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redhat.com Redone
Anonymous Coward writes "Red Hat has re-layed-out the site yet again. Looks like an attempt at a portal, but only internal resources. IWNSM (it would not surprise me) if future versions of Red Hat had netscape and lynx's default home pages set to redhat.com :) " It looks quite a bit like Yahoo. The GeekToys section is a bit timely, too, if not a bit heavy on Nerf.
The last version made it fairly difficult for me to find information/stuff. i am quite impressed with the current layout. everything is obviously defined, and orginized. yay! good job redhat.
Fetch the raw document with wget or lynx -source, or from netscape do a "view source" on that page. Now, look at the javascript gunkola at the top. They assume that if you're not running Linux, and you're not running Windows, then you must obviously be running a Mac! That's hilarious.
I must say that it looks very solid, but I can't say that the page has a nice, goodlooking lay-out. I can understand that they don't want to use flash or something like that, but this can be done better.
This is pretty nice. Definitely better than a couple months ago, when the text was a pain to read. Those tiny fonts had to go. Personally, though, this stuff does not matter to me unless it is really poorly laid out. Are there any books on website interface design in the same vein as "About Face"? Maybe that question should go to Redhat's webmaster...
~Religion is O.K., as long as it gets you laid.
someone actually stole Circuit City's old interface...and I mean oooooollllldddd.....as in way back when.
it was ugly then, worse now.
Dan
It was done in the /usr/bin/netscape script as a forced command line parameter when the browser is opened without any other parameters. Even setting the NS home page internally had no effect, since NS won't display the homepage when one is passes as a parameter. I didn't appreciate having to track this down and fix it myself.
So why've you got javascript running?
Most of the design is text flavored so I don't even have to load up images, and that's a very nice thing.
-- Ender, Duke_of_URL
I like the new look. It's clean, nicely organized and makes good use of color.
Besides the email addy and the e-newsletter are there any other benefits to signing up on the site? Any type of customization?
That's what I love about them high-school girls. I get older, they stay the same age... yes they do.
--Wooderson 1976
-- jimmycarter
Their $999.99 DVD player is available from some places for just over $700 (compare prices at, say, pricescan. This is to be expected from the home of the $80 "free software" CD, I guess.
Well, it wasn't -that- bad, but I think they could have made it a little more Lynx-friendly. The list of links look particularly horrible.
Wouldn't a busted link report better belong in the webmaster's email inbox instead of cluttering up stuff here?
-- Ender, Duke_of_URL
How about a two?
I was watching this comment sit at zero, and sit at zero thru several new comments refreshing in, and saying to myself, "Patience, they're busy, they'll get to it..."
-- Ender, Duke_of_URL
Just call me Mr. Dictionary.
God, this is ugly. Is the template of the future? It looks like zdnet and shopper, yahoo, etc. Is there something about America where interesting design loses out to load time again and again? I love Euro sites for their interesting graphics and layout. If this is the is the result of Redhat's IPO and their desire to make the site into more of a viable e-commerce look, then "hooray for capitalism!" as Austin Powers once said. Of course the flipside is "Down with good design!". Alexis de Tocqueville's critique of the homogenizing effect of our nation in his book "Democracy in America" is borne out yet again. I work in e-commerce and though I understand the concept of sucking the life out of graphics and simple layout to improve load time, it is not an excuse for poor design. I'm glad that I split my Linux twixt SuSe and PPC. I'd rather have 'business simple' or 'amateur look' over e-commerce genericism any day. Letch
Hey, you think your house is cool?
Red Hat carries ads for Sun? How odd... how long till they'll carry Microsoft?
Yeah yeah everyone is launching their goddamn portal. I for one detest portals, but whatever. No more link to /. on the front page now :(
--
"Some people say that I proved if you get a C average, you can end up being successful in life."
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Never quite put my finger on it before, but you've definitely got a point - there are fundamental differences between Euro sites and US ones...
Sort of the same as the automobile industry - US designs cheesy godawful cars and EU designs cars that yuppies all over the US are cashing in their stock options to buy on a yearly basis.
Interesting. I'm going to continue to observe this effect as I browse the web, looking for cultural barriers like this. Lifes simple ironies (cultural/design ethos on an International medium) are interesting, at times...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I do think this sort of design is getting rather boring... whats happened to originality? in another 2 years, are every commericial site going to look like this? Look at Sun, Borland, Microsoft... there are quite similar in some ways.
