From amk at amk.ca Mon Sep 1 06:16:18 2003 From: amk at amk.ca (A.M. Kuchling) Date: Sat Sep 13 09:21:31 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Finishing off the site map Message-ID: <20030901101618.GB9549@nyman.amk.ca> Yesterday evening I checked in another bunch of .sitemap-ignores, and added a feature that lets you put glob patterns (e.g. pr*.ht) into a .sitemap-ignore file; matching files aren't included on the sitemap. This lets /dev/summary/ show up without having to list every single python-dev summary. In short, at this point I think the pointless cruft has finally been removed from the site map. Please take a look at www.python.org/SiteMap.html, and check in appropriate .sitemap-ignore files if you disagree. There's one remaining problem: the ordering of the top-level directories such as doc/, 2.3/, sigs/, etc. Right now they're sorted in ASCII order, so 1.5/ is the very first directory, and 2.3 is in the middle, after all the older 2.x versions. I'd like to hard-wire a better ordering into sitemap.py. My proposal is to break it into two parts for important and obscure stuff, and leave each part sorted. 2.3 community doc download dev peps psf pycon search sigs topics workshops 1.5 2.0 (and other older versions) editors emacs idle cp4e (is this directory still relevant?) other packman patches windows Thoughts? --amk From andrew.kuchling at asti-usa.com Fri Sep 5 18:53:09 2003 From: andrew.kuchling at asti-usa.com (Andrew Kuchling) Date: Sat Sep 13 09:21:33 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Finishing the site map Message-ID: I've finished hiding things from the site map; at this point there isn't anything else that needs to be removed. Please check it out at http://www.python.org/SiteMap.html . However, I'd like to re-order the top-level categories. Right now they're sorted alphabetically, and the problem is that /1.5/ comes first and useful things such as /workshops/ come later. I'd like to split the sitemap into two sections, important and less-important links (not labeled as such). Important links (alphabetical order): 2.3/ community/ dev/ doc/ download/ editors/ psf/ pycon/ search/ topics/ windows/ workshops/ Less-important links (alphabetical order): Older versions (1.5-2.2) cp4e/ emacs/ idle/ other/ packman/ peps/ patches/ sigs/ I'm most unsure about where pycon/, emacs/, and idle/ belong. --amk From amk at amk.ca Fri Sep 5 19:34:17 2003 From: amk at amk.ca (A.M. Kuchling) Date: Sat Sep 13 09:21:34 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Sidebar/nav. bar revisions Message-ID: <778B0500-DFF9-11D7-99A3-0003931BF218@amk.ca> Here's another round of sidebar changes: http://www.amk.ca/python.org.html The "mirror sites" link has been moved down. SIGs and Help have been dropped from the top navbar, replaced with a "Contact us" page (still to be written) and "Site map". Comments? Secondary issue: given the current plague of viruses (and the likelihood of future viruses), should we be trying to minimize the number of times e-mail addresses are given on web pages? The 'Contact us' page would be a step toward this: this single page would be the only ones with an e-mail address. --amk From Mike at Geary.com Sun Sep 7 00:56:47 2003 From: Mike at Geary.com (Michael Geary) Date: Sat Sep 13 09:21:35 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Unreadable fonts in proposed design Message-ID: Greetings, I'm new to this list, having just taken a look at the proposed redesign at http://www.pollenation.net/journal/index.php?p=37&c=1. Please forgive me and correct me if this is the wrong place for the comments that follow--and I hope I won't make too many enemies by saying this :-) but I am extremely distressed by this design. The typography is just unacceptable. It probably looks fine on the designer's 21" monitor, but it is very hard to read on my high-resolution notebook display. Here is a copy of the detailed comments I posted on the site mentioned above: Sorry, but the typography on the main page is just horrible. The text is only 10 pixels high, and I'll bet a nickel it's specified in "px" units, isn't it? Don't forget that not everyone uses a 21" monitor. I do all my work on a ThinkPad A30p, running 1600x1200 on a 15" panel. On my display, this is 5.4 point text! No one wants to read 5.4 point text. (Put another way, each character is less than 1/13" high. That's mighty small text!) Also, you've got *zero* leading. Zoom in on your main page under Case Studies where "Python" is above "adoption". Note that if the word Python happened to be three pixels farther to the right, the descender on the "y" would touch the ascender on the "d". Finally, the text is a gray-blue color (RGB:59,81,153). This averages out to 97.7, which means you've thrown away 38% of the available contrast! The interior page is both better and worse. Here the text is 12 pixels high with two pixels of leading. The color is (RGB:112,110,103), for an average of 108.3, so you have thrown away 42% of the available contrast. Compare all of this with the beautifully readable text on the current python.org page. The CSS simply leaves BODY text unspecified, so it uses my default browser font. I can read the page in any typeface and any font size I want. It respects the font size selection in any browser, and the text is solid black on white for 100% contrast. THAT is how you design for usability: respect the user's wishes instead of imposing unreadable fonts on them. This proposed design is a huge step backwards. Sorry I'm so critical, but bad website typography happens to be my pet peeve. :-) -Mike From amk at amk.ca Tue Sep 9 16:25:21 2003 From: amk at amk.ca (A.M. Kuchling) Date: Sat Sep 13 09:21:39 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Proposed contact page Message-ID: Here's proposed text for a 'Contact us' page to live at www.python.org/contact.html . If we change all of the webmaster@python.org mailto links to point to this page instead, that may reduce our exposure to virus e-mails. Reactions? --amk Title: Contact Us Content-type: text/x-rst To get help with Python programming questions, join `the tutor mailing list `_, a list especially for people learning computer programming with Python. Other mailing lists and newsgroups may also be helpful; see the guide to Python mailing lists for a list of available forums. Programming questions can also be sent to `help@python.org `_, which is staffed by a group of volunteers who will provide brief answers to questions. To report problems with the python.org site (errors, broken links, and typos) or to make suggestions about the material on python.org, write to `webmaster@python.org `_. From lac at strakt.com Thu Sep 11 03:49:50 2003 From: lac at strakt.com (Laura Creighton) Date: Sat Sep 13 09:21:40 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site Message-ID: <200309110749.h8B7nog5027270@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> One of the reasons I dislike python.org is that you pretty much have to know where there links you want are, so you can click on them. You have a handful of bookmarks, and navigate from there. (At least I do). This is despite having a search engine. For some reason it never works to display the information I want. This is in contrast to John Walker's site http://www.fourmilab.ch/ where I can use Google to find anything I want. My conclusion is that Google does a better job than Infoseek. The question is, couldn't we get a Google search for Python.org? With a button to search all the comp.lang.python articles via google groups as well? If I were Peter Norvig, I would give us one for free in exchange for a note saying 'Google is powered by Python', which we wanted to say anyway. Has this idea come up before? It strikes me as obvious. Will we end up hurting somebody's feelings at infoseek if we deep-six it? Laura From lac at strakt.com Thu Sep 11 17:26:09 2003 From: lac at strakt.com (Laura Creighton) Date: Sat Sep 13 09:21:44 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Test. Message-ID: <200309112126.h8BLQ916030652@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> None of my posts to Pydotorg-redesign are getting out. Let us see if this one does, because I just cc'd it to Barry and it would be annoying to me if this one worked when the ones I cared about didn't. Apologies to those as see this (except Barry) I do not expect this to work. Pydotorg redesign archives end in August and this is Sept 11. Let me know if you see this. Laura From barry at python.org Fri Sep 12 08:16:29 2003 From: barry at python.org (Barry Warsaw) Date: Sat Sep 13 09:21:46 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] a test Message-ID: <1063368989.19907.37.camel@anthem> please ignore From lac at strakt.com Sat Sep 13 10:14:31 2003 From: lac at strakt.com (Laura Creighton) Date: Sat Sep 13 10:15:19 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Unreadable fonts in proposed design In-Reply-To: Message from "Michael Geary" of "Sat, 06 Sep 2003 21:56:47 PDT." References: Message-ID: <200309131414.h8DEEVq3006638@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> pydotorg-redesign is back after a long outage. Thanks very much Barry. But this means the note this was a reply to was discussing an old version of the proposed new page. New ones are here: http://pollenation.net/assets/public/python-main3.html http://pollenation.net/assets/public/python-main3-interior.html http://pollenation.net/assets/public/colours/blue.png http://pollenation.net/assets/public/colours/green.png http://pollenation.net/assets/public/colours/brown.png http://pollenation.net/assets/public/colours/maroon.png http://pollenation.net/assets/public/colours/violet.png http://pollenation.net/assets/public/colours/tangreen.png http://pollenation.net/assets/public/colours/bluegold.png Just so we don't waste time rehashing the past, Laura From lac at strakt.com Sat Sep 13 10:27:04 2003 From: lac at strakt.com (Laura Creighton) Date: Sat Sep 13 10:27:44 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Proposed contact page In-Reply-To: Message from "A.M. Kuchling" of "Tue, 09 Sep 2003 16:25:21 EDT." References: Message-ID: <200309131427.h8DER4q3006689@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> In a message of Tue, 09 Sep 2003 16:25:21 EDT, "A.M. Kuchling" writes: >Here's proposed text for a 'Contact us' page to live at >www.python.org/contact.html . >If we change all of the webmaster@python.org mailto links to point to >this page instead, >that may reduce our exposure to virus e-mails. Reactions? > >--amk I don't understand how this helps with the viruses. (I don't disagree, I just don't understand). > >Title: Contact Us >Content-type: text/x-rst I would list python-list first for Python programming questions. Then I would list _If you are learning how to program_ join the .. or you could do that in the reverse order, I think. > >To get help with Python programming questions, join `the tutor mailing >list `_, a list >especially for people learning computer programming with Python. >Other mailing lists and newsgroups may also be helpful; see "community/lists.html">the guide to Python mailing lists for a >list of available forums. > >Programming questions can also be sent to `help@python.org >`_, which is staffed by a group of volunteers >who will provide brief answers to questions. > >To report problems with the python.org site (errors, broken links, >and typos) or to make suggestions about the material on python.org, >write to `webmaster@python.org `_. > My problem with the proposed solution, is that I would like to refer to people to the various lists from other places all over the site. For instance, if we have a CP4E whole portal, which I would like, then I would like to invite educators who think that educating is fun to join tutor. I would like to get at tutor via -- looking for community as well. Since I don't know how this proposal is supposed to cut down on spam, I don't know if having a separate page for tutor, which you can link to from many places, ditto python-list is a compatible solution, or if it just breaks amk's fix. The most useful page for me on python.org is a list of all the mailman maintained mailing lists on python.org. If this is going away, then I will be very unhappy, and probably never able to find the right place to mail things again. Laura From lac at strakt.com Sat Sep 13 10:35:03 2003 From: lac at strakt.com (Laura Creighton) Date: Sat Sep 13 10:35:38 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] idea I had (expressed in the wrong forum) In-Reply-To: Message from Laura Creighton of "Mon, 25 Aug 2003 17:06:17 +0200." <200308251506.h7PF6HOK015332@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> References: <200308251506.h7PF6HOK015332@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> Message-ID: <200309131435.h8DEZ3q3006733@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> My next idea that should have been here but wasn't, because I didn't want to bring it up if it was diuscussed in the mail we weren't getting is making a staging area. This is a complete copy of python.org with one difference -- anybody can write to it. It also doesn't have to be mirrored. Then when people such as journalists write articles they would like to have on python.org, they can just add the links to the staging area. Later amk or somebody can check and make sure they aren't links to penis enlargers, and just swap the staged page for the python.org one. Knowing that something has changed in the staging area is a job for a bot, as is checking stale links. (Which also could get fixed by the people who find them in the staging area, assuming they know where the links ought to point to). Oleg Broytmann has writen such a bot for the stale (and changed I think) links see: http://phd.pp.ru/Software/Python/ I have never used it. The idea is to build a vibrant and dynamic community around the website, without burdening the site maintainers too much. Laura From lac at strakt.com Sat Sep 13 10:36:55 2003 From: lac at strakt.com (Laura Creighton) Date: Sat Sep 13 10:37:02 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Finishing off the site map In-Reply-To: Message from "A.M. Kuchling" of "Mon, 01 Sep 2003 06:16:18 EDT." <20030901101618.GB9549@nyman.amk.ca> References: <20030901101618.GB9549@nyman.amk.ca> Message-ID: <200309131436.h8DEatq3006765@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> I don't know where Pycon belongs, but wherever it is, EuroPython wants to be there too. Laura From lac at strakt.com Sat Sep 13 11:09:41 2003 From: lac at strakt.com (Laura Creighton) Date: Sat Sep 13 11:09:50 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] http://www.python.org/community/lists.html Message-ID: <200309131509.h8DF9f8W006952@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> says that the non-English mailing lists are listed under http://www.python.org/doc/NonEnglish.html now they aren't. So you had better delete that line. Also can somebody tell me what the German language mailing list's address is? thanks very much, Laura From python at dylanreinhardt.com Sat Sep 13 13:56:32 2003 From: python at dylanreinhardt.com (Dylan Reinhardt) Date: Sat Sep 13 13:57:27 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] idea I had (expressed in the wrong forum) In-Reply-To: <200309131435.h8DEZ3q3006733@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> References: <200308251506.h7PF6HOK015332@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> <200309131435.h8DEZ3q3006733@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> Message-ID: <1063475791.23737.44.camel@ida.dylanreinhardt.com> On Sat, 2003-09-13 at 07:35, Laura Creighton wrote: > My next idea that should have been here but wasn't, because I didn't > want to bring it up if it was diuscussed in the mail we weren't getting > is making a staging area. This is a complete copy of python.org with > one difference -- anybody can write to it. It also doesn't have to > be mirrored. Then when people such as journalists write articles > they would like to have on python.org, they can just add the links > to the staging area. Later amk or somebody can check and make sure > they aren't links to penis enlargers, and just swap the staged page > for the python.org one. Rather that reinvent the wheel, why not use an existing, best-of-breed solution written in Python? Zope + Plone does this exact set of tasks extremely well. I previously offered to build a prototype. That offer stands. > The idea is to build a vibrant and dynamic community around the website, > without burdening the site maintainers too much. I couldn't agree more... this is one area where our current approach is seriously lacking. FWIW, Dylan From cs1spw at bath.ac.uk Sat Sep 13 14:00:14 2003 From: cs1spw at bath.ac.uk (Simon Willison) Date: Sat Sep 13 13:59:39 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Proposed contact page In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3F635B2E.7090203@bath.ac.uk> A.M. Kuchling wrote: > Here's proposed text for a 'Contact us' page to live at > www.python.org/contact.html . > If we change all of the webmaster@python.org mailto links to point to > this page instead, > that may reduce our exposure to virus e-mails. Reactions? If reducing spam to the addresses listed on the site is an issue, one technique that might prove useful would be to keep all contact emails hidden away on a page that can only be accessed by an HTTP POST request. Spam harvesting crawlers exclusively use GET to retrieve pages, so email addresses on POST generated pages are inaccessible to them. I demonstrate this technique on the contact page of my blog: http://simon.incutio.com/contact/ I can't offer much in the way of proof that it works other than to say that the amount of spam I receive has not noticably increased since I made my address available on my site in this way. Cheers, Simon Willison From amk at amk.ca Sat Sep 13 06:27:14 2003 From: amk at amk.ca (A.M. Kuchling) Date: Sat Sep 13 14:22:37 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] http://www.python.org/community/lists.html In-Reply-To: <200309131509.h8DF9f8W006952@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> References: <200309131509.h8DF9f8W006952@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> Message-ID: <20030913102714.GA3917@nyman.amk.ca> On Sat, Sep 13, 2003 at 05:09:41PM +0200, Laura Creighton wrote: >now they aren't. So you had better delete that line. Also can >somebody tell me what the German language mailing list's address is? It's the next-to-last link in the German section: http://starship.python.net/mailman/listinfo/python-de The problem is that the link text isn't always "Mailing list" for mailing lists; that should be made consistent. I'll do that. --amk From amk at amk.ca Sat Sep 13 06:47:06 2003 From: amk at amk.ca (A.M. Kuchling) Date: Sat Sep 13 14:42:27 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Proposed contact page In-Reply-To: <200309131427.h8DER4q3006689@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> References: <200309131427.h8DER4q3006689@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> Message-ID: <20030913104706.GC3917@nyman.amk.ca> On Sat, Sep 13, 2003 at 04:27:04PM +0200, Laura Creighton wrote: >I don't understand how this helps with the viruses. (I don't disagree, >I just don't understand). Most of the current crop of viruses will search the web browser cache for mailto: links and use the addresses as recipients or as faked senders. Pretty much every single page on python.org has an 'E-mail us' and a mailto pointing at webmaster, so anyone who's ever gotten infected and browsed python.org at some point will likely end up generating e-mails to us. (Hmm, http://www.harrison.k12.co.us/tech-support/help/anti-virus/klez.html is a really nice explanation of how Klez works. Should weblog that page...) If every page has a 'contact us' link to the same HTML page, and only that one page has a mailto, that page may only end up in the browser cache if people explicitly follow that link, and relatively few people will do that. The trade-off is that this slightly decreases usability. Also, some sections have different authors -- e.g. the link is for docs@, not webmaster@ -- and it's unclear what to do in this case: list all such author addresses on the contact us page? Only suppress the webmaster@ mailtos and leave docs@ and other addresses to fend for themselves? >I don't know if having a separate page for tutor, which you can link >to from many places, ditto python-list is a compatible solution, or Having separate pages wouldn't be a problem. >The most useful page for me on python.org is a list of all the mailman >maintained mailing lists on python.org. If this is going away, then Mailman automatically provides such a listing: mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo . Unfortunately it provides only the most telegraphic explanation for each list, so the listing isn't very newbie-friendly. --amk From amk at amk.ca Sat Sep 13 06:53:47 2003 From: amk at amk.ca (A.M. Kuchling) Date: Sat Sep 13 14:49:07 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <200309110749.h8B7nog5027270@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> References: <200309110749.h8B7nog5027270@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> Message-ID: <20030913105347.GD3917@nyman.amk.ca> On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 09:49:50AM +0200, Laura Creighton wrote: >Has this idea come up before? It strikes me as obvious. Will we >end up hurting somebody's feelings at infoseek if we deep-six it? +1. Google already makes it straightforward to add a form to search your own site with Google (http://www.google.com/services/free.html). Google requires no sysadmin effort on our part and provides a better search. Infoseek is a commercial company that uses Python, which is good, but wanting to support them is no reason to saddle python.org readers with weaker search features. --amk From cs1spw at bath.ac.uk Sat Sep 13 15:30:49 2003 From: cs1spw at bath.ac.uk (Simon Willison) Date: Sat Sep 13 15:30:08 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <20030913105347.GD3917@nyman.amk.ca> References: <200309110749.h8B7nog5027270@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> <20030913105347.GD3917@nyman.amk.ca> Message-ID: <3F637069.9020605@bath.ac.uk> A.M. Kuchling wrote: > On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 09:49:50AM +0200, Laura Creighton wrote: > >>Has this idea come up before? It strikes me as obvious. Will we >>end up hurting somebody's feelings at infoseek if we deep-six it? > > > +1. Google already makes it straightforward to add a form to search > your own site with Google (http://www.google.com/services/free.html). > > Google requires no sysadmin effort on our part and provides a better > search. Infoseek is a commercial company that uses Python, which is > good, but wanting to support them is no reason to saddle python.org readers > with weaker search features. Alternatively, how about building a search engine on top of the excellent lupy (a port of the open source Lucene Java search engine)? From my admittedly limited experience of Lupy it is a truly excellent product - it provides a very powerful API for indexing documemts, and a simple interface for running searches on them. I've been trying it out on a collection of 800 documents and searches complete in 0.02 seconds, running on my Windows desktop PC. http://www.divmod.org/Lupy/ Regards, Simon Willison http://simon.incutio.com/ From roy at panix.com Sat Sep 13 16:06:52 2003 From: roy at panix.com (Roy Smith) Date: Sat Sep 13 16:06:53 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <3F637069.9020605@bath.ac.uk> Message-ID: On Saturday, September 13, 2003, at 03:30 PM, Simon Willison wrote: > Alternatively, how about building a search engine on top of the > excellent lupy (a port of the open source Lucene Java search engine)? > From my admittedly limited experience of Lupy it is a truly excellent > product - it provides a very powerful API for indexing documemts, and > a simple interface for running searches on them. Why would you not want to use google, as previously suggested, other than NIH (Not Invented Here)? It works, it's easy, it's fast, it's free, we don't have to maintain it ourselves, everybody is familiar with it, etc. What's not to like? What does Lupy give us that google doesn't? From tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com Sat Sep 13 16:18:30 2003 From: tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com (Tim Parkin) Date: Sat Sep 13 16:18:49 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <005301c37a34$3938fcf0$0a00a8c0@JASPER> >On Saturday, September 13, 2003, at 03:30 PM, Simon Willison wrote: >> Alternatively, how about building a search engine on top of the >> excellent lupy (a port of the open source Lucene Java search engine)? >> From my admittedly limited experience of Lupy it is a truly excellent >> product - it provides a very powerful API for indexing documemts, and >> a simple interface for running searches on them. > >Why would you not want to use google, as previously suggested, other >than NIH (Not Invented Here)? It works, it's easy, it's fast, it's >free, we don't have to maintain it ourselves, everybody is familiar >with it, etc. What's not to like? The massive advantage of having your own search engine is that you can customise it to 1) exlude certain parts of the html in a site (ie furniture and menu's) 2) add your own keywords to pages and weight them if nescessary 3) add a category based sub-search 4) provide a better summary text for each returned result 5) provide a result title that isn't the page title 6) add your own stop words There are more than just these reasons, I've swish / swish++ and lucene and they are both excellent products. I'm with Simon and think Lupy would be an appropriate Python search engine and would need little setup. Google, whilst very useful, can only provide a vanilla search results and even simple site based optimisation can dramatically improve these results. I'm with Lupy if in any way at all possible. Obviously if google are willing to donate a search app or help optimise out results then fantastic. I would suggest:- 1) Launch with google search 2) Ask google for an optimised solution and if not Add a Lupy search Tim From cs1spw at bath.ac.uk Sat Sep 13 16:43:32 2003 From: cs1spw at bath.ac.uk (Simon Willison) Date: Sat Sep 13 16:42:53 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3F638174.7000607@bath.ac.uk> Roy Smith wrote: > What does Lupy give us that google doesn't? Lupy gives us three big advantages: 1. Content is indexed as soon as it is added to the site. This is a critical advantage over Google, which may only reindex once a week or even once a month. 2. We can customise it (as Tim Parkin has already pointed out). 