On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 10:22:17AM -0600, Andy Doan wrote:
On 11/16/2011 06:15 AM, Dave Martin wrote:
I think for the table of links we do need an explanation of what each item is, though this should literally just be a few words.
Thanks for the feedback!
I've created a bug with all your comments[1]. I'd also like to point out the road-map I'm trying to put together[2]. I don't really disagree with anything you've said. However, I have to balance it with other feedback and direction I've gotten so we don't end up with this[3].
There are also some things there which would be fairly incomprehensible to a newcomer. What is "Cycles", for example? People also won't be able to guess what "Connect" refers to without laboriously reading the other text.
I would vote for removing all the links from the introductory paragraph -- the precence of links disrupts the readability of the text unnecessarily IMHO, and putting all the links into the table.
This is an interesting idea. I'm +1'ing it.
Another minor thing:
Is it possible to get rid of Moin's "external link" icon on each link? It breaks up the text a lot, and I'm not convinced how useful it is.
Could we also experiment with ordering the links so that the stuff for newcomers appears first, and the resources for developers come afterwards, perhaps in a separate table? We need to give newcomers a bit of extra help, because they're the people who will need it.
This is something I'm thinking more on and plan to improve. However, 4 of our most popular pages (Android, DevPlatform, Builds, Source) are in the top corner of the table.
Popularity is a valuable metric, but we need to be a bit careful -- each of the most popular links should probably be on the front page somewhere, but strictly ordering by popularity can have downsides. In particular, if the items form some sort of logical structure, ordering by popularity can obscure it.
For example, pages containing release information, instructions and reference material may get a lot of hits, but these links are not the first things that a new visitor should be looking at.
Just my opinion, though
Cheers ---Dave