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NASA Launches New Science Website

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the nasa-trying-to-catch-up dept.

aclark4life writes "NASA just launched a new website designed to provide information about its scientific endeavors and achievements. The new site was built on top of the Plone Open Source Content Management System and features an easy-to-navigate design and several new search features."

37 comments

  1. Nasa 'Launches' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Haha, nice pun.

    1. Re:Nasa 'Launches' by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2, Funny

      Well, the load on their web servers is definitely going to skyrocket now. Let's hope that their machines have stellar performance!

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    2. Re:Nasa 'Launches' by plover · · Score: 2, Funny
      For those astronomical price tags, they'd better have.

      But what do I know? I'm no rocket scientist.

      --
      John
    3. Re:Nasa 'Launches' by IdleTime · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Too bad they decided to get the website designed by some 1337 14 year old who has no clue about usability and scalability. Worst website I have seen in a while, great job NASA on making a crappy page!

      --
      If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
  2. Hellopysics by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 1

    Am I the only person who looked at the 'Heliophysics' section and thought that it said "Hellophysics?"

    I thought, in a Cartman voice: "Hellophysics? Wow. That's hellacool!"

    --
    My blog
    1. Re:Hellopysics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How ken I reach dese keeds?

  3. OOS for the win by thejuggler · · Score: 1

    The site looks nice. And being open source they should be saving some money!!!

  4. Plone Open Source Content Management System by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    POSCMS?

  5. Slow news day? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I didn't start reading /. to be informed of new websites.

    1. Re:Slow news day? by FoolsGold · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Slashdot doesn't give a crap about new websites. The ONLY reason it's mentioned here is because the backbone of the site is Open Source. Apparently that's important enough.

    2. Re:Slow news day? by SEWilco · · Score: 1

      I thought the news was in NASA trying to avoid being Flash hindered.

  6. Did Apple design it? by qmaqdk · · Score: 1

    Is it me, or does it look like the designer of the iPhone helped with the website?

    --
    My UID is prime. Hah!
    1. Re:Did Apple design it? by TinBromide · · Score: 1

      Is it me, or does it look like the designer of the iPhone helped with the website? no, apple didn't design it, just someone who used a little web 2.0 sprinkle (i.e. a 5 year old technique) in photoshop.
      http://www.stab.se/aq/ny/pstips/layerfx/glass.htm
      --
      Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
  7. No RSS feeds on the whole site by theurge14 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    No RSS feeds on the site. Does the 'Plone Open Source Content Management System' not feature RSS or did NASA decide to disable it?

    1. Re:No RSS feeds on the whole site by tvaught · · Score: 2, Informative

      Plone absolutely supports rss throughout (and has since the very early versions)...must have been disabled.

    2. Re:No RSS feeds on the whole site by Laughing+Dog · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Plone has RSS support; NASA probably just didn't wish to have feeds. There's a decent, if biased summary of what some of Plone's high points are here. The CMS itself isn't geared towards any specific category of content; some organizations use it for their public website, whereas we use it to power a small Intranet web site where I work, primarily for the purpose of sharing documents rather than typical web content. It has relatively fine-grained security options built in regarding who can see what, and the Kupu editor is *extremely* easy to use for people who know nothing about markup languages, but who can at least use a word processor. The default site skin presents a very intuitive interface. The ability to manage documents in a workflow is helpful, too. For me, the biggest downside to Plone has been the shear amount of conflicting documentation on the product. For a sortable table, documents for slightly older versions will say to mark it as a certain class (and different versions say different classes), and let Plone do the work. Newer documentation points the user to JQuery. A lot what works well with the current version seems to be located off the main Plone site; there are a lot of articles on the official project site itself that are our of date, and, since that's where a newbie is going to go first, it can be an exercise in frustration. Most of what applied to older versions still works on the current one, but, when it doesn't, sometimes reading the conflicting recommendations and averaging them is the best way to go. Overall, though, it suits our needs well.

  8. Not designed for Firefox, eh? by SockPuppet_9_5 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Love the little pop up text box on all the vocabulary words, but they pop under the picture menu, hiding 3/4 of the text.

    1. Re:Not designed for Firefox, eh? by TimSSG · · Score: 1

      Looks Good on Firefox 3.0b5 Tim S

    2. Re:Not designed for Firefox, eh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Looks OK on 2.0.0.13

    3. Re:Not designed for Firefox, eh? by cheater512 · · Score: 1

      Fine on Seamonkey. Its just you.

    4. Re:Not designed for Firefox, eh? by Jesterthe3rd · · Score: 1

      Nope, it's me too: Vista, with FF3b5, no extensions.

    5. Re:Not designed for Firefox, eh? by morrillo · · Score: 1

      well... it does not look good on IE7 and FireFox 2 anyway, it is a very nice website

    6. Re:Not designed for Firefox, eh? by Xabraxas · · Score: 1

      It does the same thing on Epiphany and Midori for me.

      --
      Time makes more converts than reason
  9. Lemme guess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's what we need...yet another NASA source for "water finally found on mars" news.

