[Cuis-dev] Cuis web presence

Mariano Montone marianomontone at gmail.com
Tue Nov 2 09:45:29 PDT 2021


Hi Phil,

    thanks for your input!

If I am to follow your advice, then the bad news for me is my current
website doesn't have much to offer, neither regarding content or design,
and so it may just be better to start from scratch.

As you say, what is most important is content.

My suggestion would be to start writing some content for the webpage
collaboratively somewhere, either on a new git repository or at Cuis wiki.

Cheers,

Mariano


El 2/11/21 a las 13:01, Phil B via Cuis-dev escribió:
> Mariano,
> 
> On Tue, Nov 2, 2021 at 9:22 AM Mariano Montone via Cuis-dev
> <cuis-dev at lists.cuis.st <mailto:cuis-dev at lists.cuis.st>> wrote:
> 
>     Hi Hilaire,
> 
>     El 2/11/21 a las 09:24, H. Fernandes escribió:
>     > Hi Mariano,
>     >
>     > It is a good start you have an infrastructure to build web site.
>     We should use it :) Not a big fan of the style, though. A web
>     designer will be of good help.
> 
>     Probably. I just had the idea of mimicking the Cuis environment, as you
>     can see . I suspect you are not fan of that idea? Or something about the
>     implementation? (can you be more specific?). Regardless, I'm not a
>     designer, but I kind of like the idea, and also the result.
> 
> 
> Your approach succeeded which is the problem.  You're repeating on the
> web the same mistake that the Smalltalk community has made repeatedly in
> the past: being different for the sake of being different. (i.e. we used
> different line terminators, button mappings, version control etc. for
> years and all it served to do was turn new users off)  That works if
> your audience is experienced Smalltalkers, not if you're trying to
> appeal to new users.
>  
> 
> 
>     I don't know of a web designer that could help. If anyone knows, or have
>     suggestions on how to improve, please let me know.
> 
> 
> You're on the web so don't try to pretend you're not.  Keep it clean and
> make it look and work like a standard web page.  Don't try to make it
> into something it isn't (either a 'real' application or a Squeak/Cuis
> one) or you'll end up with something polarizing like the extreme
> examples of SPA's/PWA's etc.  Find a simple, clean CSS template you like
> and use it consistently.  Let links look and work like links, let things
> scroll in a sane way etc.
> 
> The problem with getting too cute with web design is that you may get
> something that looks great on iOS, and possibly Android, for now.   But
> it's pretty much guaranteed to break at some point and/or have issues on
> other browsers/platforms.  Even if you overcome all that, it runs a high
> risk of turning off people who don't share your design aesthetic. 
> Should you decide you don't care and still want to go there:  don't do
> it until you address the following...
>  
> 
> 
>     >
>     > Regarding contents itself, a few general pages/information with
>     details and pointers will be help to present Cuis:
>     >
>     > - Features
>     > - Download
>     > - Documentation
>     > - Community
>     > - Packages
>     > - Use cases
>     >
>     > Contents should be simple and non technical (I find your pages too
>     technical and verbose). Technical stuff should be left to external
>     pages the web site will point to.
>     > Squeak and Pharo web sites are quite well done, in my opinion
> 
>     I agree 100% with that. I didn't put any effort on writing the content.
>     I just transformed already available Markdown pages to HTML, so there's
>     room for a lot of improvement there.
> 
> 
> This is where the majority of the focus needs to be.  While presentation
> is important, content is more important.
>  
> 
> 
>     I think a way forward would be to write the content for the pages you
>     mentioned.
> 
>     Cheers,
> 
>     Mariano
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> Phil 
> 



More information about the Cuis-dev mailing list