Forge for developers, or end users?

[ccondrup]

Forge for developers, or end users?
..why not both?  I don't get it. In project overview, why is 15% of the page width donated to describing the project, while the rest of the space just shows graphs of downloads and activity? That info is something the project members/admins would be interested in, not the general user. At least move the graphs to one column, and make some room for the description! Take a look at this, something seem out of place?

Detail pages
Thorough description of what it does, which versions it works on, parameterlist etc. All this would preferably be in formatted text with, and two things I feel is very important: Supply a demo url and screenshots. Use one of the default templates for displaying what your module etc. does when taking screens. These are of course things that are up to project admins - but at least for templates, a screenshot should be required.

In general, after browsing around the new forge, I feel it is much more project-admin-customized than user-centric. Maybe I just need to get used to it, but that's the first impression, unfortunately. Hard to find where things are located. Ok, there's a user guide, but should I as a well travelled netsurfer have to read a 3MB pdf in order to be able to browse around on a repository? I think people choose Joomla for simplicity, it's ironic they probably will not understand how to get the addons...

Fullfeatured demo site?
Could we have a  http://3pd.joomla.org - a demo site with all demos installed, and references to the forge?

Please don't take it the wrong way, I am grateful for all this effort everyone makes. But, we get spoiled when you constantly keep making so much good stuff, and sit here with high demands and expectations

[bluesaze]

Hello.
      I agree with point 1 and 2. That graph thing is a bit annoying at the same time useful but it shoulnot be show everytime. Screen shots and demos would also be very help.

I think There should be some rules laid down. so people who start the project would make life easier for the end users

I dont think option 3 is feasible its too risky.

[kenmcd]

Graphs taking the majority of the page:
Agreed, from a end-users usability standpoint the page design is lacking.
The graphs may be important to the project developers.
The graphs would probably be more appropriate on the project admin pages.
Lots of screen real estate devoted to less important info.

Most important to end-users -- description, files, and news.
Little useful info in the graphs for an end-user
Even SF has the most recent file releases on the project front page.


3rd party add-on demo site:
VERY tough to do.
Many add-ons do not play well together, mostly from coding practices.
The 3PD standards group is going to try and help this situation.
The best demo is seeing the CMM in use on a real web site.
The CMM Resources list had links to working demo sites whenever possible.
Perhaps including a place on the project home page for links to demo sites would help encourage the practice.
I suppose you could make demo links using the applications menu.

[manuman]

About the 3PD demo's...

It doesn't have everything, but it does have a lot... http://demo.corephp.com/

Cheers
Shayne

[de]

I am also missing things for the user...
There seem no project home page to link to an online documentation (or I am just to ignorant to find it).
And then it needs 3 clicks from the project home page to come to the downloadable files (plus one to eventually download it)... thats 2 more clicks than on mamboforge. The new forge looks much more pretty and has probably some advantage... just missing the simple things (or don't know how to set them up yet).

[Jinx]

Forge for developers, or end users?
..why not both?  I don't get it. In project overview, why is 15% of the page width donated to describing the project, while the rest of the space just shows graphs of downloads and activity? That info is something the project members/admins would be interested in, not the general user. At least move the graphs to one column, and make some room for the description! Take a look at this, something seem out of place?

Thanks for the input. We realise the forge layout can be improved, we are currently working to together with the people at VA to improve this.

Fullfeatured demo site?
Could we have a  http://3pd.joomla.org - a demo site with all demos installed, and references to the forge?

Please don't take it the wrong way, I am grateful for all this effort everyone makes. But, we get spoiled when you constantly keep making so much good stuff, and sit here with high demands and expectations

About a 3PD site, it will be very hard to create a 3PD demo site. However we are thinking about creating a more simpel and straightforward enduser download site. More news about this will be made available in a few weeks.

[Boomzilla]

Couple of comments:


Re: "There seem (sic) no project home page to link to an online documentation"

You can put documentation in the Document manager. If you want to provide one-click to reach it create a linked application using the URL that points to the document in the document manager. See the "Download 1.0.1" link on the https://developer.joomla.org/sf/sfmain/ ... cts.joomla page.

You can also use the same approach that I used for the Joomla! project for one click download.

Hope this helps

Col

[de]

Re: "There seem (sic) no project home page to link to an online documentation"

You can put documentation in the Document manager. If you want to provide one-click to reach it create a linked application using the URL that points to the document in the document manager. See the "Download 1.0.1" link on the https://developer.joomla.org/sf/sfmain/ ... cts.joomla page.

You can also use the same approach that I used for the Joomla! project for one click download.

Thanks for the response... actually I would have created a separate thread but wanted to give it a bit more time to evolve... though this thread was to tempting to mention it :-)

However, I see you used News items (at least it appears to me like this). I'd like to use the news well.. for version updates/news instead. For the documentation I'd like to have a very short description at the forge but a rather more complex documentation on a separate website for maintainance reasons (and because of the way I create it). Thats what I used the "Project Home Page" for in the previous forge... on the new forge I just placed it into the project description. The document manager seem not to do what I want (but I might be wrong).
Maybe it will be possible to customize the layout of the project home page so that I could place links to the latest release, the online documentation and the like?

Daniel

[¥]

Thought I'd add my two cents here.

The layout is definitely geeked out for coders - having attempted to play around with this thing for a while now, I half expect that a terminal window will pop up and I'll have to type in commands to access anything

Here's my short wishlist:

1) Wget functionality. I'm on a satellite connection with horrible latency and upload issues - I much preferred using wget to pull files over to my server, which now seems to be blocked by the javascript thingy. So given I actually do use the terminal for that, I wonder why everything else is so geek-centric, while that basic functionality is hidden behind javascript.

2) No reviews. Maybe I'm asking too much from a forge But I think if this is going to be the "hub" for all things Joomla, then there should be a review system built in. I know that there are various independent sites attempting to set this up, almost every attempt has failed. And I think the primary reason for these failures is that they "splinter" the community. I actually bought joomlareview.com and joomlareviews.com - then decided against it because I felt that the Joomla community would (hopefully eventually) supply a one-stop shop for everything Joomla.

3) Robust forum functionality. I'm not sure why every site feels the need to reinvent the wheel on this stuff. Anyway, the forums seems like an after-thought - yet community forums are the strongpoint of Joomla.

Oh, and I'm all for the geeks. More power to 'em And hey, the site is DEVELOPER.joomla.org - not STUPIDNEWBIELOOKINGFORSTUFF.joomla.org.

So maybe that's really the approach we need to take - a separate site for non-developers that feeds itself from the developer site?

At any rate, someone should make a decision on it. Either developer.joomla.org remains geeked out for developers, and the developers understand that normal users will not be able to use it - or the user interface is reconstructed with the end users in mind, and the "geeked out" sections remain for those who know who actually work with the code.

But I don't think a half-ass attempt to "include" the end users in the Forge is a good idea - as it looks like this Forge has been designed for use by coders, and it would probably take them years to make the interface anywhere near as accessible as the CMS.

And I do think it's important to remember that the strength of Joomla! is based on its "