Freshmeat II

linuxlover wrote in to note that Scoop has redesigned Freshmeat, so called Freshmeat II features a ridiculous number of new features, and a super clean design. Congrats scoop, and ignore the flamerz this time around. Those who can, create. Those who can't, bitch.

Comments

Don't follow that link

[crisco]

you got me you rat bastard :)

Lucky I could kill off all those sorry little pop up windows before it takes down the machine.

That'll learn me.

How 'bout creating AND bitching?

[Pflipp]

Well, I would like this OSDN thing a lot better if it wouldn't trash up every site ('xcept /.?) it acquired. I liked the previous version of themes.org a whole lotta better. And now? "Adjust your monitor"-colors, a little grey OSDN bar at the top followed by a LARGE grey OSDN bar with silly baner-shaped banners (I *liked* the VA Linux community ads they had before - nice shape, not so much in the way, often even a very nice design). gtk.themes.org has become the worst, but they're ALL so DULL! Before this, every t.o website would be in the spirit of a theme itself, from head to toes. Some of them were simply adorable. Now where did that go?

And hey, that grey OSDN bar always makes me feel like some silly viewer plugin has been loaded...

And now Freshmeat. For years a very clean portal, a website where you would go if you wanted to sort out a few programs WITHOUT having to load all the accompanying trash as you would with e.g. linuxberg. Well, I can only say that I am glad they left the biggest part of that spirit intact (you really thought I was gonna brag about this, weren't ya? ;-). But well, I must say that I like the stuff they didn't change best, and that I do lament some interface stuff that they threw away... Yet I guess I'll get used to this stuff really soon. (It's just the stupid OSDN bar again! %)

So I guess this bitching makes me impotent at creating. But I don't feel that is really correct. OK, so I didn't do FM's new design, nor am I doing such stuff for daily work, granted, but being creative is a big part of my life.

(OTOH I perfectly understand the motivation for CmdrTaco to say what he said, and I also understand that it's almost impossible to say something in a Slashdot headline without getting critisized about it, but hey, he did almost take away my possibility to long back to the times before OSDN borgified every cool website around :-)

It's... It's...

ok... no

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm usually not a rob basher but this time you've really pissed me off.

you're obviously not much of a freshmeat reader because if you were, you wouldn't be against any of the constructive criticism (flame, huh?!) freshmeat's readers are providing.

you obviously just looked at the front page, said it was pretty, and went ahead and told the world that since they have a problem with it, it obviously means they're not an OSDN employee and therefore too dumb or something..

personally, i don't care what scoop did to freshmeat visually.. hell ive gotton used to navigating all kinds of websites in lynx over the years so that's not a problem. scoop also added many features, and asside from that and the fact that he's trying to turn freshmeat into a community portal, i really couldn't care less.

however, he did remove useful features, such as the lounge, which was really the only reason i chose freshmeat over any of the others all these years.. i was able to neglect checking up on updates for any amount of time i desired and come back to see everything i missed, and i never missed a software update. i might as well not have a registered account anymore since i am forced to browse updates as i always would have had to on the main page.

please scoop, add the lounge back, and taco, please dont assume everyone is a troll. even though you may be able to hate your users, scoop can't afford it

/. has a good design - "Light" mode

[isaac]

Go to your homepage preferences in your user page and select "Light" mode. Set your preferred text/bg/link colors in your browser. Enjoy incredibly fast, clean slashdot.

Not a table in sight, just the text, the whole text, and nothing but the text.

-Isaac

Re:OT - Your Sig

[vsync64]

Yes, she said it. However, this quote was taken out of context, because this sentence is included in the paragraph:

File sharing is misnamed. When I share something with you, I only have a portion of it left for me. File sharing is really file copying. This activity is not per se bad; it is how it is often used that is the problem.

I think everybody agrees with that. Now, yes, we all know she's insane and hungry for power, but if you read the rest of the quote in that interview, she almost sounds reasonable, and she makes a few interesting points.

C'mon, people, if we want to argue about something, let's not resort to posting vaguely inflammatory out-of-context quotes.

--

FM vs. SF

[autocracy]

From the standpoint of a developer, SourceForge is indeed better. But from the standpoint of Joe Enduser, if you want software then you're likely better off looking for it on FM first. Get it? Get it.

The problem with capped Karma is it only goes down...

Clean Design - Like Kuro5hin's?

[Bonker]

I think our friends have discovered one of those 'perfect' designs in terms of layout and color combination. On a second glance, the new Freshmeat didn't look exactly like Kuro5hin, but close enough to make me think that they may have arrived at the same goal via different paths.

