so technically not even that file needs to be executable.
(let me know in case you update that script and i need to update my copy.)

> ÿÿ The faq/online_faq_fix script fixes up the .html files to remove the
> header/footer .html files (site_top.html and site_bottom.html), we can
> remove this if we restyle all the pages.
> ÿÿ The faq/update_faq script operates on gtk-faq.sgml, but I can't find
> that file anywhere? Anyone know where this is?

that file results from processing the sgml:
  db2html -u gtk-faq.sgml

> ÿÿ The gtk_app_{categories|index}.html files seem redundant and if they
> are, so is the apps/ directory. Can this be removed?

note, the one thing that definitely must be preserved is:
  http://www.gtk.org/api/2.6/
(notice the PERMALINK-FOR-LSB file there). that subdir has to remain
for LSB links to remain valid, everything else is theoretically changable.

> ÿÿ The beos/ pages are badly out of date, we should really update those,
> especially things like the screen shots which make GTK+ look worse that
> it really is.

maybe we should really have some outdated/historic/etc section then where
we can move all the stuff that becoimes irrelevant or unmaintained after
a while.

> ÿÿ The news/ directory doesn't seem to have updated since 2005. Can we
> remove this?

dito.

> ÿÿ The images/freshmeat/ directory seems completely redundant now. Can we
> remove this?
> ÿÿ The images/pink/ directory seems completely redundant now. Can we
> remove this?

dito. (move to historic/ what seems worthe keeping, remove everything else)

> ÿÿ The translations page has broken links
> (http://www.gtk.org/translations.html), namely the Spanish, Chinese and
> Italian links.  Should we update this page? This page is not linked to
> by any other, is it still required?

linking it from somewhere could be interesting, beast also does this on the
website (albeit it also needs its links to be updated since last january).

> ÿÿ Can we remove these unused or unlinked (no href) top level .html files?
> 	ÿÿ setuid.html
> 	ÿÿ gtk_news.html
> 	ÿÿ gtk_news_top_10.html
> 	ÿÿ gtk_app_categories.html
> 	ÿÿ gtk_app_index.html
> 	ÿÿ announce.html
> 	ÿÿ books.html
> 	ÿÿ gtk+-1.2-NEWS.html
> 	ÿÿ glib-1.2-NEWS.html
> 	ÿÿ translations.html

i'd guess so, unless someone actually objects...
have you used google to search for any external references to these
links that indicate they could be worth keeping?
e.g. see:
  http://www.google.de/search?as_lq=www.gtk.org%2Fsetuid.html

that is, the setuid page *definitely* has to be kept. that is an ever 
recurring question and documents an important design decision.

> ÿÿ Can we remove these unused scripts:
> 	ÿÿ freshmeat_update.sh

is it revivable? otherwise removing should be fine...


> Improvements:
> =============
> ÿÿ Can we update the look and feel here and give the site a fresh coat of
> paint? I was thinking of something similar to other GNOME projects (e.g.
> http://www.gnome.org/projects/evolution/). If we can, then we can
> consider removing box_*.html in the top level directory and updating the
> scripts that use them.

yerah, for anything review, you should be outting up  some example pages
somewhere else first, so the community (gtk-devel-list readers, the p.g.o
crowd) can comment first before changing looks.
once moved to CSS, it'd be good to support multiple page styles though,
that way we should be able to cope with stylistic disagrements more
easily ;)

> ÿÿ Should we consider adding a blurb on the site about Maemo and the
> N770/N800 products and how they use GTK+? So far on the site I have seen
> little mentioned about GTK+ being usable on a mobile platform.

since the advert of the recent press release regardiung GMAE, that
actually seems advisable, yes:
  http://www.gnome.org/mobile/

> --
> Regards,
> Martyn

again, thanks for your effort. it'll be nice to see some movement
on gtk's webface ;)

---
ciaoTJ