This could be a good thing, since there are not many graphics, not many stupid java applets to halt your computer for 2/3 minutes.. the result: a site that doesn't take an age to load.. simplicity is best, IMO.
boring it may be... efficient it is, easy to find things you want instead of having to spend 20 minutes searching the site for what you want...
I haven't played with it much, but this layout looks really solid. News is readily retrievable, the search box is decent sized so you can see what you type, and I can scan the page in a second or two instead of reacding it. Bravo RedHat.
All in all, I can't complain. The issue with Lynx is a little sad at this point. Lynx under AIX was my first browser (over a 14.4 modem to an ISP), but it is NOT standards compliant. A page that is useless without graphics is inexcusable because users with limited bandwith may load without graphics and the visually impared need ALT definitions. However, demanding that a page look good for people without graphical support... that is kinda pushing it.
The fact that Lynx is free does NOT mean that it much be supported by Redhat. Redhat embraces opensource, but with free (like beer) browsers, supporting based upon open source is kinda silly, especially when far better open source browsers exist than Lynx and Netscape has source available, albeit not for the production browsers.
Alex
Four Nerf guns is too many? Fourty might be pushing it I suppose, but four is nowhere near enough...
Intolerant people should be shot.
Red Hat finally placed links for ftp mirrors and the errata at the top of the page. It's at least usable from that perspective.
(Btw, that's as regards Netscape. I've not yet learned how to use Lynx with proxy servers - but after posting this I'll try. ;-))
Graham
Graham
Linux - Fast Pane Relief
- BASE, META and TITLE tags outside of the HEAD section
- HEAD tag closed twice
- FORM not closed in TR (tags may be nested but not crossed)
- NOBR not closed in STRONG (same as above)
- COLOR attribute for IMG tag does not exist
- BORDERD attribute for IMG tag also does not exist
- ...
Do they code HTML using vi? If so, don't they check what they've typed? Is Redhat's webmaster unaware of HTML-validators?Learn RedHat, learn!
ms
The new site has actually been up for about 3 weeks now I think. I remember going there and saying to myself wow I can actually read the page. When they had the one that was basically made for a low resolution I couldn't read a darn thing without having to really squint. I must agree that it does look a little like Yahoo though. Why shouldn't Redhat have Netscape and Lynx default to their page. Linux Mandrake already does that, or at least mine does.
Good is never enough, when you dream of being great!
Although it may look bad in Lynx. w3m is able to render it fairly well. The left column scrolls down a long way compared to the rest but its certainly usable.
.jp/~aito/w3m/eng/
I'm amazed at how many table/framed sites w3m is able to render as a text mode browser.
You can find it at http://ei5nazha.yz.yamagata-u.ac
As you know an archive of mailing lists are a great resource and time saver if you can search through them.
I had to look elsewhere to get them. Moongroup.com has a great Red Hat mailing lists archive.
When are these people going to learn. Can anyone actually find any useful info on redhat's site? I haven't seen the errata in years... When I go to a website looking for info on a particular product, I don't want links to everywhere on the net! I want well organized, easy to find information. Is that so hard? I think that's the main reason I use google to search, because it's not all cluttered up with news and crap. I want to search, if I wanted news I'd go somewhere else.
IMO, They'd better have a word with CmdrTaco about web-design
core dumped.
You know what would make me happy? Being able to play dvds on my linux box.. which was what decss and livid were for. If I were more of a programmer, that would be my project right now - the RIAA can kiss my curvy behind - I want DVD for linux!
--
http://av.com/?text=y
All the power of Altavista with none of the chrome. Great for Lynx users.
I agree. I want to be able to find the latest info on their products in 2 clicks or less.
Something tells me that free email and stock quotes aren't far behind. :-)
Prediction: within the next couple of months expect to see free email @redhat.(com|net). Although I myself admit that this is very silly, there is definitely some amount of geek appeal to having @redhat E-mail address. It'll certainly impress the PHB who reads your resume (if he doesn't know any better).
--
...designing Nerf toys that are not for export. Looks like those dern furriners aren't allowed our latest tech...
*chuckle*
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
I built the targetpc.com site, and it is about a month old. The site specializes in news and reviews.
The both sites have very similar header and footer designs. I noticed right away.
Do you think they copied off us? Hmmm....
(For those that can't take satire, I am not serious about what I am saying.)
