RFC: Home page design

[Martin Pool]

2009/9/9 Emma Jane Hogbin <emma at hicktech.com>:
> Hello,
>
> Thank you once again for your feedback on the Bazaar Web site to date.
> The latest round of suggestions have been incorporated and there is
> now an HTML mockup of the site ready for review. This design
> incorporates many new elements:
>
> 1. utility navigation from previous designs combined into a single bar.
> 2. extended navigation added to the "carousel" design.
> 3. clear, unique buttons for "action" areas of the site.
> 4. more yellow.
> 5. revised "action" panes in the (now yellow) area of the site.
> 6. nicer screenshot in the carousel area (thanks Gary!)
>
> 960 width navigation: http://www.flickr.com/photos/emmajane/3903764440/
> Full width navigation: http://www.flickr.com/photos/emmajane/3902988367/
>
> Things that are not yet completed (i.e. don't bother providing
> feedback on this yet):
> 1. carousel navigation
> 2. search "prettification"
>
> For this round of feedback could you please address the following points:
> 1. Do you prefer the extended navigation (bottom of the page) in "960
> width" or "full width" design?
> 2. The yellow "action" panes are based on the initial wireframes. They
> are: Download, Extend, Get Help. Are they the right "actions" for the
> front page of the site?
> 3. The new icons are based on the logo. Staying with the road
> sign/construction theme, are there images you would prefer to see for
> each of the action buttons?
> 4. Additional constructive comments?

This is looking really good.

I think all of the backgrounds should scale to the full width of the
window - there should never be white borders along the sides (or top
or bottom for that matter).  I think it's ok to have the actual text
content set to a reasonable width though.  I think the way it looks in
 <http://www.flickr.com/photos/emmajane/3902988367/> gives a weird
top-hat effect.

I think the point of footer navigation is to be there but to be
unobtrusive, so I'd even think about getting rid of the specific blue
background down there and just having it displayed on a pale yellow
continuation of the body area.

I don't think Extend is the right action, it's just not a sensible
first step for people.  Plugins are going to be something they
encounter either after they've been using bzr for a while and they
want to get more out of it, or in answer to a question like "is there
a web viewer" or "does this integrate with Eclipse"?  The right thing
is probably for that to go to a getting-started guide that includes
links to the plugins and a description of how to use them.

I think Paul's point about people coming here to see news is a good
one, so I'd like some visual emphasis on the news about the latest
release.  Most of this page will change at most every few months (once
it's settled down) whereas the news will change every month.

In the text about "Improve your workflow..." I'd like to call out some
particular advantages like support for accessing svn, hg and git
branches, with links to documentation of those features.  I think
mentioning specific features with a promise to find out more is more
interesting than a general tour, and gives us a chance to answer key
"will this work" questions at the first glance.  (But we can certainly
do that within this general design, and at this point we're talking
more about the design than the text.)  Or for example "commercial
support" is an obvious thing to link to a page explaining what support
is available and how to get it.

The body text is a bit faded, viewed on my laptop screen, especially
when scaled down
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/emmajane/3902988367/sizes/l/> and it may
look faded on some displays.  Perhaps make it darker.

How about a positive quote from a happy user under the "Bazaar" headline?

I agree about losing the exclamation marks from the actions.

I think the roadsign icons are nice; we could take that further with a
blue/white "info" graphic for help.  I wonder if that section would
flow better with the icons above the text they describe, and then no
text below them?

-- 
Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>