After 10 years ReactOS website has got new design • Hacker News Board

Re: After 10 years ReactOS website has got new design

#41

Post by progman » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 1:28 PM UTC

merb wrote: post #16

I think when they will get NTFS support thinks will start to go crazy.

ReactOS has made great progress. The last time I tested it I wondered if it could ever be useful. Now it provides an instant desktop with XP compatiblity, variable desktop sizes and flawless network access.

In my opinion XP was the best Windows ever. I think there are many people with legacy PCs who think the same, and who would love to have a XP alternative with real sustainability, even more due to Microsoft's attempt to lock every Win7 user into the privacy-less Win10 ecosystem.

The ReactOS team should consider to make a business of it. There are so many options. Company support, driver development, 3D, better OSX/Linux cooperation, Docker-like applications w/o desktop etc. They could provide a whole new ecosystem around Windows while retaining independency from MS.

Re: After 10 years ReactOS website has got new design

#42

Post by userbinator » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 1:29 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #2

This is the previous design from 10 years ago: https://web.archive.org/web/20060421204854/http://www.reacto... It certainly looks dated, but compared to the new design there are a few good things about it: - High information density - Screenshot at the top - Link to legal review and licenses (questions that any enterprise customer would have) - No gratuitous animation sequences I wonder if it would have been possible…

I definitely like the old site more. The new design feels like yet another generic "me too" startup-ish marketing site, of which I think there are far too many today. To me, the large fonts, animations, and images are like the visual equivalent of screaming --- it certainly catches attention, but quickly tires the viewer. The old site feels far more sedate and pleasant.

I wonder if I'm getting old, or if attention spans are getting shorter, because the new site is quite optimised for the latter.

Similar thoughts I had for a different free software project's site redesign: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10512772

Re: After 10 years ReactOS website has got new design

#43

Post by juhq » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 1:33 PM UTC

Holy fuck that scrolljacking, people pls, stop doing this!

Re: After 10 years ReactOS website has got new design

#44

Post by vicmarcal-ros » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 1:34 PM UTC

JackuB wrote: post #23

Maybe it's time for another redesign… Site is quite broken on iPad

Hi! Vicmarcal from ReactOS here. Which issues are you having navigating with the new ReactOS site? I'm using Ipad, and while there is too many work to be done in the responsive area(some bootstrap fixes mainly), I see it working in my Ipad. :)

Re: After 10 years ReactOS website has got new design

#45

Post by vicmarcal-ros » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 1:39 PM UTC

bch wrote: post #8

pavlov wrote: post #2

This is the previous design from 10 years ago: https://web.archive.org/web/20060421204854/http://www.reacto... It certainly looks dated, but compared to the new design there are a few good things about it: - High information density - Screenshot at the top - Link to legal review and licenses (questions that any enterprise customer would have) - No gratuitous animation sequences I wonder if it would have been possible…

> providing a ground-up implementation of a Microsoft Windows® XP compatible operating system. I actually couldn't find that in the new website. I wondered what they're targeting, and I couldn't find it.

Thanks for the feedback. Right now in the main page you can see the "Imagine running your favorite Windows applications and drivers in an open-source environment you can trust. That's ReactOS. Not just an Open but also a Free operating system." Probably it should link to the FAQs under "Discover More" if anyone is interested in the Technical details. I am noting down to perform the change asap, because it looks as a nice improvement. Thanks!

Re: After 10 years ReactOS website has got new design

#46

Post by vicmarcal-ros » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 1:58 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #2

This is the previous design from 10 years ago: https://web.archive.org/web/20060421204854/http://www.reacto... It certainly looks dated, but compared to the new design there are a few good things about it: - High information density - Screenshot at the top - Link to legal review and licenses (questions that any enterprise customer would have) - No gratuitous animation sequences I wonder if it would have been possible…

Hi Pavlov! We hoped also that the tide of the "bloated info" came back during these latest 10 years...and we didn't have any luck :) Otherwise we wouldn't have spent too much work on the new ReactOS website. We've replaced the "Screenshot" to a "Gallery" link, which I personally think it is much better. Try to find the "Gallery" in the older one ;) Legal links are coming, but to mention some we've added a legal link needed by the German Law (that we didn't include in the past). For us sadly asking people to join us is not "gratuitous" but a serious need as we don't have any support of companies. We're the first ones willing to remove the "Help us fundraising", "Join us"...but sadly we're probably one of the biggest open source projects out there without any kind of support but the Community one. Btw, it is planed to create a "hide the slideshow" via button or once registered. On the other hand, the current information quality ranges from newbies to high skilled developers, while the old information one was just focused to (and understandable by) developers. Density is not synonym of quality, and our old site had tons of info and pages duplicated, with some of them just reachable through one link. The new site pretends to ease the contact for newcomers while greatly increase the level of the info as you move deeper. The fact is that the new site links to more Wiki articles, and have more info than the old one. Stats say!Just under its proper category. Thanks for your feedback.

Re: After 10 years ReactOS website has got new design

#47

Post by vicmarcal-ros » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 2:05 PM UTC

qb45 wrote: post #25

pavlov wrote: post #2

This is the previous design from 10 years ago: https://web.archive.org/web/20060421204854/http://www.reacto... It certainly looks dated, but compared to the new design there are a few good things about it: - High information density - Screenshot at the top - Link to legal review and licenses (questions that any enterprise customer would have) - No gratuitous animation sequences I wonder if it would have been possible…

> Animation makes this even worse, because the user has to sit and wait while the site slowly delivers information in animated word-sized chunks. This is exactly what pissed me off within the first 3 seconds, that there is no way to see everything they have to say without waiting until the animation goes whole cycle and then waiting some more to make sure I didn't miss anything. It looks like they took design tips fr…

Hi! You can move through animations thanks to the slider below it. So you can jump to the animation you want to see again.

On the other hand, a home page is just that...the main page any kind of visitors will arrive, from great IT guys (as you) to no-IT guys at all. If you know about the project already it's pretty obvious the level of the info in the home page has been lowered to ease the understanding of the scope of the project. Tell a non-IT guy we're creating an operating system clone aiming NT architecture and they won't catch what is this about at all. All the tech details are waiting you in the new "Developing" section of the site then ;)

Re: After 10 years ReactOS website has got new design

#48

Post by lorey » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 2:12 PM UTC

philippnagel wrote: post #36

spossy wrote: post #32

nice rip of http://osticket.com/index.php

No. They're both using the same Wordpress theme ( http://themeforest.net/item/porto-responsive-html5-template/... ).

Same theme, but plain HTML the and not a wordpress theme on both pages.

Re: After 10 years ReactOS website has got new design

#49

Post by patates » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 2:34 PM UTC

vicmarcal-ros wrote: post #47

qb45 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Animation makes this even worse, because the user has to sit and wait while the site slowly delivers information in animated word-sized chunks. This is exactly what pissed me off within the first 3 seconds, that there is no way to see everything they have to say without waiting until the animation goes whole cycle and then waiting some more to make sure I didn't miss anything. It looks like they took design tips fr…

Hi! You can move through animations thanks to the slider below it. So you can jump to the animation you want to see again. On the other hand, a home page is just that...the main page any kind of visitors will arrive, from great IT guys (as you) to no-IT guys at all. If you know about the project already it's pretty obvious the level of the info in the home page has been lowered to ease the understanding of the scope…

Please, at least get rid of the scroll hijacking. It is extremely annoying. Also why are you serving 4K lines of CSS, embedded on every page? I also hope you could use a static site generator instead of Drupal (which definitely is an overkill for such a site).

Re: After 10 years ReactOS website has got new design

#50

Post by qb45 » Mon, Feb 08, 2016, 2:55 PM UTC

vicmarcal-ros wrote: post #47

qb45 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Animation makes this even worse, because the user has to sit and wait while the site slowly delivers information in animated word-sized chunks. This is exactly what pissed me off within the first 3 seconds, that there is no way to see everything they have to say without waiting until the animation goes whole cycle and then waiting some more to make sure I didn't miss anything. It looks like they took design tips fr…

Hi! You can move through animations thanks to the slider below it. So you can jump to the animation you want to see again. On the other hand, a home page is just that...the main page any kind of visitors will arrive, from great IT guys (as you) to no-IT guys at all. If you know about the project already it's pretty obvious the level of the info in the home page has been lowered to ease the understanding of the scope…

Frankly, those animations are so simple that they could be replaced with static images (the first one would need a split in two). This way I can choose which one to watch simply by moving my eyeballs or maybe scrolling in case of small screens. Two simple, widely know and efficient interfaces.

Maybe I shouldn't be too harsh, after all it was me who as a teenager hacked this panel displaying information about currently selected file in Windows 98 Explorer to slide in/out during navigation like menus in StarCraft, but c'mon - it's one thing to create such stuff and another to actually really use it. Even I couldn't bear those sliding panels for long :)