Re:Clean Design - Like Kuro5hin's?

[alhaz]

This Is Not A Flame. That being said . . .

I don't like the new design. And it's not just the selection boxes.

The first time freshmeat was redesigned, there was a long "WTF?!" moment caused both by the unfamiliarity and by the way some things were in places that just didn't make sense.

But over all, it was clear that a lot of time and effort went into the visual design, and it worked out quite well once the functional problems were fixed. Even if it did take forever to render all those boxes.

This time, I can understand why he got rid of the boxes, but he seems to have forgotten what they were for. The last time it was re-worked, it was easier to browse than the original layout. This time, it's harder to browse than the original layout.

And for some very specific reasons.

The boxes were good because they visually grouped everything belonging to a particular item. There is no longer a visual grouping.

Try this - grab the scroll bar with your mouse, close your eyes, scroll up and down a few times until you're sure you're not where you used to be in the page, then glance at the page for a fraction of a second and close your eyes again - Can you remember how many items there were on the screen? Probably not. With the old design, you could have, because the boxes made it very clear, without having to pay attention to detail and repetition of a pattern, what belonged to what.

The black text in the titles right above the light blue text in the by-line is a big mistake. The blue text is more eye-catching, and takes your attention away from the important information: the project you were looking for.

The blue bar on the side is superfluous, but that's just a matter of personal preference.

The selection boxes are inexcusable, even if he's already apologized and promised to take them away. If you add more clicks to a process than there were before, you will invariably annoy your users. This should have been totally obvious, but clearly it wasn't.

The grey bar on the right isn't differentiated enough from the center, which makes the page harder to read. The text is far too close together, it's distracting.

It can be fixed. I understand that the big deal was the back-end. But I *really hope the front end does get fixed.

Re:Clean Design - Like Kuro5hin's?

[newbienetwork]

Like Kuro5in's? No....not really. I mean, Kuro5in's design is not all together unique. It is composed of a layout that is as such: A top navigation (which is not anything new, and quite common, see Amazon.com) A left and right border section with links and news snippets (see SlashDot, and practically every other site out there) A center column where the main articles are present (again, see every other quality site out there) Not to say the graphics are not nice, etc. However, in and of itself, the Design of the Layout is nothing new. The reason why it works so well is because it was designed for familiarity. People like things that are familiar. Hence the whole reason cars have brake pedals and gas pedals in certain places for certain countries. Imagine what would happen if one day in the US, Green = Stop and Red = Go? So I don't think its fair to imply that Freshmeat went out and did what Kuro5hin did. Freahmeat went out and did what a smart webmaster would do, opt for a good quality, popular design.

Great Stuff

[Angreallabeau]

"Here's baby-blue freshmeat II, codenamed 'Verdi'. "

Verdi - Verizon

Baby Blue - Big Blue

Freshmeat is going corporate! Watchout!

:-) -Angreal P.S. Great Site

Oh for the love of....

[Gen-GNU]

Freshmeat is not an FTP site. It is a portal site. It provides a search functionality, and provides links to locations which match the search pattern. It also provides info on what you can expect to find when you follow the link.

The links surround a common theme, software. Some of it is free, some Free, some both, some neither. A discussion area is provided to discuss the software at the end of the link.

If you want an FTP site, use sunsite. For those of us who like some info before we spend the dload time, freashmeat is wonderful.

(BTW, great new look!)

Re:Oh for the love of....

[Nodatadj]

I think he was saying that all the extra shit that they have: The members area, the "features" etc... are all pointless. Freshmeat was just a place to find out about software, but like /., it's now trying to be a jack of all trades, master of none

Create?

[dieman]

Of course, all CmdrTaco creates is spagetti-full perl code. :)

Why dont you redisign slashdot! I wanna see you follow your words :)

Re:So when is /. going to get a decent design?

[toastmaster]

What do you mean? Slashdot matches so well with my default Win95 background!

Haha

[Fervent]

Those who can, create. Those who can't, bitch.

That explains so much. Is that why you're constantly ragging on stupid issues, CmdrTaco? :)

Time to fire up the CVS!

[verbatim]

Hook up a project on Sourceforge and link it from freshmeat and get that CVS tree going.. this could be a goldmine project.

pfft. ;)

Very nice...

[Millennium]

I like the new layout. I very much like his increased standards support, though I could wish he'd gone all the way. A quick run through Tidy corrected all the errors (less than 50; a respectably low number) and had no effect on the layout other than to change the width of the columns slightly (the same situation in both Netscape and IE), so the amount of work to make the HTML fully valid would be minimal at best (mostly just inserting tags at certain places, and making the one quick tweak in the CSS to get the columns back to normal).

