Feedback gathered for fedoraproject.org and get.fedoraproject.org

Mel Chua mel at redhat.com
Sat Jul 11 06:35:13 UTC 2009


>>>>  -- and it should probably have a better link text
>>>>  -- I mean, imagine reading it; Get Fedora 11 Desktop Edition Now
>>>> INSTALLABLE LIVE CD!
>> YES
> 
> I'm not following at all... 

Yeah, I wasn't really clear...

Current http://fedoraproject.org site: tiny blue "--> Get Fedora" on the 
middle of the left side"

Compare to, say, http://www.ubuntu.com/ - banner stretching across the 
top with "Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop Edition / Save time and boot faster / Get 
productive with the latest apps / Enjoy an improved user experience" and 
then a high-contrast "Download" (and "Take the Tour") button right below 
that text.

Maybe we don't need *all* that stuff, but it's more descriptive and a 
lot easier to find.

>> Great point - do we have any heuristics that we're evaluating our sites 
>> against, any standard tests we run for sanity? (Making sure it works on 
>> a certain list of screen sizes, a certain set of browsers, that kind of 
>> thing?)
> 
> 800x600 and up is reasonable. 400-500 px wide isn't quite as reasonable.

That's a totally reasonable minimum bar - I think we just need to make 
clear somewhere that that *is* the minimum bar, and that problems at 
lower resolutions are a wontfix. I started 
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Websites/Heuristics to try and keep track 
of ideas for this - it's very much a draft, but I'm wondering whether 
having a good set of rules-of-thumb might help us answer "it breaks in 
this case, do we care about this case?" questions in the future.

Trying to think out loud why someone might have less than 800px width:

* Viewing fp.o on a mobile browser is probably an edge case and can be 
ignored (stats could prove me wrong, though - I wonder how to get access 
to those stats... maybe Ian might have some ideas)

* Someone on an 800+px wide display might have two windows open 
side-by-side (comparing the Fedora homepage with the Gentoo homepage, or 
surfing the web on the left side of his/her screen and reading email on 
the right). This sounds more plausible to me; my laptop is 1024x768 and 
it's not uncommon for me to have two browser windows side by side, each 
filling up half my screen (so, accounting for scrollbars and such, 
somewhere around 500px width each).

>>>> -- most people who visit your site won't want a tour.  They want a
>>>> download link.
>> Really? I wonder if there is a good way we can empirically prove this.
> 
> Why would I expend energy to download an operating system if I don't
> understand what it is I would be getting for the effort?

Also thinking off the top of my head... I think a better reason might be 
"some people will already come to fp.o knowing that they want to dl 
Fedora, even before taking the tour. Who are they?"

* someone (I trust, possibly an Ambassador standing beside me) has 
already told me I should just download this "Fedora" thing and they'll 
help me get started

* I do understand what I'd be getting; I already know what Fedora is and 
just need to grab an image file and am easily frustrated by Fitt's Law

* some people blithely click on download links first, then figure out 
what they're getting afterwards. Not that it's a good idea, mind you... 
but I've watched enough people have this as almost a knee-jerk reaction 
to a webpage that... I mean, it happens.

All my reasoning in this email and my previous one are a lot more 
hand-wavy conjecturing than I'd like. I need to sit down and learn how 
to get hold of our actual website stats, so I can base these kinds of 
statements on Actual Data.

--Mel




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