[maemo-community] Maemo.org

[From: Dave Neary]

Hi Jarmo,

Jarmo.Tikka at nokia.com wrote:
> Number of these restructurings of web site should be minimized because
> they tend to break all external links to the site.
> 
> As a reminder site usability has been discussed also in maemo bugzilla.
> https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3972

You might notice my comment on that bug. I'm all for improving the
usability of the site, and that's really the whole point of the exercise.

The logic we followed, and the main use-cases we are trying to address,
to get to where we are today is detailed in
http://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Improving_maemo.org.

A reminder: those core use-cases are:

   1. A new tablet owner wants to install some software on his tablet.
   2. An interested application developer comes to maemo.org to learn
how to write a new application for the tablet.
   3. An existing application developer comes to maemo.org looking for
information on modifying his application for Maemo.
   4. A Maemo Community member is looking for the latest news from
around the world of Maemo
   5. An interested user wants to know how he can help make Maemo better
or give feedback
   6. A tablet user has a problem which they would like to resolve.

So we've got, in the case of 1, 2 and 3, someone coming to the maemo.org
home-page, and getting redirected quickly to the Downloads page or the
Development - the front page has the most popular and the community
choice applications. In the fourth case, we have some news on the front
page, with more available at maemo.org/news. In the fifth case, we have
the new "Community" page, which should help show people how to get
involved, and finally for a user with a problem, we will have the new
"Support" page, which will bring them to the user mailing list,
documentation and FAQs, and of course bugzilla.

> How I see it people visit maemo.org because:
> - they need to install/upgrae latest image or SDK

SDK = developer = Development page

> - they need to find out some official documentation for certain
> technology area

What is documentation? We had quite a long discussion (I won't say
argument ;) about this when we came up with the first drafts for the
front page. For me, "documentation" is meaningless without context - are
we talking about developer documentation, API references, application
development guides? That's in Development. Are we talking about
troubleshooting, tablet tutorials, FAQs? That's in Support.
Documentation about getting started in maemo.org, signing up to mailing
lists, helping out - Community.

> - they need to see if certain problem has been reported or write a new
> bug report

Problems = Support page.

> For me these new layouts seems to emphasize only this last type of usage
> e.g. social issues. In my opinion also those other usage patterns should
> be made easier.

I hope that I've explained the logic behind the changes that are being
proposed by the community here. As you may be able to tell, we have had
some long debates on this over the months. To read more, you might try
this thread:
http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-community/2008-September/002335.html

There are other threads, through September, October, November and
December, working through vision, wireframing, and design - and now
implementation.


> For example we do not have links to the latest maemo image/SDK release
> in front page.

It's certainly conceivable that this would be interesting to a decent
portion of maemo.org visitors, but I'd suggest that the bigger audience
is people who own a tablet and want to either solve a problem they have
with it, or get some community-developed software. We should definitely
lead them to the community, and to developing software. Don't you think
that the software developer looking for an SDK will be able to find the
appropriate sub-page to click on to get it?

> Anyhow I think you (maemo community members) have done very good work
> for the site...

Thanks! Since you're part of that community too, your feedback is of
course welcome. I just wanted to make you aware of previous discussions,
and the thinking behind this resulting design.

Thanks,
Dave.

-- 
maemo.org docsmaster
Email: dneary at maemo.org
Jabber: bolsh at jabber.org