maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

Quim has suggested a new thread be formed (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...947#post358947), so here it is.

Suggestions for the intro page in here then.

For me, first off, I've been playing a little with the New Users page (http://wiki.maemo.org/New_users) and would like to see a link to it from the intro page (it's not perfect, I'm trying to raise ideas...)

Re: Maemo.org INto page (November Sprint)
 

oops... I just spotted I typed Into instead of Intro. Now I feel daft. Can someone with more skills than me correct the thread title?!

Edit: it's been done, thanks to whomever!

Re: Maemo.org INto page (November Sprint)
 

Actually, it strikes me that INTRO as a tag might not even be the best name for it. What about:
HELP
START
HOME
OVERVIEW

Re: Maemo.org INto page (November Sprint)
 

As well, the image on the INTRO page is nice and all, but what does it really say? Now, if it was clickable, with links to overviews and more information (websites for each) on all the contents of the image, that would be cool...

Re: Maemo.org INto page (November Sprint)
 

A link to the nice, simple, bear-of-very-little-brain walk-thru vids produced by the maemo5ui team could be handy for n00bs.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Maemo5UITeam

So would the 'tips and tricks' from nokia experts:

http://nokiaexperts.com/tips-shortcu...00-user-guide/

Re: Maemo.org INto page (November Sprint)
 

Thanks for starting this thread!

I imagine this Intro (or whatever name we decide) page as a single page, very comprehensive and visually appealing pointing to other places someone interested in Maemo and its community shoud know.

Please share your most precious Maemo / maemo.org links here.

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

Somehow I had expected more precious links shared here. :) Nothing hidden in the wiki or somewhere not obvious?

Other intresting URLs are "Intro" or "About" pages you consider good for inspiration.

And a wild though: since there is so much competition for the primary navigation bar, what about removing Intro and convert it in the top right block on top of Get Involved?

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

If all we're talking here is the front page, here's what I think:

• Seen with a newcomer's eyes, there's too much stuff on the front page. The opensuse front page helps illustrate this by way of contrast.
• News (just by way of example) doesn't really have a reason to be there. It's the planet, isn't it? Most people who would be interested in the planet would access it directly.
• It could be that I am just used to drupal, but that floating midgard bar thingie is not only annoying, it draws attention very effectively away from the top navigation bar. Kill it with fire!
• With the advent of the N900, it's consumers who will be stampeding to maemo.org is greater numbers. Might be useful to set the right expectations, that this is a place where a technical community congregates and not a source of free N900 support. "heading off" might be the right expression, and clear language and a clear link to Nokia's N900 support page might send some people off in the direction they wanted all along.
• For my money, the Intro page is actually really good content wise, less so aesthetically.
• Don't some web analytics services track navigation? With the kind of traffic maemo.org probably sees, very useful stats could be harvested. What site paths people take and where they end up spending the most time. That could then later on be used to shorten the path from these popular pages to the front page.

Off the top of my head.

I do think there's a lot of extremely good content but it might benefit from non-trivial restructuring. Aren't we glad it's a wiki? :)

And whatever else you end up doing, keep the color scheme. Even when it becomes uncool in 2525 I'll still like it, and it matches my sneakers.

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

So far I like Kathy's suggestions and the only thing that's kept me from adding to them is making sure the resource(s) I would see referenced are not redundant.

I agree with your "Get Involved" proposal Quim. I think that's a good start.

Re: Maemo.org INto page (November Sprint)
 

Vote and comment on this bug please: https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4959

Re: Maemo.org INto page (November Sprint)
 

Speaking of that bug, it seems to me that trawling through the wiki looking for stuff that can be linked and then linking it will go a long way towards closing it.

I got a mediawiki instance adopted at the group of companies where I work, and there's this MW extension we installed; FCKEditor (think it might have been renamed; damn you crappy memory) but the linking is done in a dialog which auto-completes against existing pages which is very nice and really helps increasing inter-page linking.

Maybe something for the Maemo wiki.

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

Er... this thread is not about the frontpage but about the http://maemo.org/intro/ section.

My reference to the frontpage is only about the link to this page.

Interesting ideas but I'll concentrate my November sprint worg in the Intro section without attempting to open the frontpage Pandora's box.

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

Could the Intro page be implemented in a wiki page instead? It could be protected, but even so people could mock up changes in subpages off their user page for, say, new and improved designs or better linking or what have you not.

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

Good idea. Let's start with a subpage under someone's wiki profile page, and once it's ready we move it.

Note that this means wiki right column navigation, though.

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

The wiki navigation column is a bit weildy at the moment but when yo think about it, it's a partial remedy (if populated accordingly) for the wiki dead ends texrat mentioned.

I was toying around with a subpage where I had shamelessly appropriated wikipedia's front page and was adapting it to contain the wiki's front page. It might be worth considering if Intro and the wiki's front page couldn't effectively be merged. As a bonus, that would help set the wiki front and center to community knowledge management.

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

Meh, we have already one homepage superdynamic and full of data. No need to have yet anoher one under Intro.

But the idea of merging Intro with the wiki frontpage is good! Me likes.

If the trend continues, Community and Development will end up being wiki pages as well. The conclusion is that all static content will end up wikified, and the rest wll be all contend based on specific tools. Makes sense.

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

While I realize it wasn't your thought, If maemo.org is to become a premier destination for the new N900 buyer, I think that redesigning the maemo.org home page should be seriously considered. The SUSE page is a great design for a new user. A bit more detailed but still very usable is http://www.openoffice.org/.

Right now the home page is obviously that of a developer community (not that there's anything wrong with that). The "Get Help" button will probably be clicked by a new user more than anything other than the downloads but it doesn't drop them anywhere in particular, just at a new page with more links, none of which are explained (not to mention that the Talk Forums links sends them to the ITT home page which then sends them back to maemo.org if you click on Forums).

The advantage of redesigning the home page is that it will help "keep newbies at bay" to use a just slightly condescending thread title. It will also afford the community an opportunity to structure a n00b's learning. If they want help, dump them at the top of the new user wiki pages. If they can't find it there, tell them where you want them to go next, probably either the New User or Enquiry thread or the Users category in the wiki (the FAQ in its current state doesn't have enough Qs to be useful).

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

I've stolen the wikipedia front page design and mocked sometihng up here just to see how it looks.

Skimming the thread, I found the following suggestions and tried to implement them:

• link to http://wiki.maemo.org/New_users (OK)
• link to http://www.youtube.com/user/Maemo5UITeam (OK)
• link to http://nokiaexperts.com/tips-shortcu...00-user-guide/ (NOK)
• comprehensive, pointing to places maemo and community should know of (NEEDSWORK)
• think about merge of wiki Main_Page and Intro (?)
• Try to include as many links from the wiki Main_Page and other key maemo landing pages

This is just a mockup, you got several options including but not limited to reworking it or saying "no, that's no good". It's just an option I've thrown up.

Some notes from while I was mocking that page up:

1. Do the categories make sense?
2. Have we got the right links in the categories?
3. I've started using the plain expression maemo to refer to the community. If the platform is referred to I'm calling Maemo platform.
4. Is New_users more of a FAQ, really?
5. A lot of the links which are lifted from Main_Page need a lot of work, almost look like stubs (e.g. Downloading_apps).
6. I didn't include #2 above because it's about the N900 not Maemo... feel free to edit it in.
7. To avoid redundancy I left out links which are present anyhow in the main site header.

Also, I'm sure I've made the CSS powers that be very angry with the colors. Sorry!

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

Very nice start JosefA! The layout is a bit cramped-- can that be spaced out a little more?

And I'm sure you could find a better quote-of-the-day. :p

EDIT: one suggestion-- in addition to a For Developers section, what about putting a small For New Users section above it?

EDIT 2: scratch that-- maybe the section should be For the Community and include smarsh's New User link...

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

Funny guy. :p

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

No seriously, what parts specifically are cramped? And is it an intimidating wall of text (I suspect yes)?

If we end up with something we like, it could be used for Category pages too.

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

Can you add a wee bit more white space between cells (sections)? That's what I meant.

And yeah, I like your overall format for more uses...

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

Yes, it's MY format. Those wikipedia people stole it with their time machine. Louses the lot of 'em. :)

Lemme see what I can do. I seem to have given the mistaken impression that I actually know anything about CSS... *sigh*

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

That's excellent! I really like it. It's clean, navigable for bears and welcoming. A newbie with their shiney device will know where to go, and more experienced users too. Though at the moment the 'n900' support link just goes to a general nokia page, rather than the n900 specific one.

Though I could see huge rows breaking out over who gets to choose the QOTD. :p

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

have you seen Maemo5 101 @ wiki?

http://wiki.maemo.org/index.php?title=Maemo5_101

will add nokiaexperts - link to the page in couple of minutes.

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

Nice, good usage of descriptive icons although their sizes don't match.

If its wiki front page it should mention its a wiki? Or some kind of other name like documentation project or I don't know.

Because right now this statement is confusing:

Am I not welcomed at Maemo.org front page as well? Are the forum or main page not articles as well?

On bottom QOTD should be one space to right for outlining. The outlining of Hot topics maybe a bit more to left (so matches more with content above it).

While I understand quick links on top right its a lot of text which is not good idea, but I don't know (yet) how to solve...

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

and i suggest browsing through http://wiki.maemo.org/Category:Beginners. i just added many links to new users - page from that category.

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

OK, I've mucked about a bit and tried to wrangle the CSS into something that won't elicit too many follow-up complaints. Turns out Nested tables + CSS + wiki markup isn't elegant.

Still a lot of warts, but this is the limit of my web design fu. Feel free to edit in place or copy over to your own sub-page.

Note to self, tempted to redo it all in HTML markup...

Oh, and note to *: this is lurvely.

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

Alright, we are getting there!

Two problems I see currently:

- Maintaining that intro page takes work every now and then. I would remove any dynamic data that needs to be introduced manually and I would go for a static page (fair enoug for an intro) that can be fed with dynamic content automatically.

- We have a maemo.org page with a lot of elements and now we aim to an Intro with also lots of elements... And yet still a new user won't get things clear after going through homepage and intro. And then the user will go to http://maemo.org/community/ and will get again plenty of elements with overlapping info... and still no clear simple picture of what is maemo.org all about and what is offered there.

Sorry for the lack of constructive ideas. I will try to provide them one f these days but before there are a couple of tasks I need to get out of the way.

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

Just a bureaucratic note. This task is now officially part of the November sprint: http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo.org_Spri...ember_09#Tasks

4 weeks to get it done!

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

Wiki_admin, please deal with http://wiki.maemo.org/Category:Artic...d_for_deletion and delete the marked ones?

These articles are also linked to from example Orphaned_pages and I'd like to clean the Orphaned_pages but need better overview.

Thanks!

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

Just deleted all the empty pages on that list, the other ones I don't know why they should be deleted, since they have some information.

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

maemo.org should not try to beat Nokia and the Wikipedia at describing for first timers what is Maemo, the N900 and previous models, do you agree on this?

Wikipedia pages are just as editable and the more work is put there the more it benefits absoltely everybody.

maemo.nokia.com is already a successful entry point. Millions of excited visitors of the site can't be wrong.

The missions that nobody will accomplish better are:

- For users: apps that won't be at Ovi, community help, peers discussion and power use (whatever is not written in the manual)

- For developers: genuine community developer discussion and support, all the unofficial offering, the development project infrastructure and the Extras distribution channel.

- For everybody: Maemo community unique services e.g. Bugzilla and Brainstorm plus the community involvement from rating apps and news to the QA testing, attending to events as sponsored contributor, being elected to the counil...

To me the goal of the Intro page is to give this big and broad and simple picture to everybody, and the links to know more.

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

Agreed. Users -> learn about community, pointers on how to listen in, links to tutorials and HOWTOs. Developers -> learn about community, links to places where they can get started with an SDK, writing or porting an application, helping make the platform better.


If there is agreement that the introductory pages in the wiki are better than the "Intro" section, then we could just use those (once they settle to a steady state & meet editorial standards) & have all links from there go into the wiki directly.

maemo.org/intro devinitely needs to cater to developers - but if we can have a big red button with a label "Developers and über-geeks go here!" which brings them somewhere else, that might do.

To me it's important for a new person coming to maemo.org to know in the intro that this is a community project, and be pointed to places where they can join in and listen to the conversation also.

Cheers,
Dave.

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

Good to see a consensus forming on this. As Dave no doubt understands well, there is significant value in "write once, report many" and in that light the first order of business is identifying what/where the data master is and how/where the information it governs should be distributed. Tentacles feeding automated updates from masters to reporting pages is ideal of course but not always immediately doable. That's where the volunteers are so valuable.

But to avoid confusion, maybe it would be helpful for every page replicating info that's governed elsewhere to clearly identify the original source as the master. Maybe that could minimize well-intended but ultimately wasteful efforts of "reinventing the wheel"...

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

Note that the current suggestion is that maemo.org/intro *is* already a wiki page.

But let's agree first on the content and then we will agree on the support.

And on how this intro page is linked from the homepage. It has been also proposed to remove the "Intro" entry in the primary navigation bar since there are other candidates more useful for that and such intro could be a first block in the top right column.

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

Hello, just for information :

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=34154

I don't have time myself for creating attractive icons, but I've time for page editing.

Re: maemo.org Intro page (November Sprint)
 

I've been roped into discussions on wiki structuring and front pages at work too (I steamrolled a mediawiki into adoption there), so here's some of the thoughts we've had that probably apply here too.

I know we're discussing the Intro page here, but the structure we choose for Intro can be reused for quite a lot of other things. Think wikipedia portals; the visual semantics are preserved. Let me try to be more specific: it would be great if for example the Qt4 landing page or the Community landing page were structured identically to the Intro and/or Main_Page (am I being subtle enough about thinking those should merge? :) ).

MW does support templates but I distinctly recall not being very impressed, and looking at the wikipedia front page (which history will remember that I shamelessly stole for my mockup) and portal page markup, I see that they only use templates for elements inside the page, not for the whole shebang.

I don't really have that much to say about the design since the mockup speaks better, but once we've found something we like my feeling is it ought to trigger future sprints for thematic areas: a new users portal page for example, a developers portal, etc. Having that would incidentally take some information load off the Intro page; you'd just say "You a developer, gal/fella? Fine, click developer portal" instead of having a whole box talking at developers.

Once the concepts of a wikified front and wikified thematic portals are in place, the big benefit is that we've de facto established a semblance of hierarchical organisation. I say semblance because wiis don't do hierarchy, they only mimic it. But heirarchical data representations are probably easier for a lot of people to navigate through. So carrying the Intro design over to thematic areas helps reinforce this heirarchical wiki representation.

And who knows, you might get endless layers of thematic portals. The Qt propellerheads under development for example side by side with the Gnome hippies and so on.

Sorry if this doesn't sound like it has to do with /Intro; I intend it to have everything with the /Intro page to do. I think my point here is simply that greater ambition is possible with this page. The way Intro gets structured can help improve structure elsewhere.

Whether the Intro link belongs in div id="navigation" up there, my opinion is yes. The sooner people are guided towards areas where they can contribute (wiki) as well as read the better, on principle.

Can we wikify maemo.nokia.com too? :) Please? :)


(holy wall of text; sorry!)