But the site is much improved, regardless. I could wish Slashcode would do the same with its standards support (a run through Tidy corrected some 450 errors, generated CSS that even Netscape interpreted beautifully, and the only change made in the layout was the indentation on the lists in Slashboxes, again easily changed in the CSS).

However, all the same, keep up the good work! The sites are looking better all the time, and the functionality is improving too. And for the record, I was one of the (apparently few) people who liked the old layout and wrote in a letter of support. But I like this layout too.
----------

The customer is always right!

[Palisade]

I thought the whole point of running a site for the benefit of end-users was to make them happy and keep them coming back. Here's the problem with so-called "non-profit" (yeah right) websites, they don't give a rats ass for the end-users. Cmdrtaco's insult and berating of end-users who visit his site and freshmeat is similar to the way free software projects disregard end-user opinions and complaints.

Companies (monopolies are the exception here) have always kissed the customer's ass and held high the mantra, "The customer is always right". This is the way it should be, because they exist to serve us.

Yet from Cmdrtaco's, Scoop's, and thousands of other "non-profit" websites, non-profit (non-advertisement, such as #efnet radio) internet radio streams and non-profit free software projects' perspectives, the customer is an annoyance that can just go away. They shout, "Go jump in a lake, we don't need you anyways", and these sites really don't. Gone is the respect for customers and their opinions.

And yes we are customers. The day you placed that advertisement banner on your site you became a business, with customers paying with their time and attention.

Well I'm sick of the attitude and disrespect I am given. This is one reader who won't load up freshmeat.net nor slashdot.org on a daily basis any longer. Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

bitching wont stop... I hope scoop doesnt either

[rkt]

I remember the last time changes were made... scoop wrote back saying that he was close to loosing his control over freeks who couldn't stop bitching.

Just like Someone yesterday asked "Can linus kill linux"? The answer is Yes... but do you anyone would kill his own baby/creation ? NO
If someone does something to his own creation/baby, its because it means a great deal to him/her.

So comming back to this issue of Freshmeat, I think people should appretiate what scoop is doing rather than bitch about the changes. He is here to make your life easy not to give you reasons to bitch. If you can't handle it, just get the hell out of here. This is the Internet. Changes are supposed to happen. You would be in a stone age if it was not for some freeks who designed the first stone Tool

So grab a mug of coffee (or milk if u want) and enjoy the new look... and if you don't like it, dont even bother to logon the net. You are ancient.

Ironically...

[Greyfox]

I went over there and they were flying that "WTF" banner ad. Oddly ironic considering the immediate response most users have to a new layout.

I'll have to play with the site a bit and see if I like the new layout or not.

Freshmeat vs. Sourceforge, boxes on FMII

[autocracy]

Just to agree with somebody else in this thread, Freshmeat is indeed better than Sourceforge. This is not a flame, it's just my belief that Sourceforge needs to get more bandwidth...

If you're as annoyed as I am about those little drop-boxes for links, don't worry. They're going to remove them soon.

Considering that, my only caveat is the removal of the urgency info - it's been replaced by a "Focus of Release" thing. It's a nice addition, but I still would like the urgency tag - makes sifting through the stuff easier...

The problem with capped Karma is it only goes down...

Re:Sorry, troll post

[nathanh]

But, in case anyone didn't know,

Freshmeat > Sourceforge.

Sorry Andover / VA Linux, Sourceforge is too slow. I like Freshmeat

If you just use freshmeat/sourceforge as sites to leech software, sure you'll probably like freshmeat more than sourceforge.

But if you develop software then there is no comparison. Sourceforge has bug tracking, patch managers, technical support, CVS archives, maillist admins, maillist archives, etc, etc.

I like Freshmeat too. I use it for finding the odd piece of software when it is not in Debian. But there's no comparison to Sourceforge for code development in an online working group.

Sourceforge is easily the best online project managing software I've ever used. It balances neatly between open-source requirements (public mailing lists, constant availability of source) and private requirements for developers (private areas, admin areas, shell accounts, etc).

PS: I use sourceforge every day.

Nostalgic for the freshmeat of the mid nineties

[Cardinal]

Anyone else feeling nostalgic for the really old Freshmeat designs? Like the one with the screaming crowd in the freshmeat logo?

Ah, for the good old days.

I wanted to like the design but...

[John Whorfin]

Well, I liked FM's last redesign but I found this one, well, dorky.

But you know what? I'm not that bent over it. I'm not going to flame anyone over it. I'll probably still occasionally search FM when I need some software info and that'll be that.

I do wish scoop didn't make the pages fixed width though... that's such a PITA

Re:Too much design, too feature laden.

[Karn]

WTF are you some kind of wuss?

Real men use telnet: It comes with everything, it's super lightweight, and I don't get all those stupid graphics and ads.. Sure, it takes some getting used to with having to parse HTML in your head, in real time, but it really does make browsing much better.

I like my /.!

[autocracy]

Read the subject, 'nuf said!

The problem with capped Karma is it only goes down...

..and themes.org?

[update()]

Whenever a familiar site changes, it always seems clumsy and unintuitive, so I like to reserve my opinion until I've used it for a while. As long as we're critiquing VA-owned sites, though, Themes.org made a major renovation of their site a couple of years ago and I still find it almost impossible to use.

It's an extreme case of featuritis run amok. I used to check the WindowMaker page almost daily and I contributed a bunch of themes. I've basically given up on the site because I find it impossible to browse comfortably.

some (hopefully) constructive criticism

[kellan1]

So I'm sort of disappointed with the level of criticism that Freshmeat. I'm glad there are new features on Freshmeat, some of them sound exciting, (I but i'm totally turned off by the new design, and here is why:

1. the whole page is a table (minus the ad of course) this is very very noticeable slow, and unpleasant.

2. the blue bar on the left runs down the entire page, significantly impacting the amount of space to display content. and yet it adds VERY little to the page, just a few links, and a search box near the very top of the page. this is very poor use of space.

3. the gray bar on the right is hard to read, not hard to read if i sit there and look at it, but hard to read if i'm trying to skim a list of 100 newly added applications in 30 seconds, which is, in truth, what people do.

4. information is not clearly divided. its hard to visually breakup the new entries in the center column the yellow circle is supposed to help i assume (as it doesn't add any other functionality and is repeated over and over and over) and yet it also fails to convey any info. (its a meaningless icon)

5. similar problems in the right hand bar, no clear separation of days, if i'm scrolling down the page, Monday blurs into Sunday blurs into Saturday.

6. Some people have pointed out the similarity with k5. K5's interface is overwhelming, but I was willing to deal w/ that, adjust, spend the time learning it, because there is an amazing amount of interaction going on at k5. this is not the case w/ freshmeat. I know its fun to work on community features, but I really don't see how they improve freshmeat all that much. (Especially if they come at the expense of the old feature set was immensely popular)

7. doing another quick once other or the site, i can't emphasize enough how hard that center column is to use. what was wrong w/ the old boxes? they were cool and usable! ditto in the actual project detail, all the information because a jumbled mess. (and that damn meaningless icon shows up again)

8. don't do it. do we need another community site? if you want to work on a community site, work on the bender code, or scoop, or squishdot. instant messaging in scoop would be an awesome addition, especially if it could optionally get logged somewhere like your diary. that way we could take a lot of the more vitriol debates "offline".

9. i'm going to take a leap of faith and assume that when i click on the totally uninformative "Step 2" button, I'll be brought to a page where I can preview this comment?

thanks, kellan

Efficient, clean, easy on the eyes

[Wraithlyn]

Nice and spartan! They should make that blue login column on the left a fixed size, not a percentage though... it's already creating a lot of vertical white (blue?) space without being too wide also.

Sorry, troll post

[Tairan]

But, in case anyone didn't know,

Freshmeat > Sourceforge.

Sorry Andover / VA Linux, Sourceforge is too slow. I like Freshmeat

Re:Sorry, troll post

[vectro]

Erhm, you know that freshmeat is owned by VA too, right?

No, really, it sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

You're losing 1/4 of the space to lefthand column. It's also far less readable for quick scanning of packages. All in all, I'd say it went downhill.

Flamerz? Why?

[HaggiZ]

I love it! Very clean, very easy to use, very obvious design/navigation.

I'll never forget the first time I used freshmeat, it took me a good month to work out how to simply just browse for something without doing a search first, because off the way "appindex" was written without any spacing I was reading it as part of the human anatomy and not an "Application Index".

My only criticism would be to switch the login and menu/news things to the opposite side of the screen. Having been a web developer for over 6 years now and having to put up with corporates doing usuability testing which often kills a damn sexy looking site (heheh, nobody wants to use it! They just want it to look cool!!), navigation and the like should be left based as it is where the human eye is naturally used to moving for index/content topics. And all those usuability testers would love those "hot links" that you permanently have across the top of the site for easy jumping to sections.

Good work
--
Glenn

HEALTH WARNING:

If it ain't broke.....

