On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 6:12 PM, Derek Elkins wrote:

I'm not a newbie and I don't use the front page terribly often, but I do like most of the links that are on it.  The Ruby page is certainly prettier, but the layout of the Haskell page is fine in my opinion; the difference is mainly eye-candy.  On another topic, I know people have expressed that they have liked the fact that the entire Haskell site is a wiki; this expressing openness and community involvement.

I personally don't find the Haskell front page too cluttered and I think most of issue in that vein could be resolved by simply making sure the most important/newbie-oriented links are "above the fold" and appropriately emphasized/categorized as is partially done already.

I strongly feel that the homepage should be made more newbie friendly, and I think the Ruby page has done this well, disregarding the news section. I suspect most people who like the Ruby page see the "Ruby is..." section as especially effective at introducing the language, and the random snippet is a simple way to show off a bit of code before they dive into a tutorial. Furthermore, the "Download" link is useful, but since GHC can be complicated (and varies by platform), we probably want to include pretty well thought-out instructions behind the link if we include a similar feature. I also quite like the "Participate" box on the Ruby page, which is very inviting. Regarding the current Haskell homepage, I feel the events are given far too high a place on the homepage. Almost no newbies will be interested in these, and most experienced users will know of the events via the mailing lists. The headlines below that deserve significantly more attention, and perhaps should be updated with greater frequency (and dated, and have RSS). The updated package list is fine, I think. The navigation is a bit tricky, in my opinion. To a beginner (that doesn't know what GHC is), the two download links may be confusing, although I suspect most would correctly assume that "Download Haskell" was correct option. The "Find A Library" is a good link, but the Search that follows it is awkward. There are three large search choices for beginners: 1) the search at the top, which confusingly has two submit buttons (with ambiguous differences to a beginner); 2) the Search link near the top of the navigation (which links to an almost empty page that might as well be included at the link's location); and 3) the Search link underneath the About header, which doesn't seem to belong at all. Jeff Wheeler (Sorry, sent this to just Derek at first.)