Eric Murphy
eric@targetpc.com
EverCode
Hey, if you don't earn moderator points then keep quiet. Now if I could tell this message to self-destruct...
Interesting design is good, but loading a page quickly on a 28.8 modem must be of primary importance. The fact is, if a page won't load in a reasonable amount of time for the average user, THE AVERAGE USER WON'T LOAD IT!
Most Internet users are stuck on 28.8 modems and will not deal with waiting more than 10 seconds or so to load a page.
Not happy enough with the soap box design of their packaging, RH's web site goes portal in a pathetic attempt to try to get their numbers in black somehow. Real software companies have real websites and make money from sales/support, not from 3rd-party advertising (even the evil ones).
With Red Hat's IPO a couple months ago and the recent skyrocketing of their stock price (up 44 points on Friday alone!), I'm glad to see that they are putting their resources to good use. I think that they have done an excellent job in promoting linux and making it more user friendly.
However, no matter how much I use or install Red Hat Linux, they still give their product away for free. Selling support licenses alone hardly justifies a 15 billion dollar value for the company. As bad as it may sound, the leaders of that corporation are now legally obligated to do their best to make a profit. They have a delicate situation on their hands because they also have to be careful not to over do it and alienate the hackers who write their software for free.
Setting up a linux portal is a good way to start, as long as they don't get too pushy with it. It returns something of value to the linux community, but also makes their site bookmarkable which is the first step to becoming a revenue generating site.
The old site, like many today (cnn, msnbc, abcnews) only used 800x600. So on my 1024x768 screen I had a big white space on the right site of the browser (while running browser at full screen).
Good to see that the new redhat.com uses this space properly. Now if only we could get the other sites to figure it out.
Noticed that other sections of the site, like the errata, etc., haven't been redone yet.
The latest release of Netscape 4.7 in Debian is libc5 for this reason. It seems more stable that the glibc version.
When I loaded up the site, I was gretted by a Sun advertisement up top. I guess they must be moving towards portal-dom if they accept advertising. from a competitor in the OS business. :)
Organisationally, I think the site is an improvement over their old one. It has a simpler layout, and I find it easier to browse. I think they could make it more attractive while keeping the fairly uncluttered layout, though...
--Lenny
Most people still use 800x600. Hell, alot of laptops still come with LCD screens that can only do 800x600.
I have to return some videotapes...
How come we never see storys about how when zdnet,freebsd.org,slackware.org,linuxtoday,the register, osonline, my website, insert_any_geek_ site_here, etc... get updates?
I have to return some videotapes...
Yes, it's not perfect, right? freshmeat is also ugly with those ads and Refresh stuff (need to remember that text based browsers don't know that?). RedHat rules.
Yes, and why the fuck you see IPO stories also?
Lynx? Bah. w3m? bah. Links is the best textmode web browser.
It does everything lynx and w3m do, and them some.
It's available at: http://artax.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~miku las/links/
-- Veni, vidi, dormivi
I hear you, man.
/. People who don't know what they're talking about get moderated up all the time, and good stuff gets forgotten because it's not catchy enough.
I shouldn't complain because it probably couldn't be any better, but moderation often sucks on
People need to stop using moderation to take out their sexual frustrations.
looks like they've struck up a contract with each other. great...amazon is well on it's way to becoming the microsoft of e-commerce.
"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well."
Lynx is the best browser out there. Links is a good start, but be serious. It does cookies, bookmarks, jumps, SSL, authentication and more? No, so it's not all this (until now). It's also badly designed, and I don't think it's too portable. The author should start using ncurses or S-Lang.
Forgot to ask if it does mailto and support nntp. Wow, it's missing a lot of stuff. Lynx rules, Thomas E. Dickey and the Lynx Developers are gods!
...and stop making cheap personal shots...but that's the way it is with some folks: they can't see another person's point of view no matter how little they try.
"We reject kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code." Dave Clark, IETF
Though it's kind of goofy, I think links'
text-mode "GUI" is kind of neat.
w3m and links sometimes look a lot better than Lynx,
but neither does SSL. One of them doesn't do cookies
at all.
Now, when a text mode browser does JavaScript and
SSL (so I can use the commercial sites I want/need
to), THEN I'll switch from Lynx for day to day.. and pay for it (mattack@area.com)
Or Emacs/w3 friendly.
Or Emacs/W3 friendly.