This patch solves a problem that was reported on IRC a couple of times
recently, that some users are not aware of the existence of the wiki.
(I remember a few people were surprised that we had a FAQ.)

I think this comes from the fact that the current homepage "hides" the
useful links at the bottom of it. Here's what I see on my 10 inch laptop
screen:

http://i.imgur.com/ck0js.png

So here is a patch that takes inspiration from the xmonad homepage,
turning darcs's page into two columns so that the useful links are
visible right away in the right column:

http://i.imgur.com/7yeQY.png

I also reduced some explanation text in the right column and removed
the paragraph about the "sizeable team" that seems like a useless
justification to me.

1 patch for repository http://darcs.net:

Thu Aug  5 10:44:39 ART 2010  Guillaume Hoffmann <guillaumh@gmail.com>
  * switch homepage to two-column format ala xmonad.org

Attachments

• switch-homepage-to-two_column-format-ala-xmonad_org.dpatch
• unnamed

Hi,

gh <bugs@darcs.net> writes:
> http://i.imgur.com/7yeQY.png
Looks a lot better to me!

However, I defer to Eric wrt actually pushing the patch.

Yours,
   Petr.

On Thu, Aug 05, 2010 at 13:53:34 +0000, gh wrote:
> This patch solves a problem that was reported on IRC a couple of times
> recently, that some users are not aware of the existence of the wiki.
> (I remember a few people were surprised that we had a FAQ.)

Suggestions on how to fix the FAQ problem?
I think it needs to be more prominent (but that may involve having to
make something less so).

> So here is a patch that takes inspiration from the xmonad homepage,
> turning darcs's page into two columns so that the useful links are
> visible right away in the right column:
> 
> http://i.imgur.com/7yeQY.png

I like it! And good call on reassuring us that it works OK on small
screens.

I've checked that the donations page seems fine with it.

> I also reduced some explanation text in the right column and removed
> the paragraph about the "sizeable team" that seems like a useless
> justification to me.

I particularly appreciate this aspect of your patch. 

Now, I'm going to apply this on the assumption that this is not the sort
of thing we're going to need to deliberate carefully on, but I'm CC'ing
Max as one of our Darcs Marketeers in case he has anything to say.

switch homepage to two-column format ala xmonad.org
---------------------------------------------------
> -    <p>First released in 2003, Darcs is now managed by a sizable team
> -    of programmers. Daily improvements, combined with tight quality
> -    control, culminate in frequent releases.</p>

Rah! Cat that fat!

> -      <li>News from <a href="http://blog.darcs.net">the darcs blog</a>
> +      <li>News from <a href="http://blog.darcs.net">the Darcs blog</a>

This makes me slightly nostalgic for the days when we insisted on
calling it darcs with a small d, but I guess let's be grownups.

> -      <li>The <a href="api-doc/">API documentation</a> (haddock).</li>
> +      <li>The <a href="api-doc/">API documentation</a>.</li>

Yes

> -      href="http://bugs.darcs.net/">bug tracker</a> (roundup).</li>
> +      href="http://bugs.darcs.net/">bug tracker</a>.</li>

and Yes

-- 
Eric Kow <http://www.nltg.brighton.ac.uk/home/Eric.Kow>
For a faster response, please try +44 (0)1273 64 2905.

On Fri, Aug 06, 2010 at 10:11:12 +0100, Eric Kow wrote:
> Now, I'm going to apply this on the assumption that this is not the sort
> of thing we're going to need to deliberate carefully on, but I'm CC'ing
> Max as one of our Darcs Marketeers in case he has anything to say.

Oh, visually speaking, the 'Distributed. Interactive. Smart.' tagline
now looks kind of funny.  Maybe something to do with the spacing?

I wonder if Mark Stosberg would have any advice for us?

-- 
Eric Kow <http://www.nltg.brighton.ac.uk/home/Eric.Kow>
For a faster response, please try +44 (0)1273 64 2905.

This patch bundle (with 1 patches) was just applied to the repository http://darcs.net/.
This message was brought to you by DarcsWatch
http://darcswatch.nomeata.de/repo_http:__darcs.net_.html#bundle-ebf87ebed0277d63fd7aba9e24f5179678b7c2cb

This patch bundle (with 1 patches) was just applied to the repository http://darcs.net/reviewed.
This message was brought to you by DarcsWatch
http://darcswatch.nomeata.de/repo_http:__darcs.net_reviewed.html#bundle-ebf87ebed0277d63fd7aba9e24f5179678b7c2cb