On Wed, 23 May 2001, Christoph Rauch wrote:
Raphael Quinet schrieb:
[...]
> and the systems that generate dynamic contents using horribly long URLs > should also be avoided (see the bad examples from Corel below).
There is always mod_rewrite. This way we can "beautify" the URLs, without disturbing functionality from the developer side.
Yes, of course. But it could be even better if most of the site could be based on static files that are generated once (by applying some templates around the CVS files), so that the pages do not have to be re-generated for every request. This reduces the load on the server, and more importantly this ensures that all pages can be cached, both in the user's browser cache and in large caching proxies.
Most information that is provided on the gimp.org web site is static anyway. It does not need to be updated frequently (except for the news section, but even that is not updated more than once per day) and we do not need dynamic elements. This could change if we introduce a web-based discussion forum or some online polls, but there is already the GUG site for that so this is not needed on the main gimp site. So I think that a system that generates static pages from a set of templates would be well suited to the gimp.org web site. As far as I know, this is already what is done, even if it is done by a collection of dirty hacks.
Of course, this is not a requirement. If there is a system based on dynamic pages that works better and is much easier to maintain, then it is probably better than a system that loads faster but is not easy to maintain. The key thing is that we should be sure that five years from now, there is still somebody who can understand how the thing works and keep the contents up-to-date.
>> Maybe it could be interesting to have a look at the web sites of the >> companies selling similar products... You will see that all of them >> are using simple layouts: they do not try to impress people with nice >> HTML tricks; instead they simply list the features of their products >> and provide some simple documentation. > > Looking at other pages is always a good idea to get HTML and design > ideas from, but the design of the new pages should be *totally > unique*.
Yes and no... The web site should not look like a direct copy of some other site, so in that way is should be unique. But it does not need a totally unique and impressive HTML design. We are not trying to impress people with what can be done in DHTML, we are trying to help those who are using or discovering the Gimp. Of course, it does not harm if the site looks good in addition to providing great contents and useful information about the Gimp, but we should not spend too much efforts on that.
So I do not care if nobody says: "Wow, what a nice design!" when viewing the gimp.org site, but I hope that many will say: "Wow, I did not know that I could do this with the Gimp!" or even: "Wow, this Gimp program seems to be easier to use and more powerful than my current software."
-Raphael