3. It's written in Python! The official site for the Python programming language should showcase Python whenever possible. Obviously it is not worth trading off end user functionality for "powered by Python", but Lupy really does look like an excellent search engine. Additionally, the author of the package is likely to be happy to provide extra support and customisation for the implementation used on the Python.org site. Best regards, Simon From python at dylanreinhardt.com Sat Sep 13 18:01:28 2003 From: python at dylanreinhardt.com (Dylan Reinhardt) Date: Sat Sep 13 18:02:23 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <3F638174.7000607@bath.ac.uk> References: <3F638174.7000607@bath.ac.uk> Message-ID: <1063490487.23737.81.camel@ida.dylanreinhardt.com> On Sat, 2003-09-13 at 13:43, Simon Willison wrote: > Lupy gives us three big advantages: > > 3. It's written in Python! The official site for the Python programming > language should showcase Python whenever possible. Agreed. According to www.python.org, "Python has been an important part of Google since the beginning, and remains so as the system grows and evolves." I have no idea what the details are on that claim, but showcasing Google on python.org seems like a Good Thing to me. $.02, Dylan From barry at python.org Sat Sep 13 18:27:22 2003 From: barry at python.org (Barry Warsaw) Date: Sat Sep 13 18:27:32 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <1063490487.23737.81.camel@ida.dylanreinhardt.com> References: <3F638174.7000607@bath.ac.uk> <1063490487.23737.81.camel@ida.dylanreinhardt.com> Message-ID: <1063492042.19907.167.camel@anthem> On Sat, 2003-09-13 at 18:01, Dylan Reinhardt wrote: > On Sat, 2003-09-13 at 13:43, Simon Willison wrote: > > Lupy gives us three big advantages: If I were to cast my vote I'd go for the thing that takes the least amount of effort to set up and maintain, that doesn't suck. Bonus points if we include the mailing list archives as a search corpus. -Barry From cs1spw at bath.ac.uk Sat Sep 13 21:35:47 2003 From: cs1spw at bath.ac.uk (Simon Willison) Date: Sat Sep 13 21:35:07 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <1063492042.19907.167.camel@anthem> References: <3F638174.7000607@bath.ac.uk> <1063490487.23737.81.camel@ida.dylanreinhardt.com> <1063492042.19907.167.camel@anthem> Message-ID: <3F63C5F3.2070907@bath.ac.uk> Barry Warsaw wrote: > If I were to cast my vote I'd go for the thing that takes the > least amount of effort to set up and maintain, that doesn't suck. Bonus > points if we include the mailing list archives as a search corpus. I just took a look at the mailing list archives and they total just over 700 MB(!) - the largest is Python-Dev at 111 MB. Loading that lot in to a search engine could be a painful task. It looks like Google has indexed them all (incredibly) so a targetted Google search limited to the mail.python.org domain would probably suffice for mailing lists. I still think there is a big advantage to be had in rolling a custom search engine for the site though - the ability to highlight certain site areas for specific keywords for example. I wonder if it would be possible to use the Google web services API to power a Python.org search engine? The API terms and conditions www.google.com/apis/api_terms.html say this: """ The Google Web APIs service is made available to you for your personal, non-commercial use only (at home or at work) [ ... ] And you may not use the search results provided by the Google Web APIs service with an existing product or service that competes with products or services offered by Google. """ I have no idea if a search engine for Python.org would count as "competing with products or services offered by Google". If it doesn't, a Google API powered search engine would give us all of the benefits of Google while still allowing the Python site to apply a custom template to the results and other enhancements (such as recommeded site areas for specific keywords). Cheers, Simon From tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com Sun Sep 14 06:22:26 2003 From: tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com (Tim Parkin) Date: Sun Sep 14 06:22:42 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <3F63C5F3.2070907@bath.ac.uk> Message-ID: <007f01c37aaa$1ed12d80$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Hi all, I'm getting to the point where I'm knocking out some html for the python site to see what can be done and can't be done. (at this point I'm sure everything can be done but to what extent and how efficiently we'll see). My big (BIG!!!) question is support for netscape 4. I'd love to be able to make sure it works visually in netscape 4 but if we have to do that then we lose an incredible amount of the advantages of css and semantic html. Basically if we want it to work in netscape 4 then I think we're back to tables (unless someone thinks the design can be implemented in css layout and still work in netscape, I've tried and not had much success). If it's an absolute must then we'll have to try harder or dump the design. If, like many many other sites on the Internet, we say we can live as long as the site is usable in netscape, then we're back onto a winner. This might mean that the site becomes very much a text site (no images, lynx style layout) or we can play with style sheets to see if we can come up with an alternative and simpler layout for netscape (filtered using style sheet hacks). I'd really like to be able to build the site using full semantic HTML/css layout as it would make it extrememly fast / accessible and also get a lot of attention from a lot of web developers. If you want to see the sort of html I'm talking about and how it renders in things like Lynx, check out Shown with enlarged font : "Developer Works HTML at large font size" http://pollenation.net/journal/assets/images/DeveloperWorks-ScaledFont.g if> "Python Proof of Concept HTML at large font size" http://pollenation.net/journal/assets/images/PythonProofOfConcept-Scaled Font.gif Shown with CSS removed : "Developer Works HTML at large font size with CSS removed" http://pollenation.net/journal/assets/images/DeveloperWorks-ScaledFont-N oCSS.gif "Python Proof of Concept HTML at large font size with CSS removed" http://pollenation.net/journal/assets/images/PythonProofOfConcept-Scaled Font-NoCSS.gif Shown in Lynx : "Developer Works HTML in Lynx" http://pollenation.net/journal/assets/images/DeveloperWorks-Lynx.gif "Python Proof of Concept HTML in Lynx" http://pollenation.net/journal/assets/images/PythonProofOfConcept-Lynx.g if The css removed is an example of what it would look like in netscape 4 (obviously with a smaller font if that's whats specified) if we don't aply any alternative styling. If we don't require 100% visual integrity in netscape 4, then I think we can make netscape look a lot better than that. Hope this hasn't just confused people... Just to restate the basic question Do we :- 1) Say we need netscape 4 to look exactly like the design and sacrifice a lot of the advantages of modern CSS etc 2) Say we can compromise on netscape 4 as long as it's usable and presentable and allow us to use all the modern facilities that css2/dom etc give us. My answer is 2 but I think you expected that :-) .... Tim ---------------------------------------------- Tim Parkin Managing Director Pollenation Internet Ltd www.pollenation.net m : 07980 59 47 68 t : 01132 25 25 00 -----Original Message----- From: pydotorg-redesign-bounces@python.org [mailto:pydotorg-redesign-bounces@python.org] On Behalf Of Simon Willison Sent: 14 September 2003 02:36 To: Barry Warsaw Cc: pydotorg-redesign@python.org Subject: Re: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site Barry Warsaw wrote: > If I were to cast my vote I'd go for the thing that takes the > least amount of effort to set up and maintain, that doesn't suck. Bonus > points if we include the mailing list archives as a search corpus. I just took a look at the mailing list archives and they total just over 700 MB(!) - the largest is Python-Dev at 111 MB. Loading that lot in to a search engine could be a painful task. It looks like Google has indexed them all (incredibly) so a targetted Google search limited to the mail.python.org domain would probably suffice for mailing lists. I still think there is a big advantage to be had in rolling a custom search engine for the site though - the ability to highlight certain site areas for specific keywords for example. I wonder if it would be possible to use the Google web services API to power a Python.org search engine? The API terms and conditions www.google.com/apis/api_terms.html say this: """ The Google Web APIs service is made available to you for your personal, non-commercial use only (at home or at work) [ ... ] And you may not use the search results provided by the Google Web APIs service with an existing product or service that competes with products or services offered by Google. """ I have no idea if a search engine for Python.org would count as "competing with products or services offered by Google". If it doesn't, a Google API powered search engine would give us all of the benefits of Google while still allowing the Python site to apply a custom template to the results and other enhancements (such as recommeded site areas for specific keywords). Cheers, Simon _______________________________________________ Pydotorg-redesign mailing list Pydotorg-redesign@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pydotorg-redesign From cs1spw at bath.ac.uk Sun Sep 14 07:17:19 2003 From: cs1spw at bath.ac.uk (Simon Willison) Date: Sun Sep 14 07:16:53 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Netscape 4 support In-Reply-To: <007f01c37aaa$1ed12d80$0a00a8c0@JASPER> References: <007f01c37aaa$1ed12d80$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Message-ID: <3F644E3F.7060900@bath.ac.uk> Tim Parkin wrote: > My big (BIG!!!) question is support for netscape 4. > > I'd love to be able to make sure it works visually in netscape 4 but if > we have to do that then we lose an incredible amount of the advantages > of css and semantic html. Basically if we want it to work in netscape 4 > then I think we're back to tables (unless someone thinks the design can > be implemented in css layout and still work in netscape, I've tried and > not had much success). Netsape 4's market share is so tiny now as to be insignificant. It really isn't worth investing much NS 4 specific work. At the same time, the site has to at least function in NS 4 and preferably not look like it was created by rank amateurs to users of that browser. I suggest using the classid dual stylesheets appoach. The basic stylesheet (as used by Netscape 4) can set font styles, header styles and anything else that NS4's highly limited CSS can safely support. Then @import an advanced stylesheet with the real site design in it. A good example of a site that does this effectively is www.stopdesign.com - it's amazing how much better a site looks with just some rudimentary text colours on headings. However, before finalising any decision along these lines it's vital to know the current browser usage as experienced by the existing python.org site. If it turns out for some bizzare reason that NS4 users are a significant percentage of visitors the site will need to make more of an effort to provide them with a visually attractive design. Cheers, Simon Willison http://simon.incutio.com/ From tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com Sun Sep 14 07:57:29 2003 From: tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com (Tim Parkin) Date: Sun Sep 14 07:57:44 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] RE: Netscape 4 support In-Reply-To: <3F644E3F.7060900@bath.ac.uk> Message-ID: <008301c37ab7$65939340$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Simon Willison wrote: >I suggest using the classid dual stylesheets appoach. The basic >stylesheet (as used by Netscape 4) can set font styles, header styles >and anything else that NS4's highly limited CSS can safely support. Then >@import an advanced stylesheet with the real site design in it. A good >example of a site that does this effectively is www.stopdesign.com - >it's amazing how much better a site looks with just some rudimentary >text colours on headings. How realistic is it to try to get an alternatre stylesheet that generates a header and left/right column layout? I would like to be able to offer this as an alternate, obviously it depends on the html but do you think this is realistic. Tim From cs1spw at bath.ac.uk Sun Sep 14 08:14:18 2003 From: cs1spw at bath.ac.uk (Simon Willison) Date: Sun Sep 14 08:13:39 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Re: Netscape 4 support In-Reply-To: <008301c37ab7$65939340$0a00a8c0@JASPER> References: <008301c37ab7$65939340$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Message-ID: <3F645B9A.80700@bath.ac.uk> Tim Parkin wrote: > How realistic is it to try to get an alternatre stylesheet that > generates a header and left/right column layout? I would like to be able > to offer this as an alternate, obviously it depends on the html but do > you think this is realistic. It depends on how much work you want to invest in NS4 support. www.realworldstyle.com has some NS4 friendly templates so it's definitely possible. Cheers, Simon From tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com Sun Sep 14 08:51:42 2003 From: tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com (Tim Parkin) Date: Sun Sep 14 08:51:56 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] RE: Netscape 4 support In-Reply-To: <3F645B9A.80700@bath.ac.uk> Message-ID: <008701c37abe$f85dd620$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Simon Willison said: >> How realistic is it to try to get an alternatre stylesheet that >> generates a header and left/right column layout? I would like to be able >> to offer this as an alternate, obviously it depends on the html but do >> you think this is realistic. > >It depends on how much work you want to invest in NS4 support. >www.realworldstyle.com has some NS4 friendly templates so it's >definitely possible. It's replacing the real style sheet with a netscape friendly header/2column layout without changing html... I suppose it's just try it and see... Tim From amk at amk.ca Sat Sep 13 21:13:53 2003 From: amk at amk.ca (A.M. Kuchling) Date: Sun Sep 14 09:09:15 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Netscape 4 support In-Reply-To: <3F644E3F.7060900@bath.ac.uk> References: <007f01c37aaa$1ed12d80$0a00a8c0@JASPER> <3F644E3F.7060900@bath.ac.uk> Message-ID: <20030914011353.GA7388@nyman.amk.ca> On Sun, Sep 14, 2003 at 12:17:19PM +0100, Simon Willison wrote: >However, before finalising any decision along these lines it's vital to >know the current browser usage as experienced by the existing python.org >site. If it turns out for some bizzare reason that NS4 users are a See http://www.python.org/wwwstats/usage_200308.html#TOPAGENTS . From the full list of agents, various NS4 variants turn out to account for only 0.6% of accesses to python.org. --amk From lac at strakt.com Sun Sep 14 09:55:10 2003 From: lac at strakt.com (Laura Creighton) Date: Sun Sep 14 09:55:30 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Netscape 4 support In-Reply-To: Message from "A.M. Kuchling" of "Sat, 13 Sep 2003 21:13:53 EDT." <20030914011353.GA7388@nyman.amk.ca> References: <007f01c37aaa$1ed12d80$0a00a8c0@JASPER> <3F644E3F.7060900@bath.ac.uk> <20030914011353.GA7388@nyman.amk.ca> Message-ID: <200309141355.h8EDtAq3011690@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> In a message of Sat, 13 Sep 2003 21:13:53 EDT, "A.M. Kuchling" writes: >On Sun, Sep 14, 2003 at 12:17:19PM +0100, Simon Willison wrote: >>However, before finalising any decision along these lines it's vital to >>know the current browser usage as experienced by the existing python.org > >>site. If it turns out for some bizzare reason that NS4 users are a > >See http://www.python.org/wwwstats/usage_200308.html#TOPAGENTS . From >the full list of agents, various NS4 variants turn out to account for >only 0.6% of accesses to python.org. > >--amk When you are counting 'US Commercial' are you just looking at .com endings? We're strakt.com but we're not in the USA... Laura From tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com Sun Sep 14 10:00:15 2003 From: tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com (Tim Parkin) Date: Sun Sep 14 10:00:42 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Netscape 4 support In-Reply-To: <200309141355.h8EDtAq3011690@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> Message-ID: <008b01c37ac8$8bde37b0$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Laura said: >>See http://www.python.org/wwwstats/usage_200308.html#TOPAGENTS . From >>the full list of agents, various NS4 variants turn out to account for >>only 0.6% of accesses to python.org. >> >>--amk > >When you are counting 'US Commercial' are you just looking at .com >endings? We're strakt.com but we're not in the USA... Unless you use geoip, or equivalent, the country of origin information is worse than useless.. And the stats package used doesn't use geoip, or equivalent. Did this have a relevance to Netscape 4 or was it just a general question? Tim From sholden at holdenweb.com Sun Sep 14 09:58:55 2003 From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden) Date: Sun Sep 14 10:01:56 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Sidebar/nav. bar revisions In-Reply-To: <778B0500-DFF9-11D7-99A3-0003931BF218@amk.ca> Message-ID: > -----Original Message----- > From: pydotorg-redesign-bounces@python.org > [mailto:pydotorg-redesign-bounces@python.org]On Behalf Of > A.M. Kuchling > Sent: Friday, September 05, 2003 7:34 PM > To: pydotorg-redesign@python.org > Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Sidebar/nav. bar revisions [...] > > Secondary issue: given the current plague of viruses (and the > likelihood of future viruses), should we be trying to minimize the > number of times e-mail addresses are given on web pages? The > 'Contact > us' page would be a step toward this: this single page would be the > only ones with an e-mail address. > I'd go one step further and make the "contact us" page a CGI script. Then the person trying to contact us doesn't need to have an active, correctly-configured mail client, and we don't make an address available for harvesting. regards -- Steve Holden http://www.holdenweb.com/ Python Web Programming http://pydish.holdenweb.com/pwp/ Interview with GvR August 14, 2003 http://www.onlamp.com/python/ From lac at strakt.com Sun Sep 14 10:06:13 2003 From: lac at strakt.com (Laura Creighton) Date: Sun Sep 14 10:06:26 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Netscape 4 support In-Reply-To: Message from "Tim Parkin" of "Sun, 14 Sep 2003 15:00:15 BST." <008b01c37ac8$8bde37b0$0a00a8c0@JASPER> References: <008b01c37ac8$8bde37b0$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Message-ID: <200309141406.h8EE6Dq3011798@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> In a message of Sun, 14 Sep 2003 15:00:15 BST, "Tim Parkin" writes: >Laura said: >>>See http://www.python.org/wwwstats/usage_200308.html#TOPAGENTS . From >>>the full list of agents, various NS4 variants turn out to account for >>>only 0.6% of accesses to python.org. >>> >>>--amk >> >>When you are counting 'US Commercial' are you just looking at .com >>endings? We're strakt.com but we're not in the USA... >Unless you use geoip, or equivalent, the country of origin information >is worse than useless.. And the stats package used doesn't use geoip, or >equivalent. > >Did this have a relevance to Netscape 4 or was it just a general >question? > >Tim Just general. I am making a funding proposal, and would like to make some sort of guess as to how many python users there are in Europe and world-wide. I was wondering if this info could be used for that ... Laura From tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com Sun Sep 14 10:55:44 2003 From: tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com (Tim Parkin) Date: Sun Sep 14 10:56:02 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Netscape 4 support In-Reply-To: <200309141406.h8EE6Dq3011798@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> Message-ID: <008e01c37ad0$4c8b7520$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Laura: >Just general. I am making a funding proposal, and would like to make >some sort of guess as to how many python users there are in Europe and >world-wide. I was wondering if this info could be used for that ... Don't forget that the stats are only for the main site, I don't know what hits the mirrors get or how that information might be made available. Could prove interesting as this could increase the numbers dramatically (if it doesn't then we overestimate the importance of the mirrors). Tim From lac at strakt.com Sun Sep 14 11:31:14 2003 From: lac at strakt.com (Laura Creighton) Date: Sun Sep 14 11:31:25 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Netscape 4 support In-Reply-To: Message from "Tim Parkin" of "Sun, 14 Sep 2003 15:55:44 BST." <008e01c37ad0$4c8b7520$0a00a8c0@JASPER> References: <008e01c37ad0$4c8b7520$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Message-ID: <200309141531.h8EFVEq3012201@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> In a message of Sun, 14 Sep 2003 15:55:44 BST, "Tim Parkin" writes: >Laura: >>Just general. I am making a funding proposal, and would like to make >>some sort of guess as to how many python users there are in Europe and >>world-wide. I was wondering if this info could be used for that ... > >Don't forget that the stats are only for the main site, I don't >know what hits the mirrors get or how that information might be >made available. > >Could prove interesting as this could increase the numbers dramatically >(if it doesn't then we overestimate the importance of the mirrors). > >Tim Yeah, great point. musing out loud ... I use a mirror for the docs, but when I just want to find things on the site, I get lazy and type python.org a lot.... Laura From aahz at pythoncraft.com Sun Sep 14 11:47:50 2003 From: aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) Date: Sun Sep 14 11:47:53 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Finishing the site map In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20030914154750.GA2838@panix.com> On Fri, Sep 05, 2003, Andrew Kuchling wrote: > > I'd like to split the sitemap into two sections, important and > less-important links (not labeled as such). +1 > I'm most unsure about where pycon/, emacs/, and idle/ belong. pycon/ belong in the top; don't care about the other two. -- Aahz (aahz@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/ "It is easier to optimize correct code than to correct optimized code." --Bill Harlan From skip at pobox.com Mon Sep 15 09:39:18 2003 From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro) Date: Mon Sep 15 09:39:44 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <007f01c37aaa$1ed12d80$0a00a8c0@JASPER> References: <3F63C5F3.2070907@bath.ac.uk> <007f01c37aaa$1ed12d80$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Message-ID: <16229.49414.594891.572042@montanaro.dyndns.org> Tim> My big (BIG!!!) question is support for netscape 4. Why? Look at http://www.python.org/wwwstats/agent_200308.html and see if you still think Netscape 4 really matters. Skip From cs1spw at bath.ac.uk Mon Sep 15 10:18:26 2003 From: cs1spw at bath.ac.uk (Simon Willison) Date: Mon Sep 15 10:17:48 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <16229.49414.594891.572042@montanaro.dyndns.org> References: <3F63C5F3.2070907@bath.ac.uk> <007f01c37aaa$1ed12d80$0a00a8c0@JASPER> <16229.49414.594891.572042@montanaro.dyndns.org> Message-ID: <3F65CA32.9030101@bath.ac.uk> Skip Montanaro wrote: > Why? Look at > > http://www.python.org/wwwstats/agent_200308.html > > and see if you still think Netscape 4 really matters. It took a while (those stats are pretty hard to figure out) but eventually I figured that the various versions of Netscape 4 accounts for 1.17% of hits to the Python site. In case anyone wants to check themselves, here's the code I used (after first saving the stats from that page in to a text file): import re # Regexp to extract number at start of line num = re.compile('^(\d+)') # Load in the lines from the file lines = fp.open('python-browser-stats.txt').readlines() # Filter out any lines that don't start with a number lines = [line for line in lines if num.match(line)] # Find all lines referring to a Netscape 4 version netscape = [line for line in lines if 'Mozilla/4' in line and 'compatible' not in line and 'Gecko' not in line] # Build list of numbers for each NS4 user agent strings nscounts = [int(num.match(line).groups()[0]) for line in netscape] # Do the same for ALL user agent strings allcounts = [int(num.match(line).groups()[0]) for line in lines] # Now sum the above lists nstotal = sum(nscounts) alltotal = sum(allcounts) # And calculate the percentage print float(nstotal) / alltotal * 100 The Netscape 4 list comprehension is based on the idea that Netscape 4's user agent string always contains 'Mozilla/4', but then so does the string of a number of other browsers. Filtering on 'compatible' removes Microsoft browsers, and filtering on 'Gecko' removes any gecko variants. Cheers, Simon From tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com Mon Sep 15 11:04:03 2003 From: tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com (Tim Parkin) Date: Mon Sep 15 11:04:27 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <3F65CA32.9030101@bath.ac.uk> Message-ID: <00dc01c37b9a$a0ac6ae0$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Simon said: >It took a while (those stats are pretty hard to figure out) but >eventually I figured that the various versions of Netscape 4 accounts >for 1.17% of hits to the Python site. In case anyone wants to check >themselves, here's the code I used (after first saving the stats from >that page in to a text file): I got 1.126% after removing palm browsers that pretend to be nn4 and also some robots (anything with compatible in). I think there were still a few in there.. HTTrack pretends to be NN4 too.. Oh and opera does aswell sometimes, and omniweb and web washer. Nice to see we're in the same ball park :-) Tim From roy at panix.com Mon Sep 15 19:57:19 2003 From: roy at panix.com (Roy Smith) Date: Mon Sep 15 19:58:02 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <3F638174.7000607@bath.ac.uk> Message-ID: <57273530-E7D8-11D7-81B4-0050E405C35A@panix.com> On Saturday, September 13, 2003, at 04:43 PM, Simon Willison wrote: > Roy Smith wrote: >> What does Lupy give us that google doesn't? > > Lupy gives us three big advantages: > > 1. Content is indexed as soon as it is added to the site. This is a > critical advantage over Google, which may only reindex once a week or > even once a month. Is this really critical? Only an extremely tiny fraction of the site changes month to month, and new stuff tends to be highlighted in some kind of 'what's new' section on most web sites anyway. > 2. We can customise it (as Tim Parkin has already pointed out). We can, but is it worth the trouble? Also, as a tie-in to the marketing discussion, I think there may be a certain advantage to using google's stock service rather than something we customized. Let's say I'm a dev manager, and one of my team leads is pitching using Python for our latest project. I'm nervous about the idea, but agreed to at least think about it. I go to the python web site to see what I can find there. There is something comforting about seeing a "powered by google" search box on the home page. It's familiar, it's got positive associations, and it's something I already know how to use. > 3. It's written in Python! The official site for the Python > programming language should showcase Python whenever possible. Of course we should. Google uses python. They're even one of our "reference customers", as the marketing folks would say. Whatever search engine we end up using, we should have a search box on every single page (in some standard place as part of the navigation tools). It's so much more convenient than having to navigate you way to some special search page. From cs1spw at bath.ac.uk Mon Sep 15 20:17:24 2003 From: cs1spw at bath.ac.uk (Simon Willison) Date: Mon Sep 15 20:16:46 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <57273530-E7D8-11D7-81B4-0050E405C35A@panix.com> References: <57273530-E7D8-11D7-81B4-0050E405C35A@panix.com> Message-ID: <3F665694.3060405@bath.ac.uk> Roy Smith wrote: > Whatever search engine we end up using, we should have a search box on > every single page (in some standard place as part of the navigation > tools). It's so much more convenient than having to navigate you way to > some special search page. I agree completely. A single, simple "Search" box on each page should be