FreeBSD Project Launches New Website

UltimaGuy writes "The FreeBSD Project has launched a new website today. The new design was created by Emily Boyd, a student at Smith College that they had the pleasure of working with through Google's Summer of Code program. The old website is also still available."

Comments

Quite an improvement.

[St. Arbirix]

I must admit, it makes it look more like they're providing a serious product rather than something made by a group of hippies and slackers.

*dives under a table with his Powerbook*

Re:Quite an improvement.

[aztektum]

You know if this story was about some start up who raised a buncha money in VC and had a slick website and was promising a unique product that would revolutionize the world and it turned out to be a battery operated hammer, I might agree with you. But the story is about FreeBSD, which isn't dead btw, and the majority of /. readers, whether they want to admit to it or not, recognize the quality of this product.

Could we be a little less cynical and jaded over something as trivial as FreeBSDs website redesign?

Late 24 hours+

[Lucractius]

I posted this yesterday
( " The New FreeBSD Website is UP Thursday October 06, @06:15AM Rejected" )
as news only to be rejected. I dont know why it was rejected so i cant complain i was treated unfairly. But when someone posts news and is rejected then the news appears a day later posted by someone else. It makes me wonder what the fsck is going on round here.

On the topic. The new design is a major improvement, much nicer to look at, and hopefuly it can get carried through to a HTML version of the Handbook some time soon. that could do with a style overhaul, just to make reading the thing online nicer :)

Re:go back to school emily

[hey!]

The old site packed a lot of information in without sucking, which is justification for admiration in itself. The new ones is in fact a bit better on this account (in my opinion). It looks a lot better, and I understand that this is important in a world where many people don't have the time or skill to look at things more than skin deep. However, this in itself doesn't impress me much. There are a lot of good designers out there (and a lot of bad ones to be sure); it isn't hard to make things look whizzy. What's nice is that substance and organization don't take a backseat the pizzaz, resulting in solid and usable design.

I had this discussion about this with one of the junior guys at work the other day. He was holding forth on how the web was really about information content, and sites should emphasize text, data and organization. I said, hold on. Should a web site for a movie or video game be text-centric? Or one proselytizing for a religion, or promoting a rock band? Web sites don't have to content-centric or text-centric, any more than books all need to be dictionaries. They do have to have a purpose, to accomplish certain goals. They are software. They have to variously allow the user to accomplish certain goals, or in some cases produce a kind of experience. One side or the other of this dichotomy may predominate, but there's nothing wrong with a reference site that looks impressive, or an entertainment site that also informs.

The old and new sites both get high marks for usability and organization, based on how I use this kind of site.Genreally, when I go to a software project's site, I'm in one of two modes:

First Time Mode:

(1) What does this thing do?

(2) How does it stack up against other projects/products in a similar space?

(3) What is required to run this?

(4) How do I obtain (buy/download) this software? How do I install it?

(5) Who is the organization behind this? Will it be there in six months? Can I get a hold of somebody if necessary?

(6) Where are the training and support materials?

(7) What are the differences between the various versions?

(8) What are other people saying about this? Is there evidence of mindshare?

Return Mode:

(1) What has changed in the product since my last visit? How are the various releases different? How have hardware requirements changed?

(2) Are there security or high priority bug fixes?

(3) What has changed in the support/documentation?

(4) Where do I get the software if I haven't installed it, or upgrade it if I have?

(5) Does the project show evidence of continued development and ongoing mindshare?

In both these modes both the old and new sites are very good for my purposes. The new one is definitely more "professional" looking, which is to say it looks a bit less like an open source project site and a bit more like a commercial software site, only not as brain dead.

Asking for legal trouble?

[Florian]

The new FreeBSD site boldly states: "Based on BSD Unix (r)". To my knowledge, the AT&T vs. Berkeley case was settled with (among others) the regulation that BSD may not be called Unix. The official Unix trademark FAQ states that Unix "must not be used as a generic term. It must not be used in connection with products, unless the product is licensed to use the mark".

I am not sure whether the new headline on the homepage is a very wise and professional move of the FreeBSD project.

Re:About time..

[Arandir]

Hopefully they will give the handbook a bit of a spring clean next...

Are you volunteering? The FreeBSD Documentation Project is always on the look out for new blood.