[pixelix]

....don't fix it.

Why did they change it?

It'd be pointless just posting and saying 'hey, the design sucks', but it does....kinda.

Design is a very subjective thing, and I'm sure Scoop is happy with the new Freshmeat, but I think (and judging by the number of comments just here, I think I'm right) there'll be another change again soon.

Constructive Criticism:

Fonts are too big.
New logo - uugh...what was wrong with the old one?
Blue bar down left side - uses a _lot_ of space for very little gain.
Search facility seems to be b0rken at the moment - I'll put that down to /.-effect though.
Underline mouseover on links - nice touch, but poor choice of colours - you can't tell what is and is not a link, until you hover over - this is especially evident on the grey bar on the right hand side.

IMHO, bring back the old page. :/

--
jambo
system.admin.without.a.clue

Re:Yep, if it doesn't work under lynx, it's broken

[technos]

Umm, all of the ADA lawsuit threats against web pages have amounted to hot air. DOJ won't even take your complaint. There is only speculation that it may even apply, under the vague parallel that a web page is a 'commercial service' for public offering. This assumtion is prolly bogus based on the fact that webpages in general do not charge for their services.

So far as telecom in general goes, the ADA only applies to common carriers, such as your ISP and telco. (This was the basis for the suit against AOL).

Perhaps you are confusing it with Section 508 of the Workforce Investment Act, which does mandate that all web pages have to be accessable to the blind, but which only applies to the Federal government.

Too much design, too feature laden.

[Urban Existentialist]

Lets face it, Freshmeat is basically an FTP site. I don't want fancy graphics, editorials, members areas, hottubs and god knows what. I'me getting fed up of all that shit. I just want something easily viewable in lynx that will allow me to search for the files I want!

Freshmeat are becoming another yahoo, and losing site of their central purpose. The problem is, that the linux community revolves around a few sites such as freshmeat and /., and these sites appear to be losing thier identity. Identity is important - it defines who we are as a community. But I fear that the Linux cummunity will lose out and the whims of the marketing department at Andover.net will win again. Its a damn shame.

You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-

So when is /. going to get a decent design?

[flatpack]

Nothing personal, but as much as I'm sure that /. looked revolutionary back when it was first designed, it now manages to look clunky and outdated compared to modern sites like kuro5hin. There's just too much in the way of solid blocks of particularly tasteless colours, and the HTML needs to lose the way that everything sits within a single table, making the page so slow to load...

Come on Taco, when you change /. over to Bender are we going to see a site redesign to make it cleaner and more modern looking? It's a real change to give /. a much needed overhaul...

Re:So when is /. going to get a decent design?

[Julius X]

Not a bad idea....I have been wondering for a VERY long time when /. would get its first real design upgrade.

Not to say the current design looks bad....they never do while they're in place. But its definitely true that the design could use a nice (if subtle) overhaul.

It's really interesting when you look at older designs/designed pages from 96-97 and compare them to now....very noticable. Even nostalgic. But I would hate to feel that way about /., that saying that a site that thrives on the latest happenings of the geek community is "nostalgic" of a site designed in the "late 90's".

Oh well...whatever happens, I'll probably still read the site. :)

-Julius X

They're shutting down!

[PhilHibbs]

What does MySQL Error: Server shutdown in progress mean?

Mmm

[f5426]

> Those who can, create. Those who can't, bitch

Great journalistic stance. We all know that Freshmeat ][ have no relation with slashdot. And sure, the announcment is not to be discussed. So what ? Is this only an ad for another Valinux site ? And you tell your readership to shut up ?

Second, freshmeat.net produced a FUD/flamebait article on mozilla a couple of days ago. 100 post discussed it to various length. In freshmeat ][, the article is still there, but the comments have disapeared. Great respect of readership there too.

Cheers,

--fred

Newsserver gone?

[egghat]

I always read freshmeat via nntp. Is it gone? I don't get updates for Jan. 31.

Ugh

[nebby]

Scoop, don't let the flamers get you down. I hear it all the time from people complaining about my site. Sometimes they have good suggestions, but a lot of the time those who are nasty are just bitching about stupid stuff that anyone who didn't look at computing like a religion wouldn't care about.

FreshMeat II : Electric Boogaloo

[Ether Trogg]

Very nice! I like it! Scoop, you've outdone yourself on this one.

Remember the last time changes were made to FM? You'd have thought that Scoop had blasphemed Allah while in Iran, the way that people reacted so harshly. Well, to those of you that don't appreciate the hard work, and spiffy new features, get bent!

Well done, nice job, pip pip cheerio.