an essential part of the navigation. Any advanced options (such as "search only in documentation") should be made available only on a dedicated search page. Cheers, Simon From skip at pobox.com Tue Sep 16 10:10:26 2003 From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro) Date: Tue Sep 16 10:10:45 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <57273530-E7D8-11D7-81B4-0050E405C35A@panix.com> References: <3F638174.7000607@bath.ac.uk> <57273530-E7D8-11D7-81B4-0050E405C35A@panix.com> Message-ID: <16231.6610.978717.811955@montanaro.dyndns.org> >> 1. Content is indexed as soon as it is added to the site. Roy> Is this really critical? Only an extremely tiny fraction of the Roy> site changes month to month, and new stuff tends to be highlighted Roy> in some kind of 'what's new' section on most web sites anyway. I doubt it. Also, I believe Google's crawling is adapted to the rate of change it encounters on a site over time. I don't know if that's considered at the page level, but I suspect so. It allows the crawler to profitably visit pages which change a lot. I vote for Google, at least for the time being. Anything else seems like a lot of effort at this point, for no obvious extra benefit. I'd put a little search box at the top of the left margin, right below Just's logos. Skip From tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com Tue Sep 16 11:30:59 2003 From: tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com (Tim Parkin) Date: Tue Sep 16 11:31:14 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <16231.6610.978717.811955@montanaro.dyndns.org> Message-ID: <000101c37c67$8dfb2cb0$0a00a8c0@JASPER> > >> 1. Content is indexed as soon as it is added to the site. > > Roy> Is this really critical? Only an extremely tiny fraction of the > Roy> site changes month to month, and new stuff tends to be highlighted > Roy> in some kind of 'what's new' section on most web sites anyway. > >I doubt it. Also, I believe Google's crawling is adapted to the rate of >change it encounters on a site over time. I don't know if that's considered >at the page level, but I suspect so. It allows the crawler to profitably >visit pages which change a lot. > >I vote for Google, at least for the time being. Anything else seems like a >lot of effort at this point, for no obvious extra benefit. I'd put a little >search box at the top of the left margin, right below Just's logos. Unless we can get google to provide one of it's commercial site search facility, the google free search takes up a lot of room. This is presumably for googles advertising. Also you have to have the google full web search available aswell. I'm not sure this is what we want on the site. Tim Ps and example of how it might look with the latest design home page. According to my quick scan of t's and c's we can't modify this in any way. http://pollenation.net/assets/public/python-google.gif From skip at pobox.com Tue Sep 16 12:24:36 2003 From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro) Date: Tue Sep 16 12:24:47 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <000101c37c67$8dfb2cb0$0a00a8c0@JASPER> References: <16231.6610.978717.811955@montanaro.dyndns.org> <000101c37c67$8dfb2cb0$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Message-ID: <16231.14660.423329.463000@montanaro.dyndns.org> Tim> Unless we can get google to provide one of it's commercial site Tim> search facility, the google free search takes up a lot of Tim> room. This is presumably for googles advertising. Also you have to Tim> have the google full web search available aswell. I'm not sure this Tim> is what we want on the site. I'm not sure what you mean by "takes up a lot of room". We're interested in searching python.org, right? There's no obligation to display a Google graphic as far as I know, just that any Google trademarks displayed need a "TM" sign. Similarly, I don't think we're obligations to provide a web search option. See attached. Skip -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/pydotorg-redesign/attachments/20030916/cc4ec030/google.html From todd at slack.net Tue Sep 16 13:17:01 2003 From: todd at slack.net (Todd Grimason) Date: Tue Sep 16 14:11:40 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <000101c37c67$8dfb2cb0$0a00a8c0@JASPER>; from tim.parkin@pollenationinternet.com on Tue, Sep 16, 2003 at 04:30:59PM +0100 References: <16231.6610.978717.811955@montanaro.dyndns.org> <000101c37c67$8dfb2cb0$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Message-ID: <20030916131701.B16225@crank.slack.net> Well, Python(TM) by Google would actually probably lead to a huge increase in usage and awareness of Python. Over the objections, of oh, a few hundred lawyers and millions of others. It'd get the name Python out there though! (referring to the way it ends up appearing on the page obviously...) -- ___________________________ toddgrimason*todd@slack.net From tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com Tue Sep 16 14:41:17 2003 From: tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com (Tim Parkin) Date: Tue Sep 16 14:41:34 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <16231.14660.423329.463000@montanaro.dyndns.org> Message-ID: <000d01c37c82$2445c210$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Skip wrote: >I'm not sure what you mean by "takes up a lot of room". We're interested in >searching python.org, right? There's no obligation to display a Google >graphic as far as I know, >From Googles terms and conditions >Personal Use Only >The Google Services are made available for your personal, >non-commercial use only. You may not use the Google Services >to sell a product or service, or to increase traffic to your >Web site for commercial reasons, such as advertising sales. >You may not take the results from a Google search and reformat >and display them, or mirror the Google home page or results >pages on your Web site. You may not "meta-search" Google. >If you want to make commercial use of the Google Services, >you must enter into an agreement with Google to do so in >advance. Please contact us for more information. > >If you are interested in adding a Google search box to >your web site or your company's web site, we encourage >you to do so The last is a link to the google free search service, this is the service that can be used for free and the one from which I quickly (todd :-) drew up the screenshot. Google are very hard on unauthorised us of their service even down to removing the offending site from their indexes. Of course someone may have friends in high places... Tim From skip at pobox.com Tue Sep 16 15:04:18 2003 From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro) Date: Tue Sep 16 15:04:29 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <000d01c37c82$2445c210$0a00a8c0@JASPER> References: <16231.14660.423329.463000@montanaro.dyndns.org> <000d01c37c82$2445c210$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Message-ID: <16231.24242.171319.958030@montanaro.dyndns.org> Skip> I'm not sure what you mean by "takes up a lot of room". We're Skip> interested in searching python.org, right? There's no obligation Skip> to display a Google graphic as far as I know, Tim> From Googles terms and conditions Google> Personal Use Only Google> The Google Services are made available for your personal, Google> non-commercial use only. You may not use the Google Services Google> to sell a product or service, or to increase traffic to your Google> Web site for commercial reasons, such as advertising sales. Google> You may not take the results from a Google search and reformat Google> and display them, or mirror the Google home page or results Google> pages on your Web site. You may not "meta-search" Google. Google> If you want to make commercial use of the Google Services, Google> you must enter into an agreement with Google to do so in Google> advance. Please contact us for more information. Google> Google> If you are interested in adding a Google search box to Google> your web site or your company's web site, we encourage Google> you to do so Tim> The last is a link to the google free search service, this is the Tim> service that can be used for free and the one from which I quickly Tim> (todd :-) drew up the screenshot. But there's no obligation to use precisely that HTML is there? I assume you're worried about the "your personal, non-commercial use only" phrase. If we're in violation of that I doubt it hardly makes any difference whether we display a Google tag or simply "Google (TM)". Since all we'd be doing is vectoring people off to Google's site I don't think any of the other stuff applies ("advertising sales", "increasing traffic", "meta-search", etc). Tim> Google are very hard on unauthorised us of their service even down Tim> to removing the offending site from their indexes. I know. I wanted to use AdSense on the Mojam and Musi-Cal sites. About 90% of the page views are generated search results, which they don't allow. I tried hard to convince them that the ads being displayed were appropriate to the displayed contents, but they wouldn't budge. Tim> Of course someone may have friends in high places... I'm sure Guido does, however I'm still unsure where the problem lies. Skip From tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com Tue Sep 16 17:16:01 2003 From: tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com (Tim Parkin) Date: Tue Sep 16 17:16:18 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <16231.24242.171319.958030@montanaro.dyndns.org> Message-ID: <001301c37c97$c1796450$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Skip >"your personal, non-commercial use only" phrase. Skip >If we're in violation of that I doubt it hardly makes any difference whether Skip >we display a Google tag or simply "Google (TM)". "3.3 Attribution. The search box (or other means used by an End User to enter a search query) shall conspicuously display a graphic (available at http://www.google.com/stickers.html) that indicates that the Services are provided by Google. The graphic shall link to the Google site located at www.google.com or such other address as Google may designate from time to time during the Term." I may have misunderstood the previous terms and conditions, it seems that they are probably happy as long as it's a graphic from the stickers.html page. I had heard of people getting into trouble for using the sitesearch without the websearch and without the graphical images (I hadn't seen the smaller images previously and I still can't find anywhere that says you can use text). I think any search box should also have 'search the www' aswell (according to t's & c's again) but assuming we don't then I've mocked up a logo'd version of the home page and if this is possible then I'd be happy to use it until we set up a Lupy (or equivalent) search customised to offer a dedicated site search. Tim http://pollenation.net/assets/public/python-google.png From skip at pobox.com Tue Sep 16 17:36:31 2003 From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro) Date: Tue Sep 16 17:36:45 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <001301c37c97$c1796450$0a00a8c0@JASPER> References: <16231.24242.171319.958030@montanaro.dyndns.org> <001301c37c97$c1796450$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Message-ID: <16231.33375.733677.173749@montanaro.dyndns.org> >>>>> "Tim" == Tim Parkin writes: Skip> "your personal, non-commercial use only" phrase. If we're in Skip> violation of that I doubt it hardly makes any difference whether Skip> we display a Google tag or simply "Google (TM)". Tim> "3.3 Attribution. The search box (or other means used by an End Tim> User to enter a search query) shall conspicuously display a graphic Tim> (available at http://www.google.com/stickers.html) that indicates Tim> that the Services are provided by Google. ... Tim> I think any search box should also have 'search the www' aswell Tim> (according to t's & c's again) but assuming we don't then I've Tim> mocked up a logo'd version of the home page and if this is possible Tim> then I'd be happy to use it until we set up a Lupy (or equivalent) Tim> search customised to offer a dedicated site search. You must be a customer. You keep changing the requirements. ;-) See attached. Skip -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/pydotorg-redesign/attachments/20030916/d3508ded/google.html From lac at strakt.com Wed Sep 17 02:16:54 2003 From: lac at strakt.com (Laura Creighton) Date: Wed Sep 17 02:17:43 2003 Subject: [marketing-python] RE: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: Message from "Tim Parkin" of "Tue, 16 Sep 2003 16:30:59 BST." <000101c37c67$8dfb2cb0$0a00a8c0@JASPER> References: <000101c37c67$8dfb2cb0$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Message-ID: <200309170616.h8H6Gsq3026113@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> In a message of Tue, 16 Sep 2003 16:30:59 BST, "Tim Parkin" writes: > >Ps and example of how it might look with the latest design home page. >According to my quick scan of t's and c's we can't modify this in any >way. > >http://pollenation.net/assets/public/python-google.gif No dropping the pointsize? I would rather make a 'Google Search' _Button_ that encorporates the Logo. While we are at it, I would prefer a larger window to type search terms in, a button for search just the docs, and just the starship, and if we have to use that logo, and cannot put it in a button, I would like it stuck on the bottom right corner of the page, or to the far right, or somewhere more removed from the Python logo, which I think is crowded. Perhaps putting it in a box would help, I don't know. What do others think? I suggest we make what we want, and ask for permission. Laura From lac at strakt.com Wed Sep 17 02:44:57 2003 From: lac at strakt.com (Laura Creighton) Date: Wed Sep 17 02:45:43 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: Message from "Tim Parkin" of "Tue, 16 Sep 2003 22:16:01 BST." <001301c37c97$c1796450$0a00a8c0@JASPER> References: <001301c37c97$c1796450$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Message-ID: <200309170644.h8H6ivq3026213@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> I posted too soon. Tim has been thinking like me. >I think any search box should also have 'search the www' aswell >(according to t's & c's again) but assuming we don't then I've mocked up >a logo'd version of the home page and if this is possible then I'd be >happy to use it until we set up a Lupy (or equivalent) search customised >to offer a dedicated site search. > >Tim > >http://pollenation.net/assets/public/python-google.png I'd still prefer the 'Google' IN the Search Button, and I would prefer the site doc starship newsgroups mailing lists www checkboxes below. This would give me a nice wide search window, another plus. But I also want a way to click 'get a more advanced search page' 'External resources' is a bad wording to put on a search box that is to be read, let alone used, by newbies. They have no idea what is and what is not external. And so they feel stupid, as if they were supposed to know this already. This feels worse than not 'knowing what the starship is' -- because it is open ended. For other searches with that problem I have made a line 'Don't know what any of these are? Just search for them (happy face)' (Then make sure that a definition/Welcome page was the first hit). This has the advantage of getting people to use the site... I am not opposed to spending space on search boxes, if it is useful space that does stuff and makes searching easier. I like sites that look as if the people cared more about the searchers than about their prose. Some sites it's 'yap yap yap, will these people never shut up and tell me how to find what I want? Admittedly, it is ads that gets this effect out of me the most, but it is always there' I think that this has a profound effect on how freindly a site is found -- respect goes a long way. Laura From tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com Wed Sep 17 04:19:27 2003 From: tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com (Tim Parkin) Date: Wed Sep 17 04:19:47 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <200309170644.h8H6ivq3026213@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> Message-ID: <004001c37cf4$70ad5ce0$0a00a8c0@JASPER> >>http://pollenation.net/assets/public/python-google.png > >I'd still prefer the 'Google' IN the Search Button, and I would prefer >the site doc starship newsgroups mailing lists www checkboxes below. >This would give me a nice wide search window, another plus. But >I also want a way to click 'get a more advanced search page' If we use google we won't get any more advanced features or sub searches etc. It's a wideley discovered fact that only about 0.5% of people use the advanced search anyway although for those that do it's a very important feature. Taking this into account, a basic full search should be available everywhere and an advanced search should be available on the results page. These advanced search options are the reason I for one would like to us a dedicated search like lupy. And no we can't change the size of the google logo and it looked silly inside the button unfortunately. >'External resources' is a bad wording to put on a search box that >is to be read, let alone used, by newbies. They have no idea what >is and what is not external. And so they feel stupid, as if they >were supposed to know this already. This feels worse than not >'knowing what the starship is' -- because it is open ended. External resources is not the search box, it's a quick link to outside resources (trying to get rid of all those external links whilst making them still quickly available) so it obviously needs making more obvious that it is at the moment. I'll think on that one. >I am not opposed to spending space on search boxes, if it is useful >space that does stuff and makes searching easier. I like sites that >look as if the people cared more about the searchers than about their >prose. Some sites it's 'yap yap yap, will these people never shut >up and tell me how to find what I want? Admittedly, it is ads that >gets this effect out of me the most, but it is always there' As I said I think it's great to have a search box on every page but just a simple one with room for two or three words. Anything more advanced can use the 'advanced search' facility, which they should only be using if they don't get results from the simple search. My tendency now is to try to make the basic search as useful as possible (with domain specific results and offering alternatives) instead of forcing people to try to use an advanced search, athough the advanced search should still be available. Tim From lac at strakt.com Wed Sep 17 05:05:16 2003 From: lac at strakt.com (Laura Creighton) Date: Wed Sep 17 05:05:27 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: Message from "Tim Parkin" of "Wed, 17 Sep 2003 09:19:27 BST." <004001c37cf4$70ad5ce0$0a00a8c0@JASPER> References: <004001c37cf4$70ad5ce0$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Message-ID: <200309170905.h8H95Gq3026990@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> In a message of Wed, 17 Sep 2003 09:19:27 BST, "Tim Parkin" writes: > >>>http://pollenation.net/assets/public/python-google.png >> >If we use google we won't get any more advanced features or sub searches >etc. It's a wideley discovered fact that only about 0.5% of people use >the advanced search anyway although for those that do it's a very >important feature. Taking this into account, a basic full search should >be available everywhere and an advanced search should be available on >the results page. These advanced search options are the reason I for one >would like to us a dedicated search like lupy. And no we can't change >the size of the google logo and it looked silly inside the button >unfortunately. I think you can get one size smaller than the one you are using, unless I have an old version of your page here. There is also the 'Powered bY Google ' sticker which might look better if we cannot get it in a button. > >>'External resources' is a bad wording to put on a search box that >>is to be read, let alone used, by newbies. They have no idea what >>is and what is not external. And so they feel stupid, as if they >>were supposed to know this already. This feels worse than not >>'knowing what the starship is' -- because it is open ended. >External resources is not the search box, it's a quick link to outside >resources (trying to get rid of all those external links whilst making >them still quickly available) so it obviously needs making more obvious >that it is at the moment. I'll think on that one. I'm sorry I was not clear. Let me try again. I am vehemently opposed to the words 'external resources'. This is because when a newbie shows up, wants to search something, and sees the box, they will say 'what is an external resource'. Either they will be completely blank, and the notion of 'some resources are external to python.org and some are not' is a new concept which they do not know, yet, or they are familiar with that concept but have no idea what stuff we have here, and what lives other places (like pythonology.org) and whether we consider the mailing lists as part of python.org or not. When you are using a search form, you are saying 'I don't know where this stuff is'. Thus when you first need to know something that you don't know, the experience is very frustrating, often frustrating enough to make complete newbies _leave the site_. Searching 'other python websites not connected to python.org' is a better option. (Plus it will encourage others to link to us for this service, which means we get automatic updates on lists of all python resources. This is good.) I think searching the python cookbook would be wonderful. And since I hate the way ActiveState's search works, too, I'd love a different interface to use it. Seaching 'the vaults' might be good, though not if we intend to go through the lot and make them Packages. Then a making a 'how to find a package' one click away makes sense, but I still don't know what our intentions are w.r.t. packages. (I'd love to discuss that, but I also have to catch a train to Stockholm, be back Thursday late. ) Which of these things to search belongs on an advanced search form, and which belongs on the box, needs to be thought about. First we need the list of categories. >As I said I think it's great to have a search box on every page but just >a simple one with room for two or three words. Anything more advanced >can use the 'advanced search' facility, which they should only be using >if they don't get results from the simple search. My tendency now is to >try to make the basic search as useful as possible (with domain specific >results and offering alternatives) instead of forcing people to try to >use an advanced search, athough the advanced search should still be >available. I don't see why '2 or 3 words' is connected to whether you need an advanced search. I often search for exact phrases. Whenever I see a small search box, I always wonder 'do these people simply not care about usability, or am I really all that weird when it comes to searches?' Of course, from my point of view, there isn't anything that you could use the space for that I would like as much as enough room to type in 'Alex Martelli' + 'Hotel Belfiori' or other things of that length that I want to search on. (That's Alex's article that explains what a reference is in a neat way, by the way). Laura From cs1spw at bath.ac.uk Wed Sep 17 05:17:54 2003 From: cs1spw at bath.ac.uk (Simon Willison) Date: Wed Sep 17 05:17:11 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <200309170905.h8H95Gq3026990@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> References: <004001c37cf4$70ad5ce0$0a00a8c0@JASPER> <200309170905.h8H95Gq3026990@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> Message-ID: <3F6826C2.3000800@bath.ac.uk> The best advice I have ever seen on search engine usability is in Steve Krug's excellent book "Don't Make Me Think". There are two possible options for a search interface (apologies for the poor ASCII art): Search: |________| |Go!| or |________| |Search| Any other wording will cause people to have to stop and think, which is bad. Additional options etc are fine, but they should be hidden away on the advanced search page. The labels above are particularly important - the single word search MUST be included and the action word "Go!" should be used on teh button only if the word "Search" has already been used. I would suggest a possible third way that makes use of a snippet of javascript, based on a modification of the first method shown above: put the word Search /in/ the search box (greyed out slightly) and have it disappear when the user first focuses on the box. Using the labels.js technique[1], this can be achieved without making the interface more confusing for users with javascript disabled. All usability advice should be taken as guidelines rather than absolute rules, but in this case the guideline is such a good once I've never seen any reason to deviate from it[1]. Cheers, Simon http://simon.incutio.com/ [1] Real nit-pickers may notice my blog uses "Search Site" rather than just "Search". Rules are made to be broken ;) From tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com Wed Sep 17 06:15:50 2003 From: tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com (Tim Parkin) Date: Wed Sep 17 06:16:00 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <3F6826C2.3000800@bath.ac.uk> Message-ID: <004801c37d04$b1a3d070$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Simon: >The best advice I have ever seen on search engine usability is in Steve >Krug's excellent book "Don't Make Me Think". There are two possible >options for a search interface (apologies for the poor ASCII art): Absolutely... Heres a few other resources that support that... http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010513.html http://world.std.com/~uieweb/observng.htm http://www.currybet.net/articles/day_in_the_life/3.shtml The also insist that advanced searches are hugely less important than developers think they are. Although I removed the {go) in that last mock up it was as a result of playing around with a google button (which didn't work anyway) and it's back to 'go' again now. Simon: >I would suggest a possible third way that makes use of a snippet of >javascript, based on a modification of the first method shown above: put >the word Search /in/ the search box (greyed out slightly) and have it >disappear when the user first focuses on the box. Using the labels.js >technique[1], this can be achieved without making the interface more >confusing for users with javascript disabled. That's the approach I've taken and it seems to work in practise also. Tim From roy at panix.com Wed Sep 17 08:47:58 2003 From: roy at panix.com (Roy Smith) Date: Wed Sep 17 08:48:06 2003 Subject: [marketing-python] RE: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <200309170616.h8H6Gsq3026113@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> Message-ID: <2A9B6B81-E90D-11D7-9B91-0050E405C35A@panix.com> Why do we need different buttons to search different parts of the collection? "search docs" vs. "search whole web site" vs. "search starship" implies that the searcher already knows where the stuff is. Most people won't. Roy's Rule of UI Design says "every option you give the user is just another chance for them to do the wrong thing". If we really have to have these options, at least they should be tucked away on the "advanced search" page. The default interface (on every page) should be just a simple box into which you can type a couple of words, and a single "Search" button to click. If people insist, also a discrete link to the advanced search page. On a slightly different tangent, I'm a little concerned about "cute" names like "Starship" and "Vaults of Parnassus". One of our goals is to appeal to dev managers. Dev managers don't like cute. Cute is the antithesis of "this will help me deliver my product on time and keep my job". On Wednesday, September 17, 2003, at 02:16 AM, Laura Creighton wrote: > While we are at it, I would prefer a larger window to type search > terms in, a button for search just the docs, and just the starship, From roy at panix.com Wed Sep 17 08:56:06 2003 From: roy at panix.com (Roy Smith) Date: Wed Sep 17 08:56:12 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <004001c37cf4$70ad5ce0$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Message-ID: <4CF94EC8-E90E-11D7-9B91-0050E405C35A@panix.com> On Wednesday, September 17, 2003, at 04:19 AM, Tim Parkin wrote: > If we use google we won't get any more advanced features or sub > searches > etc. It's a wideley discovered fact that only about 0.5% of people use > the advanced search anyway although for those that do it's a very > important feature. This may sound harsh, but I think a feature which appeals to 0.5% of our customers should have no bearing on our design. It's just not worth worrying about. Not to mention that worrying about it distracts you from worrying about the real issues which affect 90% of our customers. From roy at panix.com Wed Sep 17 09:06:38 2003 From: roy at panix.com (Roy Smith) Date: Wed Sep 17 09:06:46 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <3F6826C2.3000800@bath.ac.uk> Message-ID: On Wednesday, September 17, 2003, at 05:17 AM, Simon Willison wrote: > > [1] Real nit-pickers may notice my blog uses "Search Site" rather than > just "Search". Rules are made to be broken ;) > > You made an excellent point that the UI has to be simple and standard, so I'm confused as to why you then break your own rule? Does "Search Site" parse as or as ? I.e., does it mean "Click here to search this site", or "Click here to go to the site at which I can do searches?" From cs1spw at bath.ac.uk Wed Sep 17 09:16:50 2003 From: cs1spw at bath.ac.uk (Simon Willison) Date: Wed Sep 17 09:16:09 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3F685EC2.1060801@bath.ac.uk> Roy Smith wrote: > On Wednesday, September 17, 2003, at 05:17 AM, Simon Willison wrote: > >> [1] Real nit-pickers may notice my blog uses "Search Site" rather than >> just "Search". Rules are made to be broken ;) > > You made an excellent point that the UI has to be simple and standard, > so I'm confused as to why you then break your own rule? Does "Search > Site" parse as or as ? > I.e., does it mean "Click here to search this site", or "Click here to > go to the site at which I can do searches?" The reason is about as shallow as you can get. Just the word "Search" looked unbalanced compared to the other headers in that column, which each have several words in them. I also figure that my site's audience are smart enough to spot a search feature like that from 600 paces. Cheers, Simon From sdeibel at wingide.com Wed Sep 17 09:28:42 2003 From: sdeibel at wingide.com (Stephan Deibel) Date: Wed Sep 17 09:21:38 2003 Subject: [marketing-python] Re: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <4CF94EC8-E90E-11D7-9B91-0050E405C35A@panix.com> References: <4CF94EC8-E90E-11D7-9B91-0050E405C35A@panix.com> Message-ID: Could we please stop cross-posting to both marketing-python and pydotorg-redesign? This discussion should be on the latter, as it's specifically about the design of the website. For newer members: We've had to split off different discussions to keep volume manageable for people interested in specific marketing-related projects. There's a list of all the groups here: http://pythonology.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-python Thanks, - Stephan From tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com Wed Sep 17 09:33:44 2003 From: tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com (Tim Parkin) Date: Wed Sep 17 09:34:02 2003 Subject: [marketing-python] Re: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <4CF94EC8-E90E-11D7-9B91-0050E405C35A@panix.com> Message-ID: <005501c37d20$581c48e0$0a00a8c0@JASPER> >This may sound harsh, but I think a feature which appeals to 0.5% of >our customers should have no bearing on our design. It's just not >worth worrying about. Not to mention that worrying about it distracts >you from worrying about the real issues which affect 90% of our >customers. It depends on how important that 0.5% is and how 'replaceable' the functionality is. If someone can't access the internet apart from via Links then we should offer lynx support even if it only amounts to 0.0005% of the browser usage. If there are alternatives that they could us then it's a 'preference' that they use it and not a 'requirement'. However, there is also a factor to take into account as to how important people see the functionality. In the case of Lynx (and links), a lot of users see it as very important that they can access a website using it. Finally there is how easy it is to implement the change. If the website is built to support disabled users, then the site will work by default in Lynx, hence it isn't relevant to decide whether or not to support it. With advanced searching, most of the work would have already been done to make sure the simple search is suitably effective. Eg a simple search should recognise different domains (mail. www. Or docs / turorials) and report the results like this. So If I search for 'documentation' I get a link straight to the docs home page. The advanced search is just a more explicit version of this. So we have a low demand, a high importance and an ease of implementation. The advanced search can be an option so we don't have to worry about confusing users so there is they aren't mutually exclusive. Tim _______________________________________________ marketing-python mailing list marketing-python@wingide.com http://pythonology.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing-python From skip at pobox.com Wed Sep 17 10:53:56 2003 From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro) Date: Wed Sep 17 10:54:16 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <200309170644.h8H6ivq3026213@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> References: <001301c37c97$c1796450$0a00a8c0@JASPER> <200309170644.h8H6ivq3026213@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> Message-ID: <16232.30084.700384.875890@montanaro.dyndns.org> Laura> I'd still prefer the 'Google' IN the Search Button, If you do anything to change the Google logo, they'd have to approve. Of course, you could make it an image button, but then it doesn't look like a pokable button. Laura> and I would prefer the site doc starship newsgroups mailing lists Laura> www checkboxes below. This would give me a nice wide search Laura> window, another plus. But I also want a way to click 'get a more Laura> advanced search page' I think that anything beyond searching the python.org domain or the entire web should go on a separate search page. As I wrote to Tim in an email off-list: In general, people know what simple search boxes are for. If there's no web vs. site radio button, the implication is that they search the site (or perhaps all sites in the domain). If there are a pair of radio buttons they select between searching the web or the site/domain. If you add other semantics (how will you tell them "search" is a special token?) I think you'll just confuse them. Skip From skip at pobox.com Wed Sep 17 11:05:32 2003 From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro) Date: Wed Sep 17 11:05:44 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <4CF94EC8-E90E-11D7-9B91-0050E405C35A@panix.com> References: <004001c37cf4$70ad5ce0$0a00a8c0@JASPER> <4CF94EC8-E90E-11D7-9B91-0050E405C35A@panix.com> Message-ID: <16232.30780.879377.568760@montanaro.dyndns.org> Roy> This may sound harsh, but I think a feature which appeals to 0.5% Roy> of our customers should have no bearing on our design. It's just Roy> not worth worrying about. Not to mention that worrying about it Roy> distracts you from worrying about the real issues which affect 90% Roy> of our customers. Agreed. What about the other 9.5%? ;-) Skip From lac at strakt.com Fri Sep 19 09:29:08 2003 From: lac at strakt.com (Laura Creighton) Date: Fri Sep 19 09:29:23 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Skip, I cannot send you mail. Message-ID: <200309191329.h8JDT8MW003439@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> --------- Can you tell Pobox that strakt is for real? Thanks Skip, sorry everybody else. --------- Content-Description: Notification Content-Type: text/plain This is the Postfix program at host dolly1.pobox.com. The message below did not reach its final destination. What happened exactly? Our mail server dolly1.pobox.com accepted your message and tried to forward it to skip@manatee.mojam.com. Unfortunately, we had a problem delivering the message to that address. The excerpt below shows why your message was not delivered. If you don't know what this error means, or why we are trying to deliver the message you sent to a Pobox.com address to a totally different destination, please go to http://pobox.com/bounce-pobox.html If you need further assistance regarding this message, please contact your ISP, or postmaster@manatee.mojam.com Always include the full text of this problem report. - --------------- Reason For Delivery Failure --------------- For further assistance, please send mail to If you do so, please include this problem report. You can delete your own text from the message returned below. The Postfix program : host manatee.mojam.com[199.249.165.175] said: 553 5.1.8 ... Domain of sender address lac@strakt.com does not exist (in reply to RCPT TO command) ............... From aahz at pythoncraft.com Fri Sep 19 16:56:59 2003 From: aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) Date: Fri Sep 19 16:57:01 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] PyCon: CMS for proposals Message-ID: <20030919205658.GA24924@panix.com> NOTE: see NOTE below Now that we've signed a contract for the PyCon DC 2004 facilities, we need to start gearing up for other parts of a successful conference. Specificially, we need a way to manage proposals from potential speakers. Since we've been talking about ways of adding a CMS to python.org, I figured that requesting the Zope folks to do a small-scale trial would be a Good Idea. We'd like to have this system up by October 15, because we want to have a proposal deadline of December 1. (Trevor, could you please repost your pycon-organizers response here?) NOTE: At this point, I'm overall more interested in hearing from people who think they might be able to do this work than I am in critiques of the design. Here's a draft design document: There are three kinds of users: organizers, reviewers, and submitters. All organizers are reviewers; all reviewers can submit. Each submitter can make multiple submissions. Each submission can have any number of reviews. Reviewers may not review their own submissions. Submitters can see other proposals. Submitters may see only reviews for their own submissions; reviewers can see all reviews. The system maintains a transaction log of modifications; each group can see the appropriate history of modifications. (E.g., a submitter can update zir proposal; reviewers can see the history, but not other submitters.) The system can create the following reports: * Submissions with two or fewer reviews * Reviews organized by reviewer * Submissions with blank Status Submitter fields: Date submitted Date last modified Title Type (editable field with drop-down list defaults) Summary (150 char max) Requested timespan (30 or 60 minutes) Proposal, 500-2000 words (50k byte limit) -- should be text, reST, or HTML Reviewer fields: Date first reviewed Date review last modified Proposal review Proposal quality (0-10) Estimated interest level (0-10) Proposal vote (either yes/no or Apache style) may edit Type drop-down list Organizer fields: Status (blank/Accepted/Rejected) Date accepted/rejected Final timespan -- Aahz (aahz@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/ "It is easier to optimize correct code than to correct optimized code." --Bill Harlan From amk at amk.ca Sat Sep 20 12:53:14 2003 From: amk at amk.ca (A.M. Kuchling) Date: Sat Sep 20 12:54:25 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Redesigned version of current home page Message-ID: After some c.l.python discussion, here's a revised version of some tweaks to the current home page. The sidebar has had a few more links added and subtracted, and the top bar has had the number of links trimmed from 8 to 6, making the list short enough that it can be put into a single row. Comments? Can I begin implementing these changes on python.org? --amk From aahz at pythoncraft.com Sat Sep 20 13:41:37 2003 From: aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) Date: Sat Sep 20 13:41:43 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Re: Aahz wants Trevor to build a 'paper submission Zope thing' In-Reply-To: <20030920063313.GD5645@logilab.fr> References: <200309192131.h8JLVuq3006327@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> <20030920063313.GD5645@logilab.fr> Message-ID: <20030920174137.GB26477@panix.com> On Sat, Sep 20, 2003, Nicolas Chauvat wrote: > > Please use: > > 1. Plone + Archetypes (see http://plone.org/documentation/archetypes) > > OR remove Archetypes dependency on Plone and use CMF+Archetypes > > 2. CMF workflow > > Will take a day or two for the technical part. That sounds good to me. -- Aahz (aahz@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/ "It is easier to optimize correct code than to correct optimized code." --Bill Harlan From aahz at pythoncraft.com Sat Sep 20 15:57:28 2003 From: aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) Date: Sat Sep 20 15:57:30 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Redesigned version of current home page In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20030920195727.GA13172@panix.com> On Sat, Sep 20, 2003, A. M. Kuchling wrote: > > After some c.l.python discussion, here's a revised version of some > tweaks to the current home page. The sidebar has had a few more links > added and subtracted, and the top bar has had the number of links > trimmed from 8 to 6, making the list short enough that it can be put > into a single row. > > Comments? Can I begin implementing these changes on python.org? Mind reposting the URL so I don't have to dig it up? -- Aahz (aahz@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/ "It is easier to optimize correct code than to correct optimized code." --Bill Harlan From amk at amk.ca Sat Sep 20 17:32:52 2003 From: amk at amk.ca (A.M. Kuchling) Date: Sat Sep 20 17:34:04 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Redesigned version of current home page In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Saturday, September 20, 2003, at 12:53 PM, A.M. Kuchling wrote: > After some c.l.python discussion, here's a revised version of some > tweaks to the current home page. Laura Creighton points out that the URL might help: http://www.amk.ca/python.org.html D'ohh! --amk From python at dylanreinhardt.com Sat Sep 20 20:38:31 2003 From: python at dylanreinhardt.com (Dylan Reinhardt) Date: Sat Sep 20 20:39:30 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Redesigned version of current home page In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1064104710.23728.596.camel@ida.dylanreinhardt.com> On Sat, 2003-09-20 at 14:32, A.M.Kuchling wrote: > On Saturday, September 20, 2003, at 12:53 PM, A.M. Kuchling wrote: > > After some c.l.python discussion, here's a revised version of some > > tweaks to the current home page. > > Laura Creighton points out that the URL might help: > http://www.amk.ca/python.org.html > D'ohh! What you've suggested is actually less usable than what we already have. Putting small, plain, mid-contrast text above large, bold, high-contrast styled text virtually assures that the smaller text will completely disappear. Laying the old menu out in garish columns was about the only thing that made it register on the eye _at all_. Bottom line, if the menu is less noticeable, the site is less navigable. But why are we tweaking this design? Our web site needs far more than any amount of incremental revision is likely to give it. Really, it's long past time we took this old dog out behind the barn and shot it. Rather than tinkering with what we have, we should devote our efforts to refining and implementing one of the many *good* designs that have already been contributed. FWIW, Dylan From amk at amk.ca Sat Sep 20 13:05:43 2003 From: amk at amk.ca (A.M. Kuchling) Date: Sat Sep 20 21:00:45 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Redesigned version of current home page In-Reply-To: <200309202156.h8KLuqh9018891@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> References: <200309202156.h8KLuqh9018891@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> Message-ID: <20030920170543.GA1921@nyman.amk.ca> On Sat, Sep 20, 2003 at 11:56:52PM +0200, Laura Creighton wrote: >But I am too busy to try to design a layout until mid October. This >is better than what we have, but I think that we have structural problems. >Getting a consensus on what would be 'better' however, may be a hard >problem. True, but I still think we should make incremental improvements to the existing site while waiting for the redesign. The redesign will take a few months to complete, and improving the existing site a bit is a negligible amount of effort, so why not do it? (And what if the redesign never happens, if Tim Parkin has to go do paying work or if we never converge on an improved design? The site is stuck with the existing jumble.) If the changed top nav-bar is controversial, I can readily revert it to the 8-link two-column version. --amk From amk at amk.ca Sat Sep 20 13:23:09 2003 From: amk at amk.ca (A.M. Kuchling) Date: Sat Sep 20 21:18:12 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] PyCon: CMS for proposals In-Reply-To: <20030919205658.GA24924@panix.com> References: <20030919205658.GA24924@panix.com> Message-ID: <20030920172309.GB1921@nyman.amk.ca> On Fri, Sep 19, 2003 at 04:56:59PM -0400, Aahz wrote: >Specificially, we need a way to manage proposals from potential speakers. Another possible candidate: Titus Brown's Collar (collar.sf.net). I'll look into how well it matches your requirements. --amk From python at dylanreinhardt.com Sun Sep 21 00:01:50 2003 From: python at dylanreinhardt.com (Dylan Reinhardt) Date: Sun Sep 21 00:02:46 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Redesigned version of current home page In-Reply-To: <20030920170543.GA1921@nyman.amk.ca> References: <200309202156.h8KLuqh9018891@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> <20030920170543.GA1921@nyman.amk.ca> Message-ID: <1064116909.1416.5.camel@ida.dylanreinhardt.com> On Sat, 2003-09-20 at 10:05, A.M. Kuchling wrote: > (And what if the redesign never happens, if Tim Parkin has to go > do paying work or if we never converge on an improved design? The > site is stuck with the existing jumble.) I don't sense that Tim's having difficulty finding paying work. My concern is that we might delay taking action so long he loses interest in working with us. > If the changed top nav-bar is controversial, I can readily revert it > to the 8-link two-column version. Whatever we do, let's make migrating the design the real focus. $.02, Dylan From aahz at pythoncraft.com Sun Sep 21 10:27:18 2003 From: aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) Date: Sun Sep 21 10:28:20 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Redesigned version of current home page In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20030921142717.GB9285@panix.com> On Sat, Sep 20, 2003, A. M. Kuchling wrote: > On Saturday, September 20, 2003, at 12:53 PM, A.M. Kuchling wrote: >> >>After some c.l.python discussion, here's a revised version of some >>tweaks to the current home page. > > Laura Creighton points out that the URL might help: > http://www.amk.ca/python.org.html > D'ohh! Thanks! First the things I'm going to push strongly for: * Add a mini-search form at top of side navbar (but this should probably be a separate discussion) * Add the "Python Project" link back Things I think can/should be done: * Remove "contact us" link from top navbar -- perhaps it's time to create a bottom navbar? * Remove PEPs link * In the side navbar, "versions" should link to download, "docs" should link to docs, and "community" should link to community * Add the abbreviations for PSF and PBF * Add PyCon to sidebar * Add donation link to PSF * Remove editors link -- Aahz (aahz@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/ "It is easier to optimize correct code than to correct optimized code." --Bill Harlan From aahz at pythoncraft.com Sun Sep 21 10:39:24 2003 From: aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) Date: Sun Sep 21 10:40:17 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Finishing off the site map In-Reply-To: <200309131436.h8DEatq3006765@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> References: <20030901101618.GB9549@nyman.amk.ca> <200309131436.h8DEatq3006765@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> Message-ID: <20030921143924.GC9285@panix.com> On Sat, Sep 13, 2003, Laura Creighton wrote: > > I don't know where Pycon belongs, but wherever it is, EuroPython wants > to be there too. Please send a link to webmaster@python.org -- Aahz (aahz@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/ "It is easier to optimize correct code than to correct optimized code." --Bill Harlan From Nicolas.Chauvat at logilab.fr Sat Sep 20 02:33:14 2003 From: Nicolas.Chauvat at logilab.fr (Nicolas Chauvat) Date: Sun Sep 21 10:42:30 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Re: Aahz wants Trevor to build a 'paper submission Zope thing' In-Reply-To: <200309192131.h8JLVuq3006327@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> References: <200309192131.h8JLVuq3006327@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> Message-ID: <20030920063313.GD5645@logilab.fr> On Fri, Sep 19, 2003 at 11:31:56PM +0200, Laura Creighton wrote: > > I said, make it general enough that we can use it too, and we > have different categories (track chairman, people in your track who > are all reading each others stuff as part of improving). I'm not up > for deciding what we want in this. > Trevor wrote: > > NOTE: At this point, I'm overall more interested in hearing from people > who think they might be able to do this work than I am in critiques of > the design. > > ... Please use: 1. Plone + Archetypes (see http://plone.org/documentation/archetypes) OR remove Archetypes dependency on Plone and use CMF+Archetypes 2. CMF workflow Will take a day or two for the technical part. Probably several more days for fancy graphical design if the out-of-the-box one does not fit. Here is a sample archetypes schema, which is the *only* thing you have to write to get your content types in shape: ----------------8<----------------------------- from Products.ArchExample.config import ARTICLE_GROUPS # do the other imports schema = BaseSchema + Schema(( StringField('group', vocabulary=ARTICLE_GROUPS, widget=SelectionWidget(), ), StringField('blurb', searchable=1, widget=TextAreaWidget, ), TextField('body', searchable=1, required=1, allowable_content_types=('text/plain', 'text/structured', 'text/html',), widget=RichWidget, ), )) class Article(BaseContent): schema = schema registerType(Article) ----------------8<----------------------------- (see http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/archetypes/ArchExample) This is what I have been meaning to do for EP04's website, but I lack time... Hope this helps. -- Nicolas Chauvat http://www.logilab.com - "Mais o? est donc Ornicar ?" - LOGILAB, Paris (France) From amk at amk.ca Sun Sep 21 11:07:33 2003 From: amk at amk.ca (amk@amk.ca) Date: Sun Sep 21 11:07:37 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Redesigned version of current home page In-Reply-To: <20030921142717.GB9285@panix.com> References: <20030921142717.GB9285@panix.com> Message-ID: <20030921150733.GC8675@rogue.amk.ca> On Sun, Sep 21, 2003 at 10:27:18AM -0400, Aahz wrote: > * Remove "contact us" link from top navbar -- perhaps it's time to > create a bottom navbar? Pages that use table-stop (e.g. www.python.org/Mirrors.html) will make this tricky. Where should the bottom navbar go in this case, below the table of mirror sites or above it? > * Remove PEPs link How come? PEPs *are* documentation of a sort, and some features (e.g. new-style classes) are only really documented in the relevant PEPs. The rest of your suggestions seem uncontroversial. Hm... just realized the top navbar is broken in Opera for some reason; will look into it... --amk From lac at strakt.com Sun Sep 21 11:26:52 2003 From: lac at strakt.com (Laura Creighton) Date: Sun Sep 21 11:26:58 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] I think that the current site structure needs to be scrapped altogether. Message-ID: <200309211526.h8LFQqmI022897@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> Right now, it looks as if somebody has said 'the most important thing is to have all the links that are important up there on the first page'. Pack 'em in. This is an efficient design for people who already know what they want, more or less. It is, however, an intimidating design for those who are coming here for the first time, and I thought those were the ones that we were designing for. They want gateways to 'education' 'business use' and 'useful press clippings you can use' and 'FIRST TIME HERE' and so on and so forth. What they want to do is explore, and layouts for exploration look very different from layouts for sitting down and getting a lot o work done right now. The latter reads 'pure hacker', and there is indeed a place for such a page -- but down someplace in the 'for Programmers' section. If we don't produce some sort of consensus on how we are going to limit the information shown on the first page, we are going to end up with a very pretty site that still scares the managers, scientists, educators, and journalists away. Laura, who is still too busy to do anything until end of October. From aahz at pythoncraft.com Sun Sep 21 12:16:58 2003 From: aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) Date: Sun Sep 21 12:17:00 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Redesigned version of current home page In-Reply-To: <20030921150733.GC8675@rogue.amk.ca> References: <20030921142717.GB9285@panix.com> <20030921150733.GC8675@rogue.amk.ca> Message-ID: <20030921161658.GC16244@panix.com> On Sun, Sep 21, 2003, amk@amk.ca wrote: > On Sun, Sep 21, 2003 at 10:27:18AM -0400, Aahz wrote: >> >> * Remove "contact us" link from top navbar -- perhaps it's time to >> create a bottom navbar? > > Pages that use table-stop (e.g. www.python.org/Mirrors.html) will make > this tricky. Where should the bottom navbar go in this case, below > the table of mirror sites or above it? I'd put it just above . That way everyone knows to go to the bottom of the page. I see lots of sites putting things like contact, legal notices, and stuff like that there; it's reasonably consistent. We should also have a second sitemap link there. >> * Remove PEPs link > > How come? PEPs *are* documentation of a sort, and some features (e.g. > new-style classes) are only really documented in the relevant PEPs. Yeah, I'm just not sure it belongs on the front-page side navbar. They certainly should receive more prominence on other pages. I also think that PEPs tend to get misunderstood by people who don't already understand the Python development process. -- Aahz (aahz@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/ "It is easier to optimize correct code than to correct optimized