  10. ALL VISTA COMPUTERS TOO! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    NASA only uses the best! You should too!

    http://fakesteveballmer.mypodcast.com/index.html

  11. Nerds don't like science? by interactive_civilian · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Slashdot doesn't give a crap about new websites. The ONLY reason it's mentioned here is because the backbone of the site is Open Source. Apparently that's important enough. Yeah! Ignore that fact the site is all about earth and space science. You know, because everyone at Slashodot has equal levels of knowledge of such things and any site such as this which is meant to further the education of those who don't have that level of knowledge is useless. Yup, definitely not "news for nerds, stuff that matters."

    How about you get off your high horses? I'm a teacher teaching the equivalent of 8th grade science and 10th, 11th, and 12th grade biology in Thailand, and I'm glad that this got posted to slashdot or I might have missed it. There is a lot of cool information on that site, and I can see myself using it this year with my science classes. Kudos to Slashdot for bringing it to my attention.

    Sorry, but we can't all be genius rocket scientists / earth scientists like the PP and GPP.

    --
    "Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
    1. Re:Nerds don't like science? by FoolsGold · · Score: 1

      Nice try, but no. Glad you've found a use for the article, but notice how the second sentence mentions the Open Source angle as if it's really necessary in the grand scheme of what the site provides. Can't blame me for being cynical about how Slashdot chooses which articles to publish.

    2. Re:Nerds don't like science? by jesse285 · · Score: 1

      Slashdot doesn't give a crap about new websites. The ONLY reason it's mentioned here is because the backbone of the site is Open Source. Apparently that's important enough. Yeah! Ignore that fact the site is all about earth and space science. You know, because everyone at Slashodot has equal levels of knowledge of such things and any site such as this which is meant to further the education of those who don't have that level of knowledge is useless. Yup, definitely not "news for nerds, stuff that matters."

      How about you get off your high horses? I'm a teacher teaching the equivalent of 8th grade science and 10th, 11th, and 12th grade biology in Thailand, and I'm glad that this got posted to slashdot or I might have missed it. There is a lot of cool information on that site, and I can see myself using it this year with my science classes. Kudos to Slashdot for bringing it to my attention.

      Sorry, but we can't all be genius rocket scientists / earth scientists like the PP and GPP.

      Slashdot doesn't give a crap about new websites. The ONLY reason it's mentioned here is because the backbone of the site is Open Source. Apparently that's important enough. Yeah! Ignore that fact the site is all about earth and space science. You know, because everyone at Slashodot has equal levels of knowledge of such things and any site such as this which is meant to further the education of those who don't have that level of knowledge is useless. Yup, definitely not "news for nerds, stuff that matters."

      How about you get off your high horses? I'm a teacher teaching the equivalent of 8th grade science and 10th, 11th, and 12th grade biology in Thailand, and I'm glad that this got posted to slashdot or I might have missed it. There is a lot of cool information on that site, and I can see myself using it this year with my science classes. Kudos to Slashdot for bringing it to my attention.

      Sorry, but we can't all be genius rocket scientists / earth scientists like the PP and GPP.

      Well it seen like there are fews peoples that are still around crying about this site, for one things there are other who would like to learn and want to learn, just because you did not want to learn and still do all that crying about nothing, in other word please get out of the way and let the little ones learn some of this wisdom. P.S. this a good site een if you are not a spaceman
  12. Plone for CMS and for deployment by Wheat · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Looks like they are using Plone as a CMS as well as for deployment, since good ol' /ZopeTime works :P

    http://nasascience.nasa.gov/ZopeTime

    1. Re:Plone for CMS and for deployment by Bwanazulia · · Score: 1

      Good catch!

      BZ

  13. Nerds don't like windows? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nice try, but no. Glad you've found a use for the article, but notice how the second sentence mentions the Open Source angle as if it's really necessary in the grand scheme of what the site provides. Can't blame me for being cynical about how Slashdot chooses which articles to publish. Here's a test. Would slashdot have mentioned it if the site was based upon windows technology?
  14. A tad incomplete? by sidyan · · Score: 1

    Funny how the Small Bodies of the Solar System page doesn't breathe a word about Eris. Nor does their site search return any results on that term.

    Seems like some people haven't digested Pluto's demotion yet ...

  15. Old Solar System Exploration website is better by MMatessa · · Score: 1

    I still like the old Solar System Exploration website better. It's easy to search for past, present, and future missions by name, target, or decade. Plus, it knows about Eris, unlike the new site.

  16. no, not just him by someone1234 · · Score: 1

    It is crappy on ff2.0.0.12 on Linux.

    --
    Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
  17. Bad portraits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As good as it is, the portraits all look like crap. If NASA can't manage to take a decent photo of a human being then...well, nevermind.

  18. Too sad !!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I saw the title, "NASA Launches" and suddenly my heart jumped: has NASA secretly/quietly been working on a manned mission behind my/the public's back, out past earth orbit, maybe to the moon, maybe to Mars, maybe further?
        Has NASA quietly been working on a revolutionary propulsion mechanism and/or space ship capable of far exceeding the current (i.e. 1970's) generations abilities?
        Has NASA launched some brilliant new piece of infrastructure to vastly improve the frequency and ability of space flight?

    No. They posted a new website. ... I could cry. ...No, no. I am crying.

  19. Good i by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wow, 2 good things in one? First the slashdot "quick-reply" form, and now the science NASA page (which might I add, has some really nice images on it.)