Re: [9fans] complaints about new web site

[Sascha Retzki <sretzki@gmx.de>]

On Fri, Jan 27, 2006 at 02:04:19PM -0500, Russ Cox wrote:
> > On Fri, Jan 27, 2006 at 12:21:10PM -0500, Russ Cox wrote:
> > > It's probably a very good sign that the only actual complaints we've
> > > gotten about the web site have been about how ugly the HTML
> > > source is.  Hopefully that's the biggest problem it has.
> > >
> > 
> > Yes, I am very pleased by the new design - good work.
> > 
> > However, one thing (uriel also used to raved about): Can you explain the
> > need for the "Additional Software"-page?  It looks full of outdated,
> > depreciated software and/or duplicating/confusing things (like the first
> > download is (seems to be?) a link to the ISO-Image).  At least the name
> > could be renamed to "Additional Software [not included in sources or
> > outdated]" or alike.
> 
> The details of the page may change, but I believe there should
> be a page listing the major software packages that people 
> commonly want - tex, perl, python, gcc, ...

Yeah but there are two major issues:

1.) We create two places to look for software (sources and web)

2.) It may be stuff _new_ people commonly want - I don't want GCC on
Plan 9. And those people probably don't really want GCC either.


Don't misunderstand me, I don't want to imply in any way that the
porting afforts of several people should not be honored in any way - I
am not saying that the work that has already been done, without debating
if it was good or bad work, should be deleted or alike. I am just saying
that we have a clean, good, reliable way of distributing (3rd-party)
additional software - sources. 


I mean, look at the page now. If you are a new user, where do you expect
e.g. software to play an OGG-File: Under "browse the source" (respective
reading papers, the wiki, and getting an idea that Plan9 is way
different than other OSes) or do you click on "Additional Software",
finding GCC, Python and X11?


But honestly, the situation improved with the two page updates.


Sascha
> 
> I cleaned it up a little just now.  
> 
> Russ
>