code." --Bill Harlan From amk at amk.ca Sun Sep 21 12:20:05 2003 From: amk at amk.ca (amk@amk.ca) Date: Sun Sep 21 12:20:10 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] I think that the current site structure needs to be scrapped altogether. In-Reply-To: <200309211526.h8LFQqmI022897@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> References: <200309211526.h8LFQqmI022897@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> Message-ID: <20030921162005.GA9024@rogue.amk.ca> On Sun, Sep 21, 2003 at 05:26:52PM +0200, Laura Creighton wrote: > Right now, it looks as if somebody has said 'the most important thing > is to have all the links that are important up there on the first > page'. Pack 'em in. Correct; the links are jumbled together in no apparent order. I'd like to at least put them into a sensible order, without making wider revisions such as changing the graphic design or logical structure of the site. > If we don't produce some sort of consensus on how we are going to > limit the information shown on the first page, we are going to end > up with a very pretty site that still scares the managers, scientists, > educators, and journalists away. That's fine, but we shouldn't let future possibilities deter us from making trivial improvements *right now*. Isn't this the primary lesson of XP? Not to say, "Oh, we'll clean this up later", but to say "Let's clean it up *now*". The redesign effort is looking increasingly like the types-sig to me. The types-sig expended lots of discussion time on complicated questions and *never* *produced* *anything*. No add-on tools, no Python patches, no specification, no plan, *nothing*. All that discussion time was therefore wasted. If people deferred working on type-checking because "the types-sig will have a solution soon", the community lost out because we never saw the tools those people would have produced. Similarly, redesign chatter circulates and recirculates endlessly around marketing issues such as "What classes of users use the site?" and "Is Java or VB Python's competition?" and "Pictures: threat or menace?". If we defer making any improvements to the existing site because "there will be a redesign in six months", what if the redesign discussion collapses? For six months the site will have impeded users unnecessarily; what's the benefit of that? At this point I've had an improved sidebar arrangement for around two months, and it's *still* not live. I'm becoming increasingly tempted to say to hell with it and just make the revised version live. If people hate it, that's fine; just go ahead and make fixes to CVS. At least there will be *some* improvement to the site as a result, as I can't see anyone wanting to go back to the existing sidebar arrangement. --amk From aahz at pythoncraft.com Sun Sep 21 12:27:28 2003 From: aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) Date: Sun Sep 21 12:27:31 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] I think that the current site structure needs to be scrapped altogether. In-Reply-To: <20030921162005.GA9024@rogue.amk.ca> References: <200309211526.h8LFQqmI022897@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> <20030921162005.GA9024@rogue.amk.ca> Message-ID: <20030921162728.GA17653@panix.com> On Sun, Sep 21, 2003, amk@amk.ca wrote: > > At this point I've had an improved sidebar arrangement for around two > months, and it's *still* not live. I'm becoming increasingly tempted > to say to hell with it and just make the revised version live. If > people hate it, that's fine; just go ahead and make fixes to CVS. > At least there will be *some* improvement to the site as a result, > as I can't see anyone wanting to go back to the existing sidebar > arrangement. +1 I'm perfectly happy making the changes I requested myself. Thank you for all the time and effort you've put into this. -- Aahz (aahz@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/ "It is easier to optimize correct code than to correct optimized code." --Bill Harlan From python at dylanreinhardt.com Sun Sep 21 13:02:36 2003 From: python at dylanreinhardt.com (Dylan Reinhardt) Date: Sun Sep 21 13:03:33 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] I think that the current site structure needs to be scrapped altogether. In-Reply-To: <20030921162005.GA9024@rogue.amk.ca> References: <200309211526.h8LFQqmI022897@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> <20030921162005.GA9024@rogue.amk.ca> Message-ID: <1064163755.1412.89.camel@ida.dylanreinhardt.com> On Sun, 2003-09-21 at 09:20, amk@amk.ca wrote: > On Sun, Sep 21, 2003 at 05:26:52PM +0200, Laura Creighton wrote: > > Right now, it looks as if somebody has said 'the most important thing > > is to have all the links that are important up there on the first > > page'. Pack 'em in. > > Correct; the links are jumbled together in no apparent order. I'd like to > at least put them into a sensible order, without making wider revisions such > as changing the graphic design or logical structure of the site. You totally missed the point. In truth, most of those links shouldn't be there _at all_. Order is a far less important concern. If I were re-designing the front page, I would eliminate the top menu (except for a search box) and pare down the links on the side bar to about eight major topics: - Introducing Python - Download - Documentation - Community - Projects - Events - Success Stories - Links Then I'd push the "news" currently in the content area to a right-hand column and use the main content area to give an overview of Python. Each of the main topic areas might "explode" out 6-8 main subtopics on pages where they are being browsed. It's conventional, but there's a reason conventional design got that way: it works. Radical simplicity is what's needed here. There is no good reason to confront a beginner with links to PEPs, PSF, PBF, Zope, bugs, cvs, PyPI, etc, etc. They just aren't useful or relevant until you get more of the big picture. Every one of the links on the front page can be intuitively organized into one of the topic headings I listed. > > > If we don't produce some sort of consensus on how we are going to > > limit the information shown on the first page, we are going to end > > up with a very pretty site that still scares the managers, scientists, > > educators, and journalists away. > > That's fine, but we shouldn't let future possibilities deter us from making > trivial improvements *right now*. Isn't this the primary lesson of XP? Not > to say, "Oh, we'll clean this up later", but to say "Let's clean it up > *now*". XP is not a catch-all excuse for half-measures. The primary lesson of XP is to deliver the product the *customer* wants, not what the programmer wants to create. We're currently ignoring 90% of our customers and it shows. The web site is virtually useless as a tool for reaching or converting anyone who isn't already bought in. We're holding potential converts at arm's length. The site is unfriendly, cold, and unattractive. Nothing about it is going to enhance our reputation or build our user base. > Similarly, redesign chatter circulates and recirculates endlessly around > marketing issues such as "What classes of users use the site?" and "Is Java > or VB Python's competition?" and "Pictures: threat or menace?". If we defer > making any improvements to the existing site because "there will be a > redesign in six months", what if the redesign discussion collapses? For six > months the site will have impeded users unnecessarily; what's the benefit of > that? Well, here's the problem. The people who are willing to expend work on a real redesign are not the same people as those who are currently in charge of www.python.org. We're left spinning our wheels because the people who have decision-making authority appear to think that the site is actually pretty good. By almost anything other than open source hacker standards, it is not. That is why I am arguing in favor of making the decision to *do* something instead of futzing around what what we already have. It will be a lot easier to maintain momentum on a real redesign if there is a solid commitment to working on it. Investing time in small cosmetic changes directly undercuts that effort. Dylan From amk at amk.ca Sun Sep 21 13:26:18 2003 From: amk at amk.ca (amk@amk.ca) Date: Sun Sep 21 13:26:26 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] I think that the current site structure needs to be scrapped altogether. In-Reply-To: <1064163755.1412.89.camel@ida.dylanreinhardt.com> References: <200309211526.h8LFQqmI022897@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> <20030921162005.GA9024@rogue.amk.ca> <1064163755.1412.89.camel@ida.dylanreinhardt.com> Message-ID: <20030921172618.GA9347@rogue.amk.ca> On Sun, Sep 21, 2003 at 10:02:36AM -0700, Dylan Reinhardt wrote: > Well, here's the problem. The people who are willing to expend work on > a real redesign are not the same people as those who are currently in > charge of www.python.org. We're left spinning our wheels because the > people who have decision-making authority appear to think that the site > is actually pretty good. By almost anything other than open source > hacker standards, it is not. To my mind, it's completely unclear who the people who have decision-making authority *are*, which is a fundamental problem. This stalls small changes as well as the larger redesign. Anyway, there's nothing preventing anyone from grabbing portions of python.org with wget, making an improved prototype and putting it on some random IP address. Fred even made a (somewhat controversial) tarball a little while ago; that could be repeated. So, make a prototype! > solid commitment to working on it. Investing time in small cosmetic > changes directly undercuts that effort. This is not a zero-sum game. My investing time in the existing site doesn't take time away from those people who are willing to work on a major redesign. --amk From roy at panix.com Sun Sep 21 13:37:06 2003 From: roy at panix.com (Roy Smith) Date: Sun Sep 21 13:46:50 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] I think that the current site structure needs to be scrapped altogether. In-Reply-To: <1064163755.1412.89.camel@ida.dylanreinhardt.com> Message-ID: <38646350-EC5A-11D7-936B-0050E405C35A@panix.com> On Sunday, September 21, 2003, at 01:02 PM, Dylan Reinhardt wrote: > We're currently ignoring 90% of our customers and it shows. Putting on my product management hat for a moment, do we have any data on what sells and what doesn't, i.e. which links on the current page get used a lot and which don't? For the ones that don't get used a lot, we need to figure out why. Either they're not of interest to the majority of the people who walk in the front door (in which case they should be banished to lower-priced real estate), or they're not being presented well (in which case they need more visibility). From aahz at pythoncraft.com Sun Sep 21 13:40:38 2003 From: aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) Date: Sun Sep 21 13:48:07 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] I think that the current site structure needs to be scrapped altogether. In-Reply-To: <1064163755.1412.89.camel@ida.dylanreinhardt.com> References: <200309211526.h8LFQqmI022897@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> <20030921162005.GA9024@rogue.amk.ca> <1064163755.1412.89.camel@ida.dylanreinhardt.com> Message-ID: <20030921174037.GA266@panix.com> On Sun, Sep 21, 2003, Dylan Reinhardt wrote: > > We're currently ignoring 90% of our customers and it shows. The > web site is virtually useless as a tool for reaching or converting > anyone who isn't already bought in. We're holding potential converts > at arm's length. The site is unfriendly, cold, and unattractive. > Nothing about it is going to enhance our reputation or build our user > base. That's opinion, not fact. We still have not achieved consensus about design goals, not even talking about the extent to which the current design does or does not achieve those goals. > Well, here's the problem. The people who are willing to expend work on > a real redesign are not the same people as those who are currently in > charge of www.python.org. We're left spinning our wheels because the > people who have decision-making authority appear to think that the site > is actually pretty good. By almost anything other than open source > hacker standards, it is not. Again opinion. If you look at successful sites such as Amazon.com or cnn.com, I think it's hard to argue that python.org does significantly worse at the organizational level. -- Aahz (aahz@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/ "It is easier to optimize correct code than to correct optimized code." --Bill Harlan From aahz at pythoncraft.com Sun Sep 21 13:42:55 2003 From: aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) Date: Sun Sep 21 13:50:45 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] I think that the current site structure needs to be scrapped altogether. In-Reply-To: <20030921172618.GA9347@rogue.amk.ca> References: <200309211526.h8LFQqmI022897@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> <20030921162005.GA9024@rogue.amk.ca> <1064163755.1412.89.camel@ida.dylanreinhardt.com> <20030921172618.GA9347@rogue.amk.ca> Message-ID: <20030921174255.GB266@panix.com> On Sun, Sep 21, 2003, amk@amk.ca wrote: > > To my mind, it's completely unclear who the people who have > decision-making authority *are*, which is a fundamental problem. This > stalls small changes as well as the larger redesign. Supposedly it's the PWC, but we haven't really gotten off the ground yet. My priority has been PyCon more than the website recently (after catching up from the metric tonne of e-mail from malware and its byproducts). > This is not a zero-sum game. My investing time in the existing site > doesn't take time away from those people who are willing to work on a > major redesign. +1 -- Aahz (aahz@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/ "It is easier to optimize correct code than to correct optimized code." --Bill Harlan From python at dylanreinhardt.com Sun Sep 21 15:44:02 2003 From: python at dylanreinhardt.com (Dylan Reinhardt) Date: Sun Sep 21 15:44:58 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] I think that the current site structure needs to be scrapped altogether. In-Reply-To: <20030921174037.GA266@panix.com> References: <200309211526.h8LFQqmI022897@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> <20030921162005.GA9024@rogue.amk.ca> <1064163755.1412.89.camel@ida.dylanreinhardt.com> <20030921174037.GA266@panix.com> Message-ID: <1064173442.1414.148.camel@ida.dylanreinhardt.com> On Sun, 2003-09-21 at 10:40, Aahz wrote: > On Sun, Sep 21, 2003, Dylan Reinhardt wrote: > > The site is unfriendly, cold, and unattractive. > > Nothing about it is going to enhance our reputation or build our user > > base. > > That's opinion, not fact. It is an informed opinion based on relevant experience. I spent several years creating marketing and communications materials whose results were measurable. What's your opinion based on? > > We're left spinning our wheels because the > > people who have decision-making authority appear to think that the site > > is actually pretty good. By almost anything other than open source > > hacker standards, it is not. > > Again opinion. Again, *informed* opinion. > If you look at successful sites such as Amazon.com or > cnn.com, I think it's hard to argue that python.org does significantly > worse at the organizational level. First off, CNN's success has almost nothing to do with its web site and Amazon's success has been propped by significant inflows from outside their core business. Amazon's longer-term success is yet to be proven. But even taken as given that they are good examples, I'm astonished you can't tell how much better both of those sites are at presenting and managing information. Both sites manage 1000's of times as much content as www.python.org, yet each one is easier to navigate. CNN's top bar consists of a search box, some branding and advertising and *nothing* else. CNN enables browsing by sorting hundreds of pages of new content per day into 14 key categories. The remaining 85% of the screen is link-dense, but notice what an effort is made to put a *small* number of links "above the fold" and how most of the really link-dense content is stuffed below the fold and *sorted* into headers that mirror the topic browsing buttons featured higher-up in the page. Amazon makes a far more cluttered first impression the last couple years, but it's still worlds better than the Python web site. Though the first page is a bit scatter-shot, the site quickly adapts to your usage and narrows its focus. If you allow cookies, that is. :-) Also, I'll point out something *both* those sites make extensive use of: graphics. Another thing: typography. Maybe they all look the same when you're browsing in lynx, but for the other 99.99% of us using the *graphical* web, there's a world of difference in terms of quality and usability. $.02, Dylan From guido at python.org Sun Sep 21 16:05:57 2003 From: guido at python.org (Guido van Rossum) Date: Sun Sep 21 16:06:11 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] I think that the current site structure needs to be scrapped altogether. In-Reply-To: Your message of "21 Sep 2003 12:44:02 PDT." <1064173442.1414.148.camel@ida.dylanreinhardt.com> References: <200309211526.h8LFQqmI022897@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> <20030921162005.GA9024@rogue.amk.ca> <1064163755.1412.89.camel@ida.dylanreinhardt.com> <20030921174037.GA266@panix.com> <1064173442.1414.148.camel@ida.dylanreinhardt.com> Message-ID: <200309212006.h8LK5vl12822@12-236-84-31.client.attbi.com> I recommend that everyone who hasn't done so yet, read the book "Don't make me Think" by Steve Krug. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0789723107/ref=lib_dp_TFCV/103-8580480-8104610?v=glance&s=books&vi=reader#reader-link I agree with almost everything Krug says, and wish I could put them in practice for python.org -- alas, my time is needed in language design and implementation, where there aren't quite so many people who are better than me, so don't expect me to help with the redesign. IMO the first and foremost recommendation from the book for python.org is to put a search box on the front page. We shouldn't have to wait to do that until the full redesign is ready. (BTW, the current Ultraseek search engine also uses Python. :-) --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/) From aahz at pythoncraft.com Sun Sep 21 16:14:28 2003 From: aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) Date: Sun Sep 21 16:14:31 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] I think that the current site structure needs to be scrapped altogether. In-Reply-To: <200309212006.h8LK5vl12822@12-236-84-31.client.attbi.com> References: <200309211526.h8LFQqmI022897@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> <20030921162005.GA9024@rogue.amk.ca> <1064163755.1412.89.camel@ida.dylanreinhardt.com> <20030921174037.GA266@panix.com> <1064173442.1414.148.camel@ida.dylanreinhardt.com> <200309212006.h8LK5vl12822@12-236-84-31.client.attbi.com> Message-ID: <20030921201428.GA20706@panix.com> On Sun, Sep 21, 2003, Guido van Rossum wrote: > > IMO the first and foremost recommendation from the book for python.org > is to put a search box on the front page. I'll do that as soon as AMK installs his new design. -- Aahz (aahz@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/ "It is easier to optimize correct code than to correct optimized code." --Bill Harlan From tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com Mon Sep 22 04:41:21 2003 From: tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com (Tim Parkin) Date: Mon Sep 22 04:41:47 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Next iteration (was "I think that the current site ....") In-Reply-To: <20030921172618.GA9347@rogue.amk.ca> Message-ID: <0b2301c380e5$5331e1f0$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Dylan: > > Amk: > > After some c.l.python discussion, here's a revised version of some > > tweaks to the current home page. > >But why are we tweaking this design? Our web site needs far more than >any amount of incremental revision is likely to give it. Really, it's >long past time we took this old dog out behind the barn and shot it. I disagree, the old site is awful and realistically it's going to be end of the this year / start of next year before relaunching the new site. In the meantime, lets make the current site more useful. It's against my interests as the worse the current site looks, the better our redesign appears but I'll be altruistic about it ;-) Amk: >The redesign effort is looking increasingly like the types-sig to me. The >types-sig expended lots of discussion time on complicated questions and >*never* *produced* *anything*. I'm sure you didn't mean nothing as on my public folder alone there's 9.1Mb of proposed designs/information architecture notes and logos. Also on the wiki there's prototype html components and proposed navigation concepts. Here's the latest design if people haven't seen it. http://pollenation.net/assets/public/python-latest.png Amk: >Anyway, there's nothing preventing anyone from grabbing portions of >python.org with wget, making an improved prototype and putting it on some >random IP address. Fred even made a (somewhat controversial) tarball a >little while ago; that could be repeated. So, make a prototype! Well.. There is one thing that is stopping me in particular which is a lack of official feedback on the design proposal. I don't mind spending a lot of time building a prototype but would like some sort of indication that :- a) We (myself and people on the design/redesign list) are on the right track b) If not, why not (and why hasn't it been mentioned) c) If so then what are the constraints in building html and for the platform and do we have a provisional "yes we'll use this design as long as it meets our requirements for accessibility/speed/etc" I for one would love to get going but, in order to do what I have done so far, I have had to make assumptions about what the PWC/Python Board want. In particular (but in no means an indicative or substantial part) the choice of how to support Netscape. I've had to presume Netscape 4.x will degrade to a text only type design in order to make the most of the massive advantages newer (post '98) version browsers can deliver. We also have put some thought into platform / administration IA etc but it seems risky carrying on without some buy-in from the PWC/Python Board. We'd love to build something useful using Zope (and we have addressed some of the concerns raised) but if it's a 100% no-no, then there is little point. To be honest I am just carrying on under the assumption that the scale of feedback a project like this needs is unlikely and that, in addition, the PWC/Board are not going to make any commitment apart from a yes/no once they see a completed proposal. Moving the proposed web designs into a fully standards compliant and browser compatible state is a substantial (40+ hour) task to get perfect and I really can't afford to 'waste' that amount of time. And I do mean waste as, unlike python code, web development builds are extremely difficult to refactor. To be honest what worries me is carrying on and developing something with many 100's of hours of mantime invested in it only to be told "we're doing something else". That would not only upset me but would severely test my sanity and trust. Understanding this, I shouldn't really go any further as that isn't something I want to risk. However, I love Python and see a good future for it. What we really need is an official nod to say "great... we like... go and make some html!" What do you suggest? Tim (not disillusioned, just wary of one sided relationships) From sholden at holdenweb.com Mon Sep 22 08:23:46 2003 From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden) Date: Mon Sep 22 08:26:54 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Next iteration (was "I think that the current site ....") In-Reply-To: <0b2301c380e5$5331e1f0$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Message-ID: > -----Original Message----- > From: pydotorg-redesign-bounces@python.org > [mailto:pydotorg-redesign-bounces@python.org]On Behalf Of Tim Parkin > Sent: Monday, September 22, 2003 4:41 AM > To: pydotorg-redesign@python.org > Subject: RE: [Pydotorg-redesign] Next iteration (was "I think that the > current site ....") > > > Dylan: > > > > Amk: > > > After some c.l.python discussion, here's a revised > version of some > > > tweaks to the current home page. > > > >But why are we tweaking this design? Our web site needs far > more than > >any amount of incremental revision is likely to give it. Really, it's > >long past time we took this old dog out behind the barn and shot it. > I disagree, the old site is awful and realistically it's > going to be end > of the this year / start of next year before relaunching the new site. > In the meantime, lets make the current site more useful. It's > against my > interests as the worse the current site looks, the better our redesign > appears but I'll be altruistic about it ;-) > I agree that at the moment the web site redesign appears to be in limbo, and applaud Andrew Kuchling's efforts to get going with an incremental change rather than trying to do a complete job in the absence of any guidelines. I'm glad to see you agree, Tim, as I think that could at least get us moving in the right direction. > Amk: > >The redesign effort is looking increasingly like the types-sig to me. > The > >types-sig expended lots of discussion time on complicated > questions and > >*never* *produced* *anything*. > I'm sure you didn't mean nothing as on my public folder alone there's > 9.1Mb of proposed designs/information architecture notes and > logos. Also > on the wiki there's prototype html components and proposed navigation > concepts. Here's the latest design if people haven't seen it. > http://pollenation.net/assets/public/python-latest.png > Because we have a committee "in charge" of this activity I've kind of backed off this, but I think there's an amazing collection of good ideas been proposed in the last months, and I'm somewhat surprised that there does seem to be a residual feeling in certain quarters that the existing web site is "good enough" - it isn't. Notwithstanding the need for textual navigation, we would be foolish to omit the appeal that good graphical design can add. I'm absolutely positive there has been no fundamental change to the design in the last five years, and probably it goes back rather further than that, and it looks like it. The content has grown well beyond the ability of the site's architecture to direct the reader's attention to the appropriate areas. In short, like my own current web site (which is if anything even worse) it looks like a "geek" site, and it seems clear that it isn't being organized with maximal reader convenience in mind. > Amk: > >Anyway, there's nothing preventing anyone from grabbing portions of > >python.org with wget, making an improved prototype and putting it on > some > >random IP address. Fred even made a (somewhat controversial) > tarball a > >little while ago; that could be repeated. So, make a prototype! > Well.. There is one thing that is stopping me in particular which is a > lack of official feedback on the design proposal. I don't > mind spending > a lot of time building a prototype but would like some sort of > indication that :- > > a) We (myself and people on the design/redesign list) are on the right > track > b) If not, why not (and why hasn't it been mentioned) > c) If so then what are the constraints in building html and for the > platform and do we have a provisional "yes we'll use this > design as long > as it meets our