Suggestions for system home page

[Dimitris Glezos]

O/H Rahul έγραψε:
> 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.

I prepared a draft picture of what I have in mind. You can see it here:

  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DimitrisGlezos/SystemHomepage

Comments, suggestions, rants welcome.

>>
>> 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.

I agree.

Nevertheless, I believe we should probably not dismiss the idea of
having a box *somewhere* to be able to notify users of something
important. Having it at the home page of the browser is much less
annoying than a pop-up in the notification area for example. Also,
giving the user the choice of information level (important news,
security notices, nothing at all) would ensure minimum annoyance levels.
Of course, again, these require scripting, so they remain just future
ideas for now.

>>   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.

This is good and I suggest we should expand it and promote it more. I
didn't know it existed. Good work.

-dim


>> 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
> 


-- 
Dimitris Glezos
Jabber ID: glezos at jabber.org, GPG: 0xA5A04C3B
http://dimitris.glezos.com/


"He who gives up functionality for ease of use
loses both and deserves neither." (Anonymous)
--