Suggestions for system home page

[Rahul]

Dimitris Glezos wrote:
> OK, I'll throw yet another idea on the table here. :)
> 
> I sat back and thought a bit about the default home page of the browser,
> served at file:///usr/share/doc/HTML/index.html. I feel it isn't really
> what the users should see as a system home page.
> 
> What we should aim is a page that feels like "home", something
> welcoming, a collection of useful information for the desktop. Some
> random ideas follow:
> 
>   1. For start, that page should be a collection of useful documentation
> links, with clever use of graphics and positioning.
> 
>   2. Ideas of docs that should be included are a desktop guide, the
> release notes, FAQs and links to other useful documentation, like
> fedorafaq.org, fedora news, fedora people, etc. Links to online content
> should be specially noted, because not everybody is 24/7 connected.
> 
>   3. The presentation should be in a pleasant way, keeping in mind that
> the initial page should be short, simple, sweet and handy. So that the
> user will *want* to use them, to learn more and browse through the
> pages. Also, it should have a differenet look and feel than fp.org.

All these are good ideas and we have had some discussions before but I 
have been able to followup and get it done myself. My last effort 
morphed into content that went into release notes overview itself and 
into tours

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Tours


> 
>   4. An infobox with "docs news" would be nice, like "From July 2006, a
> new guide that might interest you, is available at http://...". Could be
> irritating though.

A "welcome application" has been suggested but random notifications like 
this are bound to annoy people pretty soon.


> 
>   5. Text ideas: "This is a collection of documentation about your
> system, a place where you can explore the world of Fedora." ...
>      "If this is the first time you are using Fedora, be sure to check
> out the following documents:"

> 
>   6. Ideally, the user should be able to search in this (small)
> documentation database. Or, even better, be able to aggregate content
> from various documents, like his doc db, the online docs and the wiki.
> Hell, we could even be able to aggregate there (or at a separate "live"
> page) latest planet posts, news, etc. Of course, this dynamic content is
> a totally different story.


FC5 has a About Fedora menu item which has some pointers and you can 
search in it since it uses Yelp, the GNOME help application.

> 
> 
> An example of a nice-looking splash home page is the initial screen of
> the Eclipse platform [1].
> 

This is not just a front page, its part of the application. We could do 
something similar with just HTML and CSS.

Rahul