[Ur] New website?

[ml at extensibl.com]

It is a bit disappointing to read this discussion. 

The project serves very specific auditory of people who are certainly
able to use the current documentation, website, etc. And that is the strong side
of the project - it actually produces useful, quality software for a specific niche.

What is the purpose of replacing the current website? It will waste time and efforts.
Those, who cannot figure out how to use frames will not use Ur/Web anyway.
Also, considering the number of contributors to the project, it seems to be quite
irresponsible to spend time on a fancy website.

For those, who are not convinced yet - have a look at openbsd.org and count 
how many great tools they have produced.




On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 10:54:46PM +0200, Torstein Saltvedt wrote:
> 
> 
> On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 7:32 PM, Adam Chlipala <
> adamc at csail.mit.edu> wrote:
> 
>     Thanks to everyone for their thoughts on the
>     project web site. Here's my summary of the
>     5-ish opinions expressed:
>     - It's not clear that the large background
>     graphic from Torstein's design is the way to
>     go.  Somehow it may be out of keeping with
>     the "character" of the Ur/Web project.
> 
> 
> Aesthetics are subjective, and although I think
> the current site looks outdated, it's only one of
> the reasons for the redesign and arguably the
> least important one. 
> 
> Other concerns are:
> 
> 1) The lack of SEO. Search Google for  for "who's
> using Ur/Web", and click on the relevant link.
> Due to the use of frames the navigation is
> missing, leaving the user effectively stranded.
> Search for "ur/web libraries" and none of the
> results are the "Officially Blessed Libraries"
> page on the official webpage (again due to
> frames, "Ur/Web" is not prominent on this page.).
> Since "urweb" does not appear in the URL on the
> official website, many of the search results come
> from third parties. For this reason I highly
> encourage that the website (new or not) is served
> on a domain like urweb-lang.org/com/net.
> 
> 2) Lack of responsive design. The website does
> not cater to users with small screens (on mobile
> phones or tablets). And yes, this is important!
> If in doubt, add Google Analytics or something
> equivalent too see what percentage of users visit
> the site using small screens. The number is
> probably higher than you expect.
> 
> 3) Various usability issues. The navigation is
> not consistent, for example it's not present on
> the pages for demos or the tutorial. Generally
> speaking you should always  be able to navigate
> to the home page by clicking on the logo of the
> site to the top left. There is no favicon to make
> the website distinguishable among browser tabs.
> Frames are obsolete and break lots of stuff like:
> the ability to link to or bookmark pages,
> reloading pages, opening one of the main menu
> links in a new tab, search engines, printing,
> accessibility tools for the visually impaired and
> probably a lot of other stuff. 
> 
> 4) Various other stuff. There are no RSS or Atom
> feeds. The manual is a PDF instead of individual
> indexed and searchable HTML pages. The wiki
> design is not consistent with the rest of the
> site and holds some duplicate information. The
> HTML is not valid; missing doctype and tons of
> other issues (run it through a validator!).  
>  
> 
>     - Adding a live-coding demo section seems
>     like a no-brainer.  I started a separate
>     discussion thread looking for someone to
>     spearhead an implementation.
> 
> 
> This is a great idea. 
>  
> 
>     - Moving to Git & GitHub also seems like a
>     no-brainer.  One concern about GitHub was
>     expressed, regarding censorship.  I
>     personally am not too worried there, as it's
>     easy to maintain "mirrors" of a Git
>     repository all over the place, to be ready in
>     case one main provider goes over to the dark
>     side.  The pros seem to outweigh the cons,
>     considering how many potential contributors
>     already have GitHub accounts and are used to
>     using GitHub.
> 
> 
> Does this mean that the project will adapt the
> GitHub Wiki, Issue tracker and the Pull Request
> model as well? Will you still accept patches
> through this mailing list?
>  
> 
>     - It may still be worth tweaking the
>     graphical design of the Ur project site, but
>     I'm not seeing a clear consensus right now on
>     exactly how that should look.  (I really
>     don't mind the current site. :P)
> 
> 
> To be honest, I think the current site is so bad
> that it is undermining Ur/Web as a serious,
> modern web framework.
>  
> 
> 
>     Another very useful thing would be a tutorial
>     that doesn't assume ML and Haskell
>     familiarity, ideally written by someone
>     beside me, since Ur/Web's design has been in
>     some sense optimized for my brain. :) Any
>     takers there?
> 
>     On 07/27/2015 08:30 PM, Stefan Scott
>     Alexander wrote:
> 
>         Also, "eating your own dog food" would
>         probably be a plus. It only makes sense
>         that a website for a web programming
>         language should be programmed in the
>         language itself.
> 
> 
>     I'm not sure about this one.  Ur/Web is for
>     web _apps_, not web _sites_, so it may be a
>     mismatch for a largely static site.
> 
> 
> Agreed, but it would still make for a great
> demo. 
> 
> The largest concerns would be SEO (every page
> would have to be indexed and searchable by
> Google) and navigation/routing (back button
> should work correctly; clicking a link and then
> the back button should bring you to the original
> page with original scroll position). 
> 
> 
> --
> Torstein Saltvedt

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