requirements for accessibility/speed/etc" > Hear, hear! I've been loath to propose further ideas because they just get sucked into the cauldron of indecision that is this mailing list. > I for one would love to get going but, in order to do what I have done > so far, I have had to make assumptions about what the PWC/Python Board > want. In particular (but in no means an indicative or > substantial part) > the choice of how to support Netscape. I've had to presume > Netscape 4.x > will degrade to a text only type design in order to make the > most of the > massive advantages newer (post '98) version browsers can deliver. > > We also have put some thought into platform / administration > IA etc but > it seems risky carrying on without some buy-in from the PWC/Python > Board. We'd love to build something useful using Zope (and we have > addressed some of the concerns raised) but if it's a 100% no-no, then > there is little point. > Yes, it would be nice to see some of the other talent that's on offer being utilized to improve the situation. > To be honest I am just carrying on under the assumption that the scale > of feedback a project like this needs is unlikely and that, > in addition, > the PWC/Board are not going to make any commitment apart from a yes/no > once they see a completed proposal. Moving the proposed web > designs into > a fully standards compliant and browser compatible state is a > substantial (40+ hour) task to get perfect and I really can't > afford to > 'waste' that amount of time. And I do mean waste as, unlike > python code, > web development builds are extremely difficult to refactor. > Agreed. > To be honest what worries me is carrying on and developing something > with many 100's of hours of mantime invested in it only to be told > "we're doing something else". That would not only upset me but would > severely test my sanity and trust. Understanding this, I shouldn't > really go any further as that isn't something I want to risk. > However, I > love Python and see a good future for it. > > What we really need is an official nod to say "great... we like... go > and make some html!" > > What do you suggest? > > Tim (not disillusioned, just wary of one sided relationships) > Personally I think we need some goals, and I would think the committee should be the group to provide them, but I know that they are all busy people and I'm sure that their silence is attributable to overload rather than lack of good intentions. The confusions and cross-posting between pydotorg, pydotorg-redesign and marketing-python haven't helped, either. Guido's clearly too busy with other matters to put a hand on the tiller here, but I'm sensing a vacuum that isn't helpful for people like Tim, whose goodwill we need to nurture. Proposals are made, then commented upon, but no decision are resulting, and no goals are available by which to measure specific designs against published criteria. Goals have certain characteristics: specifically, they should be SMART: S(imple) M(easurable) A(chievable) R(ealistic), and with a T(imescale) So here's a sample goal as an "Aunt Sally". Would it help? The new web site design should allow reader to reach all existing content and provide a framework for the inclusion of new content. Any page should be reachable from the home page with no more than four mouse-clicks, and the more following sections should be more accessible: 1 click [name the most important areas] 2 clicks [the next most important areas] 3 clicks [stuff more important than the 1995 conference] Other than "leaf" content, navigational pages should not exceed 64 Kb in content-length [we can argue about this - personally I'd go for 128 Kb]. The redesign should be completed by October 31, and the content should be publicly available in the revised format by November 31. There, now tell me to shut up. I'll get back to pycon-organizers for another month :-) regards -- Steve Holden http://www.holdenweb.com/ Python Web Programming http://pydish.holdenweb.com/pwp/ Interview with GvR August 14, 2003 http://www.onlamp.com/python/ From sdeibel at wingide.com Mon Sep 22 08:51:36 2003 From: sdeibel at wingide.com (Stephan Deibel) Date: Mon Sep 22 08:44:15 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Re: I think that the current site structure needs to be scrapped altogether In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: From: amk@amk.ca > This is not a zero-sum game. My investing time in the existing site doesn't > take time away from those people who are willing to work on a major > redesign. FWIW (maybe not much ;-), I agree that work on the current site should continue until the new site design is ready to go. In this volunteer context, I think it's a mistake to discourage people willing to make the effort at *any* improvement. Stephan Deibel -- Wing IDE for Python Archaeopteryx Software, Inc Take Flight! www.wingide.com From amk at amk.ca Mon Sep 22 09:31:53 2003 From: amk at amk.ca (amk@amk.ca) Date: Mon Sep 22 09:32:08 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Next iteration (was "I think that the current site ....") In-Reply-To: <0b2301c380e5$5331e1f0$0a00a8c0@JASPER> References: <20030921172618.GA9347@rogue.amk.ca> <0b2301c380e5$5331e1f0$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Message-ID: <20030922133153.GA14298@rogue.amk.ca> On Mon, Sep 22, 2003 at 09:41:21AM +0100, Tim Parkin wrote: > I'm sure you didn't mean nothing as on my public folder alone there's > 9.1Mb of proposed designs/information architecture notes and logos. Also Oh, the types-sig produced proposals and strawman implementations, too, but that doesn't change the fact that, in this month of September 2003, there is no standard type checking tool for Python. From the viewpoint of a python.org user, the redesign process won't have produced anything until the redesign is actually live. > Well.. There is one thing that is stopping me in particular which is a > lack of official feedback on the design proposal. I don't mind spending Yes, the indecision problem is at the root of it all. I hope the PWC group can come up with some way to make such decisions. --amk From skip at pobox.com Mon Sep 22 11:52:24 2003 From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro) Date: Mon Sep 22 11:55:04 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Redesigned version of current home page In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <16239.6840.162654.717214@montanaro.dyndns.org> >> After some c.l.python discussion, here's a revised version of some >> tweaks to the current home page. ... I know Tim Parkin doesn't really like this idea, but I'll toss it out nonetheless. Here's a modified version of Andrew's revised home page which puts a Google search box near the top of the left margin. I don't think Google should have anything to complain about (are we required to provide web & python.org radio buttons?), but the (required?) Google logo doesn't look good over the non-white background. http://manatee.mojam.com/~skip/amk.html Skip From todd at slack.net Mon Sep 22 12:07:27 2003 From: todd at slack.net (Todd Grimason) Date: Mon Sep 22 12:07:28 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Redesigned version of current home page In-Reply-To: <16239.6840.162654.717214@montanaro.dyndns.org>; from skip@pobox.com on Mon, Sep 22, 2003 at 10:52:24AM -0500 References: <16239.6840.162654.717214@montanaro.dyndns.org> Message-ID: <20030922120727.A28752@crank.slack.net> * Skip Montanaro [2003-09-22 11:55]: > nonetheless. Here's a modified version of Andrew's revised home page which > puts a Google search box near the top of the left margin. I don't think > Google should have anything to complain about (are we required to provide > web & python.org radio buttons?), but the (required?) Google logo doesn't > look good over the non-white background. > > http://manatee.mojam.com/~skip/amk.html I think this is a really good idea and worthwhile improvement until we reach "the promised land", especially as we've all agreed the IA of the current site leaves a bit to be desired, a search tool (assuming it works well enough) is great to have front and center. I'll add to the chorus that this and any of the improvements by amk are well worth making while a complete overhaul is in limbo and/or development. Maybe someone more familiar with Google requirements would know where to get a logo not anti-aliased on a white bg? Or maybe it should actually be an InfoSeek logo at this point? -- ___________________________ toddgrimason*todd@slack.net From aahz at pythoncraft.com Mon Sep 22 12:19:36 2003 From: aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) Date: Mon Sep 22 12:19:38 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Redesigned version of current home page In-Reply-To: <16239.6840.162654.717214@montanaro.dyndns.org> References: <16239.6840.162654.717214@montanaro.dyndns.org> Message-ID: <20030922161936.GA11085@panix.com> On Mon, Sep 22, 2003, Skip Montanaro wrote: > > I know Tim Parkin doesn't really like this idea, but I'll toss it out > nonetheless. Here's a modified version of Andrew's revised home page which > puts a Google search box near the top of the left margin. I don't think > Google should have anything to complain about (are we required to provide > web & python.org radio buttons?), but the (required?) Google logo doesn't > look good over the non-white background. > > http://manatee.mojam.com/~skip/amk.html That's exactly what I'm planning to do as soon as AMK uploads his new version. -- Aahz (aahz@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/ "It is easier to optimize correct code than to correct optimized code." --Bill Harlan From tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com Mon Sep 22 15:37:38 2003 From: tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com (Tim Parkin) Date: Mon Sep 22 15:37:57 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Redesigned version of current home page In-Reply-To: <16239.6840.162654.717214@montanaro.dyndns.org> Message-ID: <024701c38141$01663a40$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Skip: >I know Tim Parkin doesn't really like this idea, but I'll toss it out >nonetheless. Here's a modified version of Andrew's revised home page which >puts a Google search box near the top of the left margin. I don't think >Google should have anything to complain about (are we required to provide >web & python.org radio buttons?), but the (required?) Google logo doesn't >look good over the non-white background. Hi skip, I'm not against the idea of using google at all, my only issues were i) it doesn't negatively affect the design layout of the site and ii) we abide by google licensing guidlelines. I think Google does a remarkable job as a full site search, a huge amount better than most generic (ie not site optimised) searches. It might be wise to remove the add the www subdomain to the google search as you get a lot of low quality results through the mailing lists otherwise. I've altered the following example to just limite to www so you can compare. I've also tweaked the graphics and spacing a little. I also have a version with the 'search' text inside the form field as I was unsure how well the logo worked with 'search' underneath. http://pollenation.net/assets/public/python.org.html My only previous comments were that I believe an site specific and site optimised search tool would offer substantial benefits, both in design flexibility (I mean information design as well as visual design) and quality/specificity of search results. I think myself and Skip had agreed that we'd leave the possible test of that to a much later day. Tim From amk at amk.ca Mon Sep 22 19:05:29 2003 From: amk at amk.ca (amk@amk.ca) Date: Mon Sep 22 19:05:34 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Redesigned version of current home page In-Reply-To: <20030921142717.GB9285@panix.com> References: <20030921142717.GB9285@panix.com> Message-ID: <20030922230529.GA16757@rogue.amk.ca> I've checked in the sidebar and main text changes, but haven't made them live yet. The top navbar is unchanged. Some of Aahz's suggestions that I didn't carry out: On Sun, Sep 21, 2003 at 10:27:18AM -0400, Aahz wrote: > * Add the "Python Project" link back Do you mean the "Python Project: [bugs] [patches] [cvs]" link, or just a link to /dev/? > * Remove PEPs link Not done because IMHO the link is useful. > * In the side navbar, "versions" should link to download, "docs" should > link to docs, and "community" should link to community This is doable, but the resulting links are dark blue on darker blue. We'd need to fix this (perhaps by using instead of and then using CSS), but that's more horsing around than I want to do on a laptop with 30 minutes of power left. Aahz, feel free to make any of the above changes and/or the Google search form and check them in. Otherwise, let me know and I'll just make the current version live. --amk From aahz at pythoncraft.com Mon Sep 22 20:39:20 2003 From: aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) Date: Mon Sep 22 20:42:04 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Redesigned version of current home page In-Reply-To: <20030922230529.GA16757@rogue.amk.ca> References: <20030921142717.GB9285@panix.com> <20030922230529.GA16757@rogue.amk.ca> Message-ID: <20030923003920.GB9290@panix.com> On Mon, Sep 22, 2003, amk@amk.ca wrote: > > I've checked in the sidebar and main text changes, but haven't made them > live yet. The top navbar is unchanged. Yay! > On Sun, Sep 21, 2003 at 10:27:18AM -0400, Aahz wrote: >> * Add the "Python Project" link back > > Do you mean the "Python Project: [bugs] [patches] [cvs]" link, or just a > link to /dev/? The former. It's not because I like those three extra links; they're just to provide additional cues that this is for people working on Python rather than writing Python programs. >> * Remove PEPs link > > Not done because IMHO the link is useful. Okie-doke; stuck the Python Project link above it so people will hit that first. >> * In the side navbar, "versions" should link to download, "docs" should >> link to docs, and "community" should link to community > > This is doable, but the resulting links are dark blue on darker blue. > We'd need to fix this (perhaps by using instead of color="..."> and then using CSS), but that's more horsing around than > I want to do on a laptop with 30 minutes of power left. All right, I'll leave that alone for the moment, since I'm not messing with color. ;-) > Aahz, feel free to make any of the above changes and/or the Google search > form and check them in. Otherwise, let me know and I'll just make the > current version live. I've gone ahead and made it live. After starting to play around with the Google stuff, I realized I had neither knowledge nor privs to make the necessary changes, since we want that on every page. (There should be a /search.h that PDOGenerator sticks at the top of the navbar, I think.) I have asked for privs, but I don't know how long knowledge acquisition will take. I'm attaching my proposed Google piece in case you're feeling up to it. -- Aahz (aahz@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/ "It is easier to optimize correct code than to correct optimized code." --Bill Harlan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/pydotorg-redesign/attachments/20030922/40fd8de9/google.html From fdrake at acm.org Tue Sep 23 11:49:34 2003 From: fdrake at acm.org (Fred L. Drake, Jr.) Date: Tue Sep 23 12:05:15 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Sidebar/nav. bar revisions In-Reply-To: <778B0500-DFF9-11D7-99A3-0003931BF218@amk.ca> References: <778B0500-DFF9-11D7-99A3-0003931BF218@amk.ca> Message-ID: <16240.27534.210105.619031@grendel.zope.com> A.M. Kuchling writes: > Secondary issue: given the current plague of viruses (and the > likelihood of future viruses), should we be trying to minimize the > number of times e-mail addresses are given on web pages? The 'Contact > us' page would be a step toward this: this single page would be the > only ones with an e-mail address. On the whole I like this, though I'm not at all certain it'll make any difference in the war on spam & virii. One issue related to this is that we use different addresses for different portions of the web site; this will need to be addressed by either providing different flavors of the contact page or making people read more to figure out how to contact us. (For example, the doc/ tree uses docs@python.org for a contact address instead of webmaster.) -Fred -- Fred L. Drake, Jr. PythonLabs at Zope Corporation From fdrake at acm.org Tue Sep 23 14:18:09 2003 From: fdrake at acm.org (Fred L. Drake, Jr.) Date: Tue Sep 23 14:33:43 2003 Subject: [marketing-python] RE: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <2A9B6B81-E90D-11D7-9B91-0050E405C35A@panix.com> References: <200309170616.h8H6Gsq3026113@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> <2A9B6B81-E90D-11D7-9B91-0050E405C35A@panix.com> Message-ID: <16240.36449.504177.16139@grendel.zope.com> Roy Smith writes: > On a slightly different tangent, I'm a little concerned about "cute" > names like "Starship" and "Vaults of Parnassus". One of our goals is But these aren't names "we" (meaning the python.org maintainers) have created. > to appeal to dev managers. Dev managers don't like cute. Cute is the > antithesis of "this will help me deliver my product on time and keep my > job". Understood. Note that the Vaults will (likely) be replaced by the Python Package Index (PyPI; www.python.org/pypi/) at some point in the future. (Well, I think it should be, at any rate.) Just when this makes sense depends on the growth of the PyPI database. -Fred -- Fred L. Drake, Jr. PythonLabs at Zope Corporation From fdrake at acm.org Tue Sep 23 14:31:59 2003 From: fdrake at acm.org (Fred L. Drake, Jr.) Date: Tue Sep 23 14:47:20 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Redesigned version of current home page In-Reply-To: <20030921150733.GC8675@rogue.amk.ca> References: <20030921142717.GB9285@panix.com> <20030921150733.GC8675@rogue.amk.ca> Message-ID: <16240.37279.802575.3459@grendel.zope.com> amk@amk.ca writes: > Pages that use table-stop (e.g. www.python.org/Mirrors.html) will make this > tricky. Where should the bottom navbar go in this case, below the table of > mirror sites or above it? All the way at the end (after the continuation). Though I really don't like putting it there at all. > > * Remove PEPs link > > How come? PEPs *are* documentation of a sort, and some features (e.g. > new-style classes) are only really documented in the relevant PEPs. End-users shouldn't normally need to go PEP-diving. The fact that not all documentation for end-users gets migrated to the documentation is a doc bug, not a reason to link to the PEPs. (SF bugs should be filed for these where they don't already exist.) -Fred -- Fred L. Drake, Jr. PythonLabs at Zope Corporation From lac at strakt.com Tue Sep 23 15:10:12 2003 From: lac at strakt.com (Laura Creighton) Date: Tue Sep 23 15:10:52 2003 Subject: [marketing-python] RE: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: Message from "Fred L. Drake, Jr." of "Tue, 23 Sep 2003 14:18:09 EDT." <16240.36449.504177.16139@grendel.zope.com> References: <200309170616.h8H6Gsq3026113@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> <2A9B6B81-E90D-11D7-9B91-0050E405C35A@panix.com> <16240.36449.504177.16139@grendel.zope.com> Message-ID: <200309231910.h8NJACh9002625@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> In a message of Tue, 23 Sep 2003 14:18:09 EDT, "Fred L. Drake, Jr." writes: > >Roy Smith writes: > > On a slightly different tangent, I'm a little concerned about "cute" > > names like "Starship" and "Vaults of Parnassus". One of our goals is > >But these aren't names "we" (meaning the python.org maintainers) have >created. > > > to appeal to dev managers. Dev managers don't like cute. Cute is the > > > antithesis of "this will help me deliver my product on time and keep m >y > > job". > >Understood. > >Note that the Vaults will (likely) be replaced by the Python Package >Index (PyPI; www.python.org/pypi/) at some point in the future. >(Well, I think it should be, at any rate.) Just when this makes sense >depends on the growth of the PyPI database. > > > -Fred If you want the PyPI database to grow, you need to put a pointer to the index out there which tells people how to make such a package. I still am unsure how, and there are lots of us in that boat. Then it would be worthwhile to go through the vaults and make a package of each thing there. I believe that there are lots of people in the community who would love to help and would do this -- as long as it was just plain work, and didn't require them to make judgements about packages that they don't know anything about. Laura From aahz at pythoncraft.com Tue Sep 23 18:03:30 2003 From: aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) Date: Tue Sep 23 18:03:37 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] What are the goals? In-Reply-To: <20030922133153.GA14298@rogue.amk.ca> References: <20030921172618.GA9347@rogue.amk.ca> <0b2301c380e5$5331e1f0$0a00a8c0@JASPER> <20030922133153.GA14298@rogue.amk.ca> Message-ID: <20030923220329.GA10839@panix.com> On Mon, Sep 22, 2003, amk@amk.ca wrote: > > Yes, the indecision problem is at the root of it all. I hope > the PWC group can come up with some way to make such decisions. My take is that it's not the job of the PWC to drive things. So far, I haven't seen consensus on even the base goals: some people seem to think we need a glitzy web site to attract people to Python where others want an upgraded website that focuses on usability first. I don't think these goals are *necessarily* in conflict, but I also cringe every time I see someone arguing for ridding the home page of links to e.g. the Dev Guide. I think it would be easier for me to push the PWC to make a decision if there were at least a clear description of the options for goals. What I suggest is that people write up short (100-200 words) descriptions of their web site vision (maybe on a Wiki?). People who see a lot of commonality can then group together to come up with a single vision to sign jointly. (Maybe sending the visions to marketing-python to see if anyone else wants to sign on.) Then each group submits its vision and signatories to the PWC. How does this sound? -- Aahz (aahz@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/ "It is easier to optimize correct code than to correct optimized code." --Bill Harlan From sholden at holdenweb.com Tue Sep 23 18:13:50 2003 From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden) Date: Tue Sep 23 18:16:59 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] What are the goals? In-Reply-To: <20030923220329.GA10839@panix.com> Message-ID: > -----Original Message----- > From: pydotorg-redesign-bounces@python.org > [mailto:pydotorg-redesign-bounces@python.org]On Behalf Of Aahz > Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2003 6:04 PM > To: pydotorg-redesign@python.org > Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] What are the goals? > > > On Mon, Sep 22, 2003, amk@amk.ca wrote: > > > > Yes, the indecision problem is at the root of it all. I hope > > the PWC group can come up with some way to make such decisions. > > My take is that it's not the job of the PWC to drive things. > So far, I > haven't seen consensus on even the base goals: some people > seem to think > we need a glitzy web site to attract people to Python where > others want > an upgraded website that focuses on usability first. > > I don't think these goals are *necessarily* in conflict, but I also > cringe every time I see someone arguing for ridding the home page of > links to e.g. the Dev Guide. I think it would be easier for > me to push > the PWC to make a decision if there were at least a clear > description of > the options for goals. > > What I suggest is that people write up short (100-200 words) > descriptions > of their web site vision (maybe on a Wiki?). People who see a lot of > commonality can then group together to come up with a single vision to > sign jointly. (Maybe sending the visions to marketing-python > to see if > anyone else wants to sign on.) Then each group submits its vision and > signatories to the PWC. > > How does this sound? Like nothing will continue to happen. We don't need visions, we need direction, hence my (attempted) focus on goals. Since my suggestions that we set goals was pretty much ignored, I'll assume that those with more energy than I wish to continue the current fruitless debate while AMK hacks away at the overgrowth. regards -- Steve Holden http://www.holdenweb.com/ Python Web Programming http://pydish.holdenweb.com/pwp/ Interview with GvR August 14, 2003 http://www.onlamp.com/python/ From aahz at pythoncraft.com Tue Sep 23 20:12:51 2003 From: aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) Date: Tue Sep 23 20:12:55 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] What are the goals? In-Reply-To: References: <20030923220329.GA10839@panix.com> Message-ID: <20030924001251.GA28288@panix.com> On Tue, Sep 23, 2003, Steve Holden wrote: > > Like nothing will continue to happen. We don't need visions, we need > direction, hence my (attempted) focus on goals. How do you suggest we set goals, then? -- Aahz (aahz@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/ "It is easier to optimize correct code than to correct optimized code." --Bill Harlan From python at dylanreinhardt.com Tue Sep 23 21:29:42 2003 From: python at dylanreinhardt.com (Dylan Reinhardt) Date: Tue Sep 23 21:30:51 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] What are the goals? In-Reply-To: <20030924001251.GA28288@panix.com> References: <20030923220329.GA10839@panix.com> <20030924001251.GA28288@panix.com> Message-ID: <1064366982.1414.243.camel@ida.dylanreinhardt.com> On Tue, 2003-09-23 at 17:12, Aahz wrote: > On Tue, Sep 23, 2003, Steve Holden wrote: > > > > Like nothing will continue to happen. We don't need visions, we need > > direction, hence my (attempted) focus on goals. > > How do you suggest we set goals, then? Jumping in here, our essential problem is we *lack* the ability to set goals. As a consequence, we discuss goals in an decision-making vacuum, which remains amusing for only a few weeks at a time. The way things stand, interested parties are encouraged to gather what information they can and put together a proposal that is evaluated in a PEP-like process. That sounds nice, but doesn't show very much awareness of how much effort goes into a non-trivial design proposal. Precious few pieces of effective communications are developed by committee in an open, collaborative process. A small group (1-4 people) is going to need to go off and create something. This is only likely to happen if the powers that be are *involved* and demonstrate a high degree of predisposition toward taking this group's output seriously. To move forward, we will have to identify and/or delegate decision-making authority. That authority will need to be *involved* in the redesign process. I don't see a lot of other ways to succeed. FWIW, Dylan From amk at amk.ca Tue Sep 23 21:41:16 2003 From: amk at amk.ca (amk@amk.ca) Date: Tue Sep 23 21:41:23 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] What are the goals? In-Reply-To: <20030924001251.GA28288@panix.com> References: <20030923220329.GA10839@panix.com> <20030924001251.GA28288@panix.com> Message-ID: <20030924014116.GA22970@rogue.amk.ca> On Tue, Sep 23, 2003 at 08:12:51PM -0400, Aahz wrote: > How do you suggest we set goals, then? I think the PWC, as the representatives chosen by the PSF, has to do it. The five-person committee can converge more quickly on decisions than a random group of people, some vocal and some not, on a mailing list. Now, I'm not sure what decisions the PWC needs to make. Off the top of my head: 1) There seems to be general agreement a more marketing-savvy site is needed. Is this site going to be www.python.org? If yes, is there a separate developer-oriented site at dev.python.org or python-dev.org? Do we want a family of subsites (apps.python.org, database., etc.) If no, where is this marketing site going to be? go-python.org, use.python.org, etc.? 2) What tack should this marketing site take? The marketing-python list has discussed a zillion possible approaches: "faster programming", "happier programming staff", "solve your problems", "an open source Java {or VB} replacement". Choose an angle or combination of angles. Should it emphasize success stories, the Python community, the open source aspect, the readable pseudocode aspect. 3) What are the constraints on a new design: appearance, technologies (can it use CSS, DHTML, Flash?). 3.5) Is a CMS wanted? Do we want the community to be able to post things, or should it stay centralized? 4) Designers such as Tim Parkin need a way to get specific feedback. They can request feedback from the entire list, but that wind blows every which way. The committee needs to be able to decide "Here's what's good and what's not", and do so reasonably quickly. Those are some possible starting points, anyway. --amk From aahz at pythoncraft.com Wed Sep 24 01:10:18 2003 From: aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) Date: Wed Sep 24 01:10:21 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] What are the goals? In-Reply-To: <1064366982.1414.243.camel@ida.dylanreinhardt.com> References: <20030923220329.GA10839@panix.com> <20030924001251.GA28288@panix.com> <1064366982.1414.243.camel@ida.dylanreinhardt.com> Message-ID: <20030924051018.GB5731@panix.com> On Tue, Sep 23, 2003, Dylan Reinhardt wrote: > On Tue, 2003-09-23 at 17:12, Aahz wrote: >> On Tue, Sep 23, 2003, Steve Holden wrote: >>> >>> Like nothing will continue to happen. We don't need visions, we need >>> direction, hence my (attempted) focus on goals. >> >> How do you suggest we set goals, then? > > Jumping in here, our essential problem is we *lack* the ability to set > goals. As a consequence, we discuss goals in an decision-making vacuum, > which remains amusing for only a few weeks at a time. There's a difference IMO between discussing goals versus clearly articulating sets of suggested goals then presenting them to a decision-making body. The latter is what I'm suggesting that subgroups of this list do. From my POV, a completely articulated -- but summarized -- set of goals equates to "vision statement". Nevertheless, I've gone ahead and forwarded AMK's message to the PWC, asking whether anyone there thinks that the PWC should be a driver. > The way things stand, interested parties are encouraged to gather what > information they can and put together a proposal that is evaluated in a > PEP-like process. That sounds nice, but doesn't show very much > awareness of how much effort goes into a non-trivial design proposal. That's exactly what I'm trying to get around. Once we have a set of approved design goals, it should be easier both to create designs and to evaluate proposed designs. > Precious few pieces of effective communications are developed by > committee in an open, collaborative process. A small group (1-4 people) > is going to need to go off and create something. This is only likely to > happen if the powers that be are *involved* and demonstrate a high > degree of predisposition toward taking this group's output seriously. > > To move forward, we will have to identify and/or delegate > decision-making authority. That authority will need to be *involved* in > the redesign process. I don't see a lot of other ways to succeed. While I don't disagree with you, I think that there are a lot of different ways to be involved. -- Aahz (aahz@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/ "It is easier to optimize correct code than to correct optimized code." --Bill Harlan From sholden at holdenweb.com Wed Sep 24 05:32:15 2003 From: sholden at holdenweb.com (Steve Holden) Date: Wed Sep 24 05:35:29 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] What are the goals? In-Reply-To: <20030924051018.GB5731@panix.com> Message-ID: [Aahz] > On Tue, Sep 23, 2003, Dylan Reinhardt wrote: > > On Tue, 2003-09-23 at 17:12, Aahz wrote: > >> On Tue, Sep 23, 2003, Steve Holden wrote: > >>> > >>> Like nothing will continue to happen. We don't need > visions, we need > >>> direction, hence my (attempted) focus on goals. > >> > >> How do you suggest we set goals, then? > > > > Jumping in here, our essential problem is we *lack* the > ability to set > > goals. As a consequence, we discuss goals in an > decision-making vacuum, > > which remains amusing for only a few weeks at a time. > > There's a difference IMO between discussing goals versus clearly > articulating sets of suggested goals then presenting them to a > decision-making body. The latter is what I'm suggesting that > subgroups > of this list do. From my POV, a completely articulated -- but > summarized -- set of goals equates to "vision statement". > Unfortunately, as I suspect my "goal setting" email proved, if there's no clear feedback from the PWC the discussions on goals will be as fruitless as the discussions on redesign. I think we have a different idea of a "vision statement", though. A vision statement is something like "to be the primary source of information about the use and development of the Python language", which is neither simple nor measurable (without a research project), may or may not be achievable and realistic, and definitely doesn't include a timescale. SO it has few of the characteristics of a goal, or a set of goals. > Nevertheless, I've gone ahead and forwarded AMK's message to the PWC, > asking whether anyone there thinks that the PWC should be a driver. > If the PWC won't set goals the redesign "project" is probably just going to carry on spinning its wheels. > > The way things stand, interested parties are encouraged to > gather what > > information they can and put together a proposal that is > evaluated in a > > PEP-like process. That sounds nice, but doesn't show very much > > awareness of how much effort goes into a non-trivial design > proposal. > > That's exactly what I'm trying to get around. Once we have a set of > approved design goals, it should be easier both to create > designs and to > evaluate proposed designs. > Yes! Yes! Goals! Measurability! > > Precious few pieces of effective communications are developed by > > committee in an open, collaborative process. A small group > (1-4 people) > > is going to need to go off and create something. This is > only likely to > > happen if the powers that be are *involved* and demonstrate a high > > degree of predisposition toward taking this group's output > seriously. > > > > To move forward, we will have to identify and/or delegate > > decision-making authority. That authority will need to be > *involved* in > > the redesign process. I don't see a lot of other ways to succeed. > > While I don't disagree with you, I think that there are a lot of > different ways to be involved. Indeed there are, and I respect all the individuals involved in this effort. Together they could be an incredibly powerful team. I just want to see a clear sense of direction and some goals so that I can decide whether I have the skills and knowledge to help the group achieve what it wants to. So far we don't appear to have got beyond the "motherhood and apple pie" stage, and while a lot of effort has gone into certain aspects of the design there hasn't been any clear statement of either the vision for the site or the goals we have to meet to achieve that vision. regards -- Steve Holden http://www.holdenweb.com/ Python Web Programming http://pydish.holdenweb.com/pwp/ Interview with GvR August 14, 2003 http://www.onlamp.com/python/ From jeremy at zope.com Wed Sep 24 14:29:01 2003 From: jeremy at zope.com (Jeremy Hylton) Date: Wed Sep 24 20:09:06 2003 Subject: [marketing-python] RE: [Pydotorg-redesign] how to search the site In-Reply-To: <200309231910.h8NJACh9002625@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> References: <200309170616.h8H6Gsq3026113@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> <2A9B6B81-E90D-11D7-9B91-0050E405C35A@panix.com> <16240.36449.504177.16139@grendel.zope.com> <200309231910.h8NJACh9002625@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> Message-ID: <1064428140.2072.136.camel@localhost.localdomain> On Tue, 2003-09-23 at 15:10, Laura Creighton wrote: > If you want the PyPI database to grow, you need to put a pointer to the > index out there which tells people how to make such a package. I > still am unsure how, and there are lots of us in that boat. I hope this helps: http://www.python.org/~jeremy/weblog/030924.html Jeremy From aahz at pythoncraft.com Thu Sep 25 20:19:03 2003 From: aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) Date: Thu Sep 25 20:19:06 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] What are the goals? In-Reply-To: References: <20030924051018.GB5731@panix.com> Message-ID: <20030926001902.GA8005@panix.com> On Wed, Sep 24, 2003, Steve Holden wrote: > > Unfortunately, as I suspect my "goal setting" email proved, if there's > no clear feedback from the PWC the discussions on goals will be as > fruitless as the discussions on redesign. I think we have a different > idea of a "vision statement", though. Probably. But I think that while it's fair to expect the PWC to give feedback on a packaged set of goals, I'd also suggest that it's realistic not to expect the PWC to drive the creation of goals. I'm suggesting that instead of trying to get consensus on this list, each person who wants to create a set of goals will get a hearing from the PWC. > So far we don't appear to have got beyond the "motherhood and apple > pie" stage, and while a lot of effort has gone into certain aspects of > the design there hasn't been any clear statement of either the vision > for the site or the goals we have to meet to achieve that vision. And so far, I haven't seen even a single person step up to suggest a coherent set of goals. I'm not sure why you think the PWC would have more time/energy than the group here. It's difficult to create good goals, but at this point it's more useful than anything else we can do. Here. I'll go ahead and throw something out that people can use to agree or argue with -- but do it *ONLY* as a packaged set. Don't bother arguing with me about individual points: * www.python.org is the only central web site for Python; there are no separate domains for different pieces. * The front page should cater to all the expected primary users: Python newbies, management, and existing developers. * All important information should be available within one or two clicks off the main page. * The web site must be accessible and readable through Lynx and other low-end browsers, as well as with JavaScript disabled. The site may have optional advanced features that make it more attractive in high-end browsers. * No page other than explicitly labeled download or marketing pages should take more than thirty seconds to load over a 28.8 modem: images, stylesheets, and all. This isn't particularly good, but it took me less than ten minutes. It also focuses on the user experience; it says nothing about how the site is maintained. Let's keep that as a separate discussion. -- Aahz (aahz@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/ "It is easier to optimize correct code than to correct optimized code." --Bill Harlan From tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com Fri Sep 26 08:20:29 2003 From: tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com (Tim Parkin) Date: Fri Sep 26 08:20:55 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] What are the goals? In-Reply-To: <20030926001902.GA8005@panix.com> Message-ID: <0c3e01c38428$9a056930$0a00a8c0@JASPER> >This isn't particularly good, but it took me less than ten minutes. It >also focuses on the user experience; it says nothing about how the site >is maintained. Let's keep that as a separate discussion. I think we have to take best practices for granted unless there is a situation where a best practice is in conflict with another best practice. It is at these pointes we *NEED* feedback. Case in point: full support for Netscape vs. best practices in w3c wai accessibility and standards/semantic compliance. In this I raised it as a conflict and looked for feedback but received very little and had to assume that support for Netscape was less important than good accessibility and standards/semantic compliance. Other points that have already been stated as part of the initial pycon brief, further discussion through irc or on the mailing list itself are shown here : . make it look more "professional". . make the site more obvious to use, particularly for beginners. . prioritise links to download and documentation . introduce an obvious site search facility . reduce the clutter in commercial exits . head towards valid markup . promoting Python, leverage evangelism . use existing metrics to focus improvements . simplify the homepage . documentation types confusing . simple search on home page . Should bear in mind that mirroring is important . No 3d rotating head of Guido with glowing lights around him (Kevin Altiss) . All sections should adhere to new design templates (Kevin Altiss) . a google site search on python.org is very ineffective right now (Kevin Altiss) . make it work in lynx (Aahz) . we want blue (Aahz) . reduce the maintenance hassles for the webmasters (Kevin Altiss) . top global nav and left hand secondary nav (Aahz) . front page under 60k (Aahz) . breadcrumb trail across the site (Aahz) . Steve Krug - Don't Make Me Think (Guido Van Rossum) . No flash, No dark backgrounds (Guido Van Rossum) . Don't design by committee (Guido Van Rossum) . Browsing then searching then sitemap (Guido Van Rossum) . home page should have a lot more "sell" with convenient links to the developer resources (Kevin Altiss) . there should not be two sites. Python.org is *the* homepage (Aahz) Generally these break down into four overall core requirements . Usability / Clarity . Professional Design . Both Marketing / Informational Purposes . Best Practices in Web Development On top of this, there is the marketing document at : http://wingide.com/pub/misc/pymarket/py-market-plan-0.0.6.rst Most of these have been available for at least a month. General best practices have been taken for granted. Other than the previously stated PWC/PSF guidelines, here's a list of general best working practices that I typically work to and the books that go into some more detail about them. * Page should have a time to first click of less than 8 second on an average connection. (This actually means the time until you can usefully use the navigation or content. This affects sites that use graphics as navigational elements. In these site, all of the headers graphics are loading before it gets around to loading the menu item graphics. This typically means the time to first click is similar to the time to download the whole page. If a page uses html text as the menu items, the page will be usable before even the whole html has loaded. In this way the page may be usable before even half of all page elements are downloaded. This increases the 'perceived' speed of a site.) * All pages should answer : Where am I? Where do I go Next? How do I get back? * A preferred vocabulary should be created that is widely understood and cannot be confused * The site should sit comfortably in the perceived market space. * Pictures of people are widely recognized as engaging more than any other method, use if there is a choice. * Don't hijack the browser. Leave it alone. Make it do what people expect. * Recognise that most people will be deep linking into the site * Scrolling should only be needed when a user finds the page they want. * Pages should print clearly * The site content should be optimised to benefit accurate search indexing These are only some of the best practices that are not widely recognised. If we were to make a list of all of the practices we would be writing a book and there are already enough books out there. I have copied and pasted most of this content directly from the web proposal that's currently being written that will complement the marketing document mentioned previously. A lot of extra information comes from developing best practise guidelines for British Airways' Internet strategy, a document I was co-author of. Books for Best Practice ----------------------- * "Building Accessible Website" - Clark * "Don't Make Me Think" - Krug * "Homepage Usability" - Nielsen & Tahir * "Designing Web Usability" - Nielsen * "Practical Information Architecture" - Reis * "Information Architecture" - Wadtke * "Top 100 Internet Mistakes" - Peter Burns * "CSS - Separating Content From Presentation" - Briggs, Champeon, Costello, Paterson * "Collaborative Web Development" - Brudman * "WWW Layout" - Glenwright * "WWW Type" - Pring * "Reality Chec"k - Wieners & Prescovitz * "Hotwired Style" - Veen * "Secrets of Successful Websites" - Siegel * "Click Here" - Pirouz * "Accessible Websites" - Thatcher, Bohman, et al * "Web Metrics" - Sterne * "Submit Now" - Chak * "Designing with Web Standards" - Zeldman * "Designing CSS Pages" - Schmidt * "Usability" - Braun, Gadney, et al * "Usability for the Web" - Brinck, Gergle, Wood * "Eric Meyer on CSS" - Meyer * "Customer Centred Design" - Hyatt http://pollenation.net/assets/public/python-guideline-books.jpg What I, personally, believe the PWC should be doing is dictating a framework within which people who are willing to contribute can work, if this can't be achieved then at least a date by which a decision will be made should be proposed and the process by which a choice will be made. As it is, it shouldn't take a great deal of time or coordination to get to 'yes we like the look of that' or 'no, perhaps it should be more...'. As it is there has been no feedback. We can only assume from this that, because all the work has been available for quite some time, there is approval and a desire for us to carry on. If there was a negative opinion or no wish to use what has been created then why would there be no communication of that? As the situation lies, the design/marketing/redesign groups have had numerous discussions and reached a consensus about what is felt to be the right direction. This is now being documented. I'm not sure what the advantage of having multiple groups doing the same thing is unless there is dissent as to the direction that should be taken. I haven't noticed any constructive dissent so assume we have a certain amount of consensus. I am continuing to develop the proposal, of which the material presented is only a fraction. Constructively your, Tim Parkin From todd at slack.net Fri Sep 26 09:31:30 2003 From: todd at slack.net (Todd Grimason) Date: Fri Sep 26 09:31:30 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] What are the goals? In-Reply-To: <0c3e01c38428$9a056930$0a00a8c0@JASPER>; from tim.parkin@pollenationinternet.com on Fri, Sep 26, 2003 at 01:20:29PM +0100 References: <20030926001902.GA8005@panix.com> <0c3e01c38428$9a056930$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Message-ID: <20030926093130.A18012@crank.slack.net> * Tim Parkin [2003-09-26 08:20]: > practice. It is at these pointes we *NEED* feedback. Case in point: full > support for Netscape vs. best practices in w3c wai accessibility and > standards/semantic compliance. In this I raised it as a conflict and > looked for feedback but received very little and had to assume that > support for Netscape was less important than good accessibility and As a +1 for valid CSS/XHTML, Redhat's (admittedly lowkey/simple) new site for "Fedora" uses CSS and no tables. Other points in favor of this approach are meeting reqs such as: - low bandwidth: this type of markup *greatly* reduces byte counts - accessible: to nearly every "browser"-type device in existence - even Netscape 4 - it's just not purty in NS4 or earlier. Works great in mobile phones even! (for looking up functions on the site from a pub?) - IE gets most of it right, so the all-important "manager-types" can use the site with no problems. Geekier users will likely be using something besides NS4, so we're covered there (Konqueror, Mozilla, Opera, Lynx(!), Safari, etc.) - minimizes work: clean use of CSS (separation of content/style) helps reduce maintenance work - visibility: well-known sites are starting to convert, such as previously mentioned Redhat site, ESPN, Wired News, etc. Each time they do, they get a fair bit of press in the "design/standards world"; this is a good group to attract new users from as well. - future maintainability: won't have to do this in a year when full CSS/XHTML is even more widespread and beneficial - 100s more reasons all documented over the web and the excellent booklist Tim posted... -- ___________________________ toddgrimason*todd@slack.net From matt at pollenation.net Fri Sep 26 11:56:19 2003 From: matt at pollenation.net (Matt Goodall) Date: Fri Sep 26 11:56:35 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] An interesting comment ... Message-ID: <3F7461A3.9000404@pollenation.net> Just saw this in python-list ;-). Cheers, Matt -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: PEPs link gone from the Python homepage? Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 17:18:27 +0200 From: Daniel Dittmar Organization: SAP AG To: python-list@python.org Newsgroups: comp.lang.python References: David Abrahams wrote: > Since a significant part of Python is only documented in PEPs, I am > disappointed to see that they can't be easily found. Where are they? Don't bother with site navigation, google "pep site:python.org". Daniel -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list -- Matt Goodall, Pollenation Internet Ltd w: http://www.pollenation.net e: matt@pollenation.net From aahz at pythoncraft.com Mon Sep 29 18:58:15 2003 From: aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) Date: Mon Sep 29 18:58:18 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] What are the goals? In-Reply-To: <0c3e01c38428$9a056930$0a00a8c0@JASPER> References: <20030926001902.GA8005@panix.com> <0c3e01c38428$9a056930$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Message-ID: <20030929225815.GC6728@panix.com> [This is far too long a message for me to respond to in any substantive way, so I'm just going to take a few potshots at points that I think are important.] On Fri, Sep 26, 2003, Tim Parkin wrote: > > I think we have to take best practices for granted unless there is a > situation where a best practice is in conflict with another best > practice. It is at these pointes we *NEED* feedback. Case in point: full > support for Netscape vs. best practices in w3c wai accessibility and > standards/semantic compliance. In this I raised it as a conflict and > looked for feedback but received very little and had to assume that > support for Netscape was less important than good accessibility and > standards/semantic compliance. So far, everyone has said that it's possible to have something readable in Netscape, even if it doesn't look particularly good, so I don't see what the issue is. > Generally these break down into four overall core requirements > > . Usability / Clarity > . Professional Design > . Both Marketing / Informational Purposes > . Best Practices in Web Development Right. But I don't know how much agreement there is in achieving those requirements. > On top of this, there is the marketing document at : > > http://wingide.com/pub/misc/pymarket/py-market-plan-0.0.6.rst That's a long document that's difficult to wade through, not to mention a lack of clarity about how relevant it is to the website redesign. > As it is, it shouldn't take a great deal of time or coordination to get > to 'yes we like the look of that' or 'no, perhaps it should be more...'. > As it is there has been no feedback. We can only assume from this that, > because all the work has been available for quite some time, there is > approval and a desire for us to carry on. If there was a negative > opinion or no wish to use what has been created then why would there be > no communication of that? Speaking strictly for myself, one problem is that a key design proposal (yours) has not been available as an HTML page. I'm not prepared to spend time looking at it until either most other people have approved it or it's available in HTML. I'm just not going to download pictures of an evolving design. > As the situation lies, the design/marketing/redesign groups have had > numerous discussions and reached a consensus about what is felt to be > the right direction. This is now being documented. I'm not sure what the > advantage of having multiple groups doing the same thing is unless there > is dissent as to the direction that should be taken. I haven't noticed > any constructive dissent so assume we have a certain amount of > consensus. Some, yes. But it's not clear how much consensus. And the three groups (marketing, website redesign, and logo) have different emphases and different groups of people. -- Aahz (aahz@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/ "It is easier to optimize correct code than to correct optimized code." --Bill Harlan From amk at amk.ca Mon Sep 29 20:54:47 2003 From: amk at amk.ca (A.M. Kuchling) Date: Mon Sep 29 20:54:36 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] What are the goals? In-Reply-To: <20030929225815.GC6728@panix.com> Message-ID: On Monday, September 29, 2003, at 06:58 PM, Aahz wrote: > So far, everyone has said that it's possible to have something readable > in Netscape, even if it doesn't look particularly good, so I don't see > what the issue is. Tim is doubtless worried that the mandate will be for the site to look identical in both NS4 and current Mozilla/IE/Safari/whatever. Netscape 4's CSS implementation is very buggy, with bugs ranging from rendering glitches to browser segfaults. * If it doesn't matter if NS4 is unreadable or crashes, the designer can just use CSS and let the chips fall. Easy. * If the site has to be readable in NS4 but getting a different, less attractive, presentation doesn't matter, the designer can just hide or simplify the CSS stylesheet served to Netscape4 using Apache directives or some CSS tricks. * If the site has to look identical in both NS4 and Mozilla, it's very difficult; you end up doubling the work required, or you implement for NS4 and avoid using modern CSS. You seem to be OK with the middle option. --amk From aahz at pythoncraft.com Mon Sep 29 22:10:15 2003 From: aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) Date: Mon Sep 29 22:10:18 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] What are the goals? In-Reply-To: References: <20030929225815.GC6728@panix.com> Message-ID: <20030930021015.GA4826@panix.com> On Mon, Sep 29, 2003, A. M. Kuchling wrote: > > Tim is doubtless worried that the mandate will be for the site to look > identical in both NS4 and current Mozilla/IE/Safari/whatever. That's ridiculous. From my POV, NS4 is simply one of a long line of non-mainstream browsers that must be supported (Lynx, Links, Internet appliances, various cell phone and PDA browsers). There's no way we can mandate an idential look across all these platforms, particularly when you start considering that 800x600 vs 1280x1024 might as well be different platforms. > * If it doesn't matter if NS4 is unreadable or crashes, the designer > can just use CSS > and let the chips fall. Easy. That is not an option. > * If the site has to be readable in NS4 but getting a different, less > attractive, presentation > doesn't matter, the designer can just hide or simplify the CSS > stylesheet served > to Netscape4 using Apache directives or some CSS tricks. That's the way to go. > * If the site has to look identical in both NS4 and Mozilla, it's very > difficult; you end up > doubling the work required, or you implement for NS4 and avoid using > modern CSS. Well, I'm not opposed to the idea of ditching CSS. ;-) (You figure out how much winking that is.) > You seem to be OK with the middle option. Absolutely. No, I'm not just okay, that's a requirement. -- Aahz (aahz@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/ "It is easier to optimize correct code than to correct optimized code." --Bill Harlan From todd at slack.net Mon Sep 29 22:36:36 2003 From: todd at slack.net (Todd Grimason) Date: Mon Sep 29 22:36:36 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] What are the goals? -> CSS/XHTML In-Reply-To: <20030930021015.GA4826@panix.com>; from aahz@pythoncraft.com on Mon, Sep 29, 2003 at 10:10:15PM -0400 References: <20030929225815.GC6728@panix.com> <20030930021015.GA4826@panix.com> Message-ID: <20030929223636.C17478@crank.slack.net> * Aahz [2003-09-29 22:10]: > On Mon, Sep 29, 2003, A. M. Kuchling wrote: > > > > Tim is doubtless worried that the mandate will be for the site to look > > identical in both NS4 and current Mozilla/IE/Safari/whatever. > > That's ridiculous. From my POV, NS4 is simply one of a long line of > non-mainstream browsers that must be supported (Lynx, Links, Internet > appliances, various cell phone and PDA browsers). There's no way we can > mandate an idential look across all these platforms, particularly when > you start considering that 800x600 vs 1280x1024 might as well be > different platforms. It is ridiculous, but you'd be (shocked|amazed|disappointed|&c) by how many clients still demand it. Thankfully that number is slowly declining now, but it has been (a very painful) standard requirement from clients for years now. Compliant CSS/XHTML will guarantee legibility on all clients, and nice presentation on the majority of clients. Also reduced bandwidth and easier maintenance. It appears an agreement has been reached!(?) -- ___________________________ toddgrimason*todd@slack.net From tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com Tue Sep 30 06:11:59 2003 From: tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com (Tim Parkin) Date: Tue Sep 30 06:12:15 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] What are the goals? In-Reply-To: <20030929225815.GC6728@panix.com> Message-ID: <01f701c3873b$5069b130$0a00a8c0@JASPER> >So far, everyone has said that it's possible to have something readable >in Netscape, even if it doesn't look particularly good, so I don't see >what the issue is. Only Simon Willison and Myself have said this, the only other consensus was that the number of netscape 4 visitors was 1.17%. Unless the issue was resolved elsewhere. The issue is that a web design CAN be built in XHTML/CSS for netscape 4.x but is substantially more work and sacrifices a lot of the advantages of CSS. Some people see this as important just as Todd says. I'm glad that we agree it's a waste of time. >(re marketing document) That's a long document > that's difficult to wade through, not to mention > a lack of clarity about how relevant it is to the > website redesign. I presume all of it is relevant if the website is to be any sort of marketing tool. I've used the whole document in the process of developing a site architecture/visual design. >Speaking strictly for myself, one problem is that a key design proposal >(yours) has not been available as an HTML page. I'm not prepared to >spend time looking at it until either most other people have approved it >or it's available in HTML. I'm just not going to download pictures of >an evolving design. Why not? This is how most design processes go. I hope the PWC can agree it would be an incredible waste of time if I were to develop the site in HTML only for them to say "I don't like the design, can you change it" which would probably mean recreating a whole load of HTML. I do have a full time job aswell (actually running a company which is probably more like 5 full time jobs). If the visual design is irrelevant to you then I'm happy to create a text only version that reflects the information architecture and the way the document design would degrade in lynx. I really appreciate that you are the one of the only PWC representatives supplying feedback and I hope you don't mind me speaking frankly. If the visual design is relevant and yet the effort can't be found to assess a single image then I'm sorry to say I'm a ittle dissapointed, especially considering the amount of work that has been put in by myself and other parties. I wasn't going to build the HTML without any further mandate from the PWC/PSF but as it looks like this is unlikely to happen, I will carry on regardless under the presumption That; the mailing lists are high enough profile that people would have objected had they disliked what was available. It should be remembered that the current design proposal was originally prototyped in HTML to ensure the design could be achieved and the results acceptable and this has been available on the redesign wiki for quite a while. I'm not sure how obvious this had been made so. Please note that little effort has been made regarding cross browser compatibility or that the results are optimised for lynx however as the design is semantic HTML it should render fairly well. http://www.pollenation.net/assets/public/index_about.html This demonstrates how the menu, the breadcrumb trail and the semantic content would appear. Although this doesn't indicate the content or the information architecture. If a mock up of the lynx version of the site would be beneficial, this would be realistic to achieve in a short period of time. If this is the case then I'll proceed with this in order to demonstrate the proposal. If not then I'll continue under the previous assumption. >> . Usability / Clarity >> . Professional Design >> . Both Marketing / Informational Purposes >> . Best Practices in Web Development > > Right. But I don't know how much agreement > there is in achieving those requirements. Does this mean the PSF, having proposed these requirements, can't agree whether it's a) worth achieving. Or b) possible to achieve. I'm not sure I understand. Is it that all of the requirements aren't in one place? That's one of the reasons I had compiled all of the statements by PSF/PWC members togather. If any one has any objections to the design requirements stated in the previous post then raise them so they can be discussed. Otherwise, tacit approval would seems to have been reached. I'm not trying to be difficult :-) , all I want is that there is a continuing movement forward and that effort is not going to waste when a little feedback could stop it. Verbosely... Tim From lac at strakt.com Tue Sep 30 07:28:00 2003 From: lac at strakt.com (Laura Creighton) Date: Tue Sep 30 07:28:05 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] What are the goals? In-Reply-To: Message from "Tim Parkin" of "Tue, 30 Sep 2003 11:11:59 BST." <01f701c3873b$5069b130$0a00a8c0@JASPER> References: <01f701c3873b$5069b130$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Message-ID: <200309301128.h8UBS0h9013012@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> I have a shorter idea. I have no idea who it is that has approval of this -- PWC, PSF -- who the people are. I suggest that somebody who knows posts the list of people here. Then, we give them each by the end of the week to look at the current design, and say, 'I like the current design and think further work would not be wasted' -- or if they cannot stand by that statement, say something else. Laura From fdrake at acm.org Tue Sep 30 08:53:45 2003 From: fdrake at acm.org (Fred L. Drake, Jr.) Date: Tue Sep 30 08:53:53 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] What are the goals? In-Reply-To: <200309301128.h8UBS0h9013012@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> References: <01f701c3873b$5069b130$0a00a8c0@JASPER> <200309301128.h8UBS0h9013012@ratthing-b246.strakt.com> Message-ID: <16249.31961.579474.108605@grendel.zope.com> Laura Creighton writes: > I have no idea who it is that has approval of this -- PWC, PSF -- who > the people are. The PWC decides what happens with the site, in the end. > I suggest that somebody who knows posts the list of people here. I don't have the list handy (sorry), but I'm on it. > Then, we give them each by the end of the week to look at the current > design, and say, 'I like the current design and think further work > would not be wasted' -- or if they cannot stand by that statement, > say something else. If by current design, you mean what's on www.python.org now: The current design doesn't sicken me, but it could stand a *lot* of improvement. The stuff I've seen from Tim Parkin looks quite promising, and I regret that I've not been able to be more responsive to his inquiries. I definately intend to take some time to look further into it, and I appreciate the efforts everyone has made to work this out. Now, on the related issue of site goals, I'm more ambivalent: The site should be easier to use for newbies (and old-timers), but making this a "marketing" or "advocacy" site sounds scary. It's not at all clear to me what the win is in trying to convert the unconverted; they'll convert on their own if they determine it's right for them. As far as the information architecture goes: What's on the site now is pretty messy, and doesn't effectively serve either the goal of making it easy for programmers to find information or for the audiences of marketing hype to get the hype that's fit for them. So it realy needs work. I applaud the efforts Andrew Kuchling has led to make the site easier to navigate (structurally). How's that? ;-) -Fred -- Fred L. Drake, Jr. PythonLabs at Zope Corporation From skip at pobox.com Tue Sep 30 09:27:08 2003 From: skip at pobox.com (Skip Montanaro) Date: Tue Sep 30 09:27:19 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] What are the goals? In-Reply-To: <20030930021015.GA4826@panix.com> References: <20030929225815.GC6728@panix.com> <20030930021015.GA4826@panix.com> Message-ID: <16249.33964.836650.913008@montanaro.dyndns.org> >> * If it doesn't matter if NS4 is unreadable or crashes, the designer >> can just use CSS and let the chips fall. Easy. aahz> That is not an option. Seems like a perfectly valid option to me. A thread here some time ago suggested NS4's share of the python.org hits was just over 1%. At some point, you have to just cut it loose. Lynx is a different matter, not because it necessarily has a larger share of the browser market (it might at this point for all I know), but because it serves a unique segment of the user population, those without access to graphical user interfaces. I suspect most people who use NS4 *could* use something else. It doesn't hurt that it has a vocal supporter either. I've never heard a peep on webmaster from anyone complaining that the Python site doesn't work in NS4. Maybe the people coding the site have been diligent or just lucky. In any case, Netscape 4's warts mean that at some point you have to decide it's not worth the effort. >> * If the site has to be readable in NS4 but getting a different, less >> attractive, presentation doesn't matter, the designer can just hide >> or simplify the CSS stylesheet served to Netscape4 using Apache >> directives or some CSS tricks. aahz> That's the way to go. I'd still argue that NS4 support is not a primary design criterion. If, after all is said and done, you can (easily) tweak the CSS or add a RewriteRule to the Apache config to deliver a different CSS file to Netscape 4 users, that's fine. Just like we don't take pains to support Unicos, Cygwin or OS/2 (someone from the Python community has to pony up some patches) we shouldn't take great pains to support NS4 either. In fact, I like that analogy quite well. Just like Python itself, this is an open source programming project (maybe the CVS repository should be available via anoncvs) being done with limited contributed resources. Like any other open source project, the programmers get to scratch their itches. They aren't obligated to scratch someone else's. >> * If the site has to look identical in both NS4 and Mozilla, it's >> very difficult; you end up doubling the work required, or you >> implement for NS4 and avoid using modern CSS. aahz> Well, I'm not opposed to the idea of ditching CSS. ;-) (You aahz> figure out how much winking that is.) Like it or not, CSS is the future. Skip From roy at panix.com Tue Sep 30 10:04:45 2003 From: roy at panix.com (Roy Smith) Date: Tue Sep 30 10:06:18 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] What are the goals? In-Reply-To: <16249.33964.836650.913008@montanaro.dyndns.org> Message-ID: <0B9A0225-F34F-11D7-9DFD-0050E405C35A@panix.com> On Tuesday, September 30, 2003, at 09:27 AM, Skip Montanaro wrote: > >>> * If it doesn't matter if NS4 is unreadable or crashes, the designer >>> can just use CSS and let the chips fall. Easy. > > aahz> That is not an option. > > Seems like a perfectly valid option to me. A thread here some time ago > suggested NS4's share of the python.org hits was just over 1%. At some > point, you have to just cut it loose. I've stayed out of this for the most part for a while, but I'm with Skip 100% on this. It just doesn't make sense to cater to 1% of the audience, especially when as Skip points out, there's nothing keeping NS4 users from upgrading to something newer. We're also not talking about 1% new adopters of a technology, so there's an expectation that the audience share will grow. We're talking about the hangers-on, with the expectation that it will continue to decline. > Lynx is a different matter, not > because it necessarily has a larger share of the browser market (it > might at > this point for all I know), but because it serves a unique segment of > the > user population, those without access to graphical user interfaces. Again, I'm with Skip. I can't remember the last time I actually used a computer that didn't support some kind of graphical environment, but it's fairly common that I've got a slow network between me and a remote Unix box I'm working on. If I've got to download something from a web site to that remote Unix box, firing up Lynx on the remote box is often the simpliest way to get the job done. If my local box is a Mac or Win box with no X server installed, then Lynx is my only choice if I want to do the download directly to the remote box. There are certainly enough other non-graphical applications (PDA's, web crawlers, browsers for the visually impaired) that the ability to render reasonably on a text-only display has value out of proportion to the raw usage stats. But NS4 is a complete non-starter as far as I'm concerned. > Like it or not, CSS is the future. > Once again, Skip I agree with Skip. I'm not particularly thrilled with CSS, but the fact is it's the standard, it's here to stay, and it's supported in all mainstream browsers. To talk of putting effort into NS4 while ignoring CSS is lunacy (IMHO). On a slightly different thread, I agree with the idea of not doing web page mockups in HTML. In the design stage, you really want to concentrate on the design, not the implementation. The design should drive the coding. If you do your design in HTML, it's too easy to let the coding drive the design. It's the same reason people mock-up GUI's with paint/draw programs instead of coding them. First answer the question, "what do we want?", then worry about "How do we get what we want?" later. From fdrake at acm.org Tue Sep 30 15:39:22 2003 From: fdrake at acm.org (Fred L. Drake, Jr.) Date: Tue Sep 30 15:39:41 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] What are the goals? In-Reply-To: <0B9A0225-F34F-11D7-9DFD-0050E405C35A@panix.com> References: <16249.33964.836650.913008@montanaro.dyndns.org> <0B9A0225-F34F-11D7-9DFD-0050E405C35A@panix.com> Message-ID: <16249.56298.125828.960817@grendel.zope.com> Roy Smith writes: > Again, I'm with Skip. I can't remember the last time I actually used a > computer that didn't support some kind of graphical environment, but > it's fairly common that I've got a slow network between me and a remote > Unix box I'm working on. If I've got to download something from a web I just poked at the current python.org with "links" (different from "lynx", at least in that it happened to be installed on this box), and the site held up fairly well; the organization was still sloppy, but the presentation degraded cleanly and was about as usable it is on the recent versions of Mozilla I'm accustomed to using. That's the kind of behavior I'd like to see on the new design. I'm not concerned with seeing the exact same thing on every browser. I'd like the site to be navigable on NS4, but degraded presentation is quite tolerable. (Heck, it's almost desirable to get NS4 users out of their slump!) If we can do it using a simple stylesheet with an @import to load portions of the style that would break NS4, that seems like the right level of effort. Making a dynamic selection on the server seems like the wrong approach, and doesn't lend itself to mirroring this site; @import takes care of that quite nicely. > > Like it or not, CSS is the future. ... > Once again, Skip I agree with Skip. I'm not particularly thrilled with > CSS, but the fact is it's the standard, it's here to stay, and it's > supported in all mainstream browsers. To talk of putting effort into > NS4 while ignoring CSS is lunacy (IMHO). Whatever the faults of CSS, it's much better than having the style information inline. That's good enough for me. We're not getting beyond it for quite a while. -Fred -- Fred L. Drake, Jr. PythonLabs at Zope Corporation From fdrake at acm.org Tue Sep 30 16:29:07 2003 From: fdrake at acm.org (Fred L. Drake, Jr.) Date: Tue Sep 30 16:29:21 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] What are the goals? In-Reply-To: <01f701c3873b$5069b130$0a00a8c0@JASPER> References: <20030929225815.GC6728@panix.com> <01f701c3873b$5069b130$0a00a8c0@JASPER> Message-ID: <16249.59283.896528.267775@grendel.zope.com> Tim Parkin writes: > The issue is that a web design CAN be built > in XHTML/CSS for netscape 4.x but is substantially > more work and sacrifices a lot of the advantages of CSS. > Some people see this as important just as > Todd says. I'm glad that we agree it's a > waste of time. I stated my position on the NS4 issue earlier today in response to a different email, but I'll summarize here in case anyone missed it: If we need to do any more than the @import trick to support NS4, we're doing too much. If the @import trick is sufficient, we should do it. NS4 is dying off, and we shouldn't stop it. (If we can hurry it along, that would be a Good Thing, even if NS4 users don't know that yet.) -Fred -- Fred L. Drake, Jr. PythonLabs at Zope Corporation From fdrake at acm.org Tue Sep 30 17:33:21 2003 From: fdrake at acm.org (Fred L. Drake, Jr.) Date: Tue Sep 30 17:33:44 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] What are the goals? -> CSS/XHTML In-Reply-To: <20030929223636.C17478@crank.slack.net> References: <20030929225815.GC6728@panix.com> <20030930021015.GA4826@panix.com> <20030929223636.C17478@crank.slack.net> Message-ID: <16249.63137.757911.840110@grendel.zope.com> Todd Grimason writes: > It is ridiculous, but you'd be (shocked|amazed|disappointed|&c) by how > many clients still demand it. Thankfully that number is slowly > declining now, but it has been (a very painful) standard requirement > from clients for years now. Clients have to pay for what they get. When someone pays for NS4 support on python.org, it'll get a higher priority (heck, it might even happen in that case!). -Fred -- Fred L. Drake, Jr. PythonLabs at Zope Corporation From aahz at pythoncraft.com Tue Sep 30 19:08:09 2003 From: aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) Date: Tue Sep 30 19:09:03 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] What are the goals? In-Reply-To: <16249.33964.836650.913008@montanaro.dyndns.org> References: <20030929225815.GC6728@panix.com> <20030930021015.GA4826@panix.com> <16249.33964.836650.913008@montanaro.dyndns.org> Message-ID: <20030930230809.GA24272@panix.com> On Tue, Sep 30, 2003, Skip Montanaro wrote: > > >> * If it doesn't matter if NS4 is unreadable or crashes, the designer > >> can just use CSS and let the chips fall. Easy. > > aahz> That is not an option. > > Seems like a perfectly valid option to me. A thread here some time > ago suggested NS4's share of the python.org hits was just over 1%. > At some point, you have to just cut it loose. Lynx is a different > matter, not because it necessarily has a larger share of the browser > market (it might at this point for all I know), but because it serves > a unique segment of the user population, those without access to > graphical user interfaces. I suspect most people who use NS4 *could* > use something else. It doesn't hurt that it has a vocal supporter > either. I've never heard a peep on webmaster from anyone complaining > that the Python site doesn't work in NS4. Maybe the people coding > the site have been diligent or just lucky. In any case, Netscape 4's > warts mean that at some point you have to decide it's not worth the > effort. Not being familiar with NS4's problems, I have no idea why we don't currently get complaints, but given how much traffic python.org gets, I'd have to say that 1% is a substantial amount of traffic. I will agree that it's not worth going out of the way to ensure that things are readable with NS4, but as soon as a single complaint comes in that our site is unreadable or crashes NS4, I think it should be fixed. That's what I mean by "not an option". > >> * If the site has to be readable in NS4 but getting a different, less > >> attractive, presentation doesn't matter, the designer can just hide > >> or simplify the CSS stylesheet served to Netscape4 using Apache > >> directives or some CSS tricks. > > aahz> That's the way to go. > > I'd still argue that NS4 support is not a primary design criterion. > If, after all is said and done, you can (easily) tweak the CSS or add > a RewriteRule to the Apache config to deliver a different CSS file > to Netscape 4 users, that's fine. Just like we don't take pains to > support Unicos, Cygwin or OS/2 (someone from the Python community has > to pony up some patches) we shouldn't take great pains to support > NS4 either. In fact, I like that analogy quite well. Just like > Python itself, this is an open source programming project (maybe > the CVS repository should be available via anoncvs) being done with > limited contributed resources. Like any other open source project, > the programmers get to scratch their itches. They aren't obligated to > scratch someone else's. Thing is, given how many different browsers there are out there, I think it's fair to say that a bug that shows up in one browser is pretty likely to show up in another. The point isn't whether we're catering to NS4 in specific, the point is the extent to which we code the site to fit the lowest-common denominator. I'd say that extent is pretty high. -- Aahz (aahz@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/ "It is easier to optimize correct code than to correct optimized code." --Bill Harlan From cs1spw at bath.ac.uk Tue Sep 30 19:28:22 2003 From: cs1spw at bath.ac.uk (Simon Willison) Date: Tue Sep 30 19:27:23 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Netscape 4 support summarised Message-ID: <3F7A1196.9060901@bath.ac.uk> The "What are the goals?" thread has been going on about Netscape 4 support for dozens of messages with everyone seems saying exactly the same thing so I hope that by summarising that thread here we can get on to talking about something more interesting. The consensus seems to be that the site should use modern standards and aim to look good in modern browsers; it should just WORK in older browsers such as Netscape 4 (visual appearance not so important), and it shouldn't crash in anything. With that out of the way, we can get on with the far more interesting issues of what content the site should contain and how it should be organised. Cheers, Simon Willison From roy at panix.com Tue Sep 30 20:33:21 2003 From: roy at panix.com (Roy Smith) Date: Tue Sep 30 20:34:58 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] What are the goals? In-Reply-To: <20030930230809.GA24272@panix.com> Message-ID: On Tuesday, September 30, 2003, at 07:08 PM, Aahz wrote: > as soon as a single complaint comes in that our > site is unreadable or crashes NS4, I think it should be fixed. Why? Did we sell somebody a support contract while I wasn't looking? From fdrake at acm.org Tue Sep 30 21:31:26 2003 From: fdrake at acm.org (Fred L. Drake, Jr.) Date: Tue Sep 30 21:31:37 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] What are the goals? In-Reply-To: References: <20030930230809.GA24272@panix.com> Message-ID: <16250.11886.570617.625420@grendel.zope.com> Aahz said: > as soon as a single complaint comes in that our > site is unreadable or crashes NS4, I think it should be fixed. Roy Smith writes: > Why? Did we sell somebody a support contract while I wasn't looking? If there's a complaint that the site "doesn't work" under NS4, then it would be nice if we could make it work for them. That doesn't mean we should break it or degrade it for people using current browsers. It also doesn't mean we need to exert unlimited levels of effort to make it work for NS4. The idea that we should support all once-mainstream browsers doesn't make sense to me; we're not supporting Mosaic now either. The text browsers are more interesting because they offer different functionality than older graphical browsers. The older graphical browsers aren't offering functionality that's different, so present no cause to continue support. After all this discussion about NS4 compatibility, I'm inclined to make a site that can't possibly work with it. ;-) -Fred -- Fred L. Drake, Jr. PythonLabs at Zope Corporation From amk at amk.ca Tue Sep 30 21:50:33 2003 From: amk at amk.ca (A.M. Kuchling) Date: Tue Sep 30 21:50:22 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Re: error on page 'sigs' In-Reply-To: <16249.58127.969584.453150@grendel.zope.com> Message-ID: [Redirecting to pydotorg-redesign; please follow up only to -redesign, not webmaster.] (This discussion is about www.python.org/sigs/ ; Skip was suggesting that it looks strange to have page content below the left-hand sidebar.) On Tuesday, September 30, 2003, at 04:09 PM, Fred L. Drake, Jr. wrote: > I won't argue that; I'm not a big fan of the "continuation" stuff > myself. The issue is probably that lots of people don't use the > "maximize" button on their windows, in which case a narrow table with > lots of text ends up looking weird. If we could trim the table by a column, it might work as a standard page. Could we drop the 'Coordinator' column, or move its content into one of the other columns (say, the first one with the SIG name)? --amk From fdrake at acm.org Tue Sep 30 23:13:22 2003 From: fdrake at acm.org (Fred L. Drake, Jr.) Date: Tue Sep 30 23:13:34 2003 Subject: [Pydotorg-redesign] Re: error on page 'sigs' In-Reply-To: References: <16249.58127.969584.453150@grendel.zope.com> Message-ID: <16250.18002.133943.20353@grendel.zope.com> A.M. Kuchling writes: > If we could trim the table by a column, it might work as a standard > page. Could we drop the 'Coordinator' column, or move its content into > one of the other columns (say, the first one with the SIG name)? My first thought was to drop the coordinator, but... that's the only place the coordinator is listed consistently. We could certainly combine it with either the first or second column. (If we use the second column, we'll likely end up with a narrower table, which seems specifically relevant considering the goal of moving it from the continuation section to the main body section.) -Fred -- Fred L. Drake, Jr. PythonLabs at Zope Corporation