Re: [libreoffice-website] A simpler download page

On 13-02-2012 13:13, Christian Lohmaier wrote:
> sorry for jumping in late to the discussion...
Well, I think you are allowed to take some weekends off :)

> On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 9:01 PM, Anders Holbøll<andershol@gmail.com>  wrote:
> > It seems that the download page have been discussed a few times on this list
> > (about 6 months and about 12 months ago) and there are also few bugs open.
> > The mockups in the wiki all seemed much better than the current page.
> Indeed - but so far nobody come up with the corresponding html to the mockups..
I suspected that this was the case.

> The most important part first: Note that the site is not limited to
> stuffing all the downloads into the page like it is done currently,
> i.e. one could use ajax instead to only load the selected files to
> make the downloadpage lighter.
That all downloads is shown in one page is the primary problem with the 
current page I think.
You mention ajax a few times, but I don't see the benefit in this case: 
It would require JavaScript, which this implementation tries to 
eliminated (to only have one version, making it easier to explain and 
support), and a ajax request will cause the server to do the same amount 
of work as a regular request and won't be much quicker.

> > [grouping the available downloads]
> > Platform-downloads: Base-installer, Language-pack and Help-pack.
> > Packaged-downloads: PortableApp.com-installers and ISO-files.
> > Developer-downloads: SDK's and source code.
>
> Yes, that fits. But note that The Packaged-downloads have a different
> release schedule. (or: They are released some time after the platform
> and developer downloads as they are named above). This&  the point
> that they are not available for all languages is what made me not
> include them in the autmatically generated list of downloads, but
> rather have projects manually list them.

In the implementation they are only shown if they are available for 
download. If the language is in the MultilingualNormal that is offered, 
otherwise if the language is in the MultilingualAll it is offered. I 
just felt that it was better to give the user the complete picture of 
(relevant) downloads, so they don't need to check multiple pages to make 
sure they are really getting the right download. But removing the box is 
easy :)

> > I thought it would be interesting to see what the mockups (I mostly looked
> > at Nics and Christophs proposals) would look like with real data. Since I am
> > a developer, my mockup tool is code rather than a drawing tool :),
>
> Thank you very, very much for starting with this!
You're welcome. Hopefully we can get it finished.

> > so I
> > coded it up. This is static versions of what it could looks like when a
> > German user arrives on the download page:
> > http://andershol.github.com/cms-code-demo/download-detected.html
> > If the user chooses to "Change System or Language", the user is lead though
> > these pages. Using separate pages makes it easier to fit sufficient
> > descriptions to hopefully make the "Download instructions"-page unnecessary:
> > http://andershol.github.com/cms-code-demo/select-type.html
>
> Very nice already, I'd only make the emphasis for linux on x86 vs
> 64bit, and not deb vs rpm. And the "separate pages" can nicely be
> ajaxified

I'm note sure I understand you correctly. At first I had removed the 
selection between deb and rpm and just treated them as different file 
formats (just as a windows installer might be a setup.exe and a 
setup.msi and users don't really care). But I'm not sure how different 
the rpm/deb downloads are, i.e. if they are compiled against different 
libraries. If it instead of just "(deb)" and "(rpm)" would say "(deb - 
Debian, Ubuntu, Kubuntu)" and "(rpm - Redhat, CentOS)" it makes sense to 
put them on the same "level" as the Windows/Mac choice. But I am not 
currently a desktop linux user.

> > http://andershol.github.com/cms-code-demo/select-language.html
>
> This is the only one that seems a little problematic to me - more
> precise: how to localize this. The list is ordered by the english
> labels, and the system only knows the english&  the native name.
> (that's why the current dropdown is sorted by iso-code rather than
> languagename)

My plan was the translate the language names for the international 
sites. I was actually a bit surprised that silverstripe didn't have 
translations for the language names. It is a about 100 words so it 
should be doable. I think it is a problem with the current 
implementation (i.e. the dropdown) that the language names are shown in 
their own language (and are not aligned) since that makes it hard to 
skim through the list. The iso-codes doesn't seem that user friendly.

> > http://andershol.github.com/cms-code-demo/select-version.html
> > Note that as a special case for pt-BR, BrOffice-versions are shown as
> > separate versions that this seemed the best way of categorizing them.
>
> BrOffice was only available with 3.3. With 3.4 and 3.5 the BrOffice
> branding was removed, pt-BR also is branded as LibreOffice, so no need
> to special-case it anymore.

I had the feeling that it was being folded into LibreOfficce, but kept 
it for completeness. The few places where "-br" is handled in code, 
should be easy to removed when it is really gone.

> No idea how it will perform with that then, but I don't see a real
> problem. Currently the server is not challenged at all :-)
Okay, no reason to spend time optimizing if it is good enough (or is all 
wrong). Some of the queries can be made simpler by fixing the 
UpdateDownloadsTask. But I think I would generated some static files 
with serialized data-structures from the UpdateDownloadsTask if it 
needed to be quicker. Or use SilverStripes Static Publisher.

> I'll bring the github version up-to-date with local changes later
> today, and then will look into your patches.
That would be very helpful. I added some patches yesterday, so it should 
be feature complete now. I intend to localize it today, but that need 
not hold back comments or tests.

--
Anders

--
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to website+help@global.libreoffice.org
Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/website/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted