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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."
Well that's a heck of an improvement on the old one. Now if only some of the other BSD's (Open, i'm looking at you) would do something similar, would be good. And yes, i know, better they spend time hacking at the source than making their site pretty, but as was shown by the summer of code thing, finding people willing to take on the responsibility of sorting it out isn't hard.
...this is much much better than the old website. The important details are much clearer (i.e where to get it, what the current releases are) and the whole thing generally feels very fresh and modern.
Hopefully they will give the handbook a bit of a spring clean next...whilst informative it sometimes lacks in either explaining concepts sufficiently or just assumes a lot of prior knowledge in certain areas.
Kev
Didn't know it was that new... I was just looking for info on FreeBSD Java on wednesday on those pages (the new ones).
The FreeBSD website was in dire need of an overhaul.
Looks like the new site keeps the best of the old site, but in a better form.
It'd be nice if the 'Large' stylesheet also made the columns wider however.
Use the 'Large' stylesheet you old blind coot. :)
(agreed about the naming convention however, but sadly I think around 90% of web developers haven't worked this out yet)
The problem for us blind old coots is finding the large stylesheet. Maybe they should default to large and let you whippersnappers choose the tiny stylesheet.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
It's still grey on grey action.
By the time you are 60 you lose 30% of your contrast.
Especially if you read Wired, you will appreciate that there is a reason why we make paper white as possible and use black ink.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
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*
Direct away from face when opening.
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
XML - A clever joke would be here if
What! A new web page a no new logo? I couldn't see anything about the logo contest at first glance. (disclaimer: I didn't submit any logos, no personal agenda).
Come on FreeBSD, it has been 3 months since the contest ended, are you having trouble deciding which is best out of the 500 submitted or which is the least worst? At least post the submissions in a gallery.
i watch 1280x800 resolution on my 15,4" laptop, but my parents look 800x600 on a 17"CRT , and i still notice things that they miss...
this micro measured large stylesheet button should be a bit bigger and have more contrast perhaps. currently it's like throwing a walking stick to blind man and missing by a mere "150 feet", which is quite a radius to search for a blind man.
anyway, aside from that, the site looks cool! i love it (thou i liked the old one too). and they can pretty honestly say again that freebsd ownz
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
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.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I am not sure whether the new headline on the homepage is a very wise and professional move of the FreeBSD project.
gopher://cramer.plaintext.cc http://cramer.plaintext.cc:70
lets here it for primary colors.. yellow to red.. .. nice layout, but I'm not a fan of the red...
I wonder if they did any research on usablilty and making it easier to find things..
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
You know what I mean? I thought we'd see; "In today's ever-shifting market one must dynamically synergize when the chance arises, in order to properly facilitate the introduction of vital new resources for the further progressive development of their intellectual property portfolio."
Or at least something more along the lines of, "here's where it all comes together in one operating system; Middleware, Applications and Management Tools."
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
No.... cant have change.. noo... All kidding aside, i was used to the old format and knew where stuff was, but this seems to address that issue for new comers..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Contrast isn't so great now, text is tiny and yet too big with the large stylesheet.
It's also following the brain-dead trend to LOCK the size/alignment of the layout making window resizing useless; a PRINT versus WEB layout. Sorry, my windows aren't primarily 800x600.
If you are centering your layout, you have a whitespace flaw/problem.
All the submissions remain the copyright of the artist.
Then why did the contest rules fail to grant FreeBSD Foundation a limited non-exclusive licence to display each submission publicly for the duration of the contest?
Ok, it needed some improvements, and also a lot may be because I'm used to it, but overall, I preferred the old site.
For a start, it made full use of my browsers screen size (the new site only uses a quarter of my browsers window.. damn 'fixed sized' web sites)
It also (and maybe as a consequence) squashes too much into a small space.
The news/upcoming events/in the media/security advisories sections now have too much prominence. Sure, this may be handy for 'regulars', but regulars know where to look anyway.
Surely, the purpose is to grab -- and keep -- new visitors to FreeBSD. As such, this large section merely confuses.
But, ultimately, I resent this page being squashed into a quarter of my window!!
Sig out of date
She has some nice OSS designes under her belt. A Google search shows she designed the pgsql site, for one. Her designes are attractive, but not as accessible as I would like. For example, most of her fonts are below 1em (1em being the size you tell your browser that you want). It is fine to go less than 1em for things such as copyright notices and advisory feeds and whatnot, but the majority of the text on the site should always be 1em: the user should have his say on what the font size is. I would also prefer more of my monitor real estate be used. I'm not a fan of squashed designes. Overall, everything is an improvement on the eyesore that was the status quo.
$ whatis themeaningoflife
themeaningoflife: not found
...And if you stare at a CRT all day, you'll curse the fools who apply the same scheme to websites.
$ whatis themeaningoflife
themeaningoflife: not found
A "stylesheet" that needs cookies and Javascript? Ugh.
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
roflmao dude,
:D
>>> Yeah, not really true at all. Well, i guess it's true if you're a moron.
do you read what you write ?
it is true, and i cant be a moron in such case (whereas you seem to be a solid candidate).
a) my freebsd cant do a thing with my usb irda dongle, my freebsd barely works with my digicam (with some hacks on libusb) and freebsd doesnt know a "dong" about my webcam. - so the hw support for desktops is a bit lacking, at least from my point of view. (yeah the motherboard, screen, hdd and network card work, but there's more to a computer nowadays)
b) a friend of mine who is a pretty solid solaris and linux admin, had to ask for my help just to get some elementary and a bit not so elementary web server/mailserver software apps running. he's no newb and knows what usually there is to do, but freebsd is a lot different from a linux box to a newb.
c) linux is glitching a lot lately, most "common" distributions enable far too many things by default, many of them having exploits and unless the user manages to keep all his n+1 applications up to date (on debian apt-get dist-upgrade does the trick but still, many users havent even once used the command). havent seen redhat a lot lately, but last time i saw it, the rpm tracking was a hell and i dont ever want to see that again.
---
next time you try to call someone a moron, be kind to challenge them to an iq test first (i'm sorry but i most probably will not be the loser against you) and please read what you write before you post smth that entitles yourself as one
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
While we're at it ... may i suggest in that case to just rename Linux to "Red Herring" ?
How else will you persist a stylesheet selection over multiple pages*?
Without the cookie or javascript you will just get the default stylesheet each time and you will have to change it on every page you go to.
* Yes, you can store it at the server end, with a lot of hassle. I don't think this is an ideal solution.
You're an idiot. Chuck (AKA Beastie) is a daemon not a demon. Dumbass.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
If you use Firefox, see View -> Text Size or View -> Page Style. There is always the possiblity to use multiple style sheets where the page doesn't have to do anything to switch them, the user does this in his browser.
0 5-October/002938.html
If you use 1600x1200, the width is fixed to about 800 pixels. Well done. Perhaps they should've hired one that isn't stuck in 15" 800x600 stone age.
The most hilarious thing is this bug: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-www/20
I think the site is one half-assed wank.
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
View-Text Size doesn't scale the layout or images. It is only useful for when a designer thinks that 7pt text is 'cool'. Admittedly scaling images with CSS is a hassle, but at least the layout is easily changed or resized.
View -> Page Style doesn't persist your choice.
Javascript and a Cookie does, and it does it in under 20 lines of code.
Yes, the stylesheets available on that site aren't great, but hey, why not contribute your own that is built for a higher resolution screen? I'm sure they would be grateful.
The site looks good on a 1024x768 laptop display. I can see that it would suck for the typical Windows weenie full-screen everything user however.
You forget there's sections of any site where there's copious amount of text.
Resizing the window to maximum takes advantage of available screen real estate and eliminates scrolling. It's the difference between reading a webpage on a celphone, or reading it on a real display. I like how well packed the old website was because I didn't have to go through more than one link to get to the section I wanted.
Unless it's one of those weenies where the pretty desktop background is more important than properly sizing a window for content, or one of those still stuck in the pre-windowed display days of fixed-sized monotext screens on 14" RGB monitors.
http://bulma.net/beowulf/greasemonkey/fix-new-free bsd_org.user.js
Try Ubuntu GNU/Linux, it's great!!!
If you are going to get someone to redo your website, get someone competant. In addition to what the doctor pointed out, the design is fixed width, so it looks like shit and wastes half your screen if you have a high resolution, and the menu is even fixed size, so if you are using larger fonts so you can read, it wraps around under the images. The new design sucks nuts, and the designer definately needs to go back to school.
She does shit like make the default size for the whole site 0.8em. That is smaller than 1em. That is bad, and makes the text smaller by default than what everyone wants, and has set their browser for.
And she doesn't learn when people complain that she makes fixed width layouts and makes stupid assumptions about fonts that make the page messed up. This site contains the exact same problems that were pointed out in the new postgresql site.
That is so awesome. I think that from now on when anyone dives to take cover in a television program or film, particularly behind a piece of furniture, a Powerbook or at least an iBook should be included in the shot.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
This list makes no mention of FreeBSD.