[Haskell-cafe] Leaner Haskell.org frontpage

[wren ng thornton]

Ignoring the rest of the thread, but jumping in here...


haskell at 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