Re: [Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage
I've seen book providing a "chapters at a glance" part, just before the real table of content.
Such an inverted pyramid is exactly the consequence Nielson draw from the "F shape pattern" (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html). And that's my critque: i don't see the most important things there are to be sayed about Haskell in the top left corner.
For the hompage we're talking about, glancing is even simpler since everything is on the same page and you can scroll it quite easily.
I don't agree that "everything on one page" makes comprehension easier.
I'm not sure hiding a level of the hierarchy of information behind a few clicks make things easier.
That depends on which task we are talking about: - getting an overview of all available information, or - finding exactly what you are looking for I think we should optimize for the latter, where "What is Haskell?" being the most improtant question.
I like the Haskell page the way it is. The O'Caml web page, is, by comparison, infuriatingly unhelpful.
Ignoring the rest of the thread, but jumping in here... haskell@kudling.de wrote:
For the hompage we're talking about, glancing is even simpler since everything is on the same page and you can scroll it quite easily.
I don't agree that "everything on one page" makes comprehension easier.
I'm not sure hiding a level of the hierarchy of information behind a few clicks make things easier.
That depends on which task we are talking about: - getting an overview of all available information, or - finding exactly what you are looking for
I agree with minh thu. For the newcomer to the Haskell community the big question is not "what is Haskell?" but rather "I've heard of this Haskell thing, how do I get started?" and "I've tinkered with this Haskell thing, where do I get more?" The biggest thing I dislike about the alternative pages mentioned by the OP is that they fail in this task. Many of those pages are entirely unhelpful on where to go and/or are filled with administrative nonsense only the compiler developers would care about. Those that aren't are so so polished that there's no content left, or if there is it can't be easily discerned from all the other polish (e.g. the Ruby site. *I* know the content there is meaningful, but the presentation has a very corporate who-gives-a-damn flavor to it which dissuades actually reading the page). Certainly changes could be made (e.g. the verbiage of the description paragraph, moving the language choice to the top, minimizing the realestate devoted to the top bar, simplifying the many redundant search boxes/links,...) but I think by and large the page is very good as a portal for new users as well as for experienced community members looking for That One Thing Whatsitcalled. Hiding the TOC content behind links is a sure way to keep people from finding it and reading it. -- Live well, ~wren
participants (3)
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haskell＠kudling.de -
Richard O'Keefe -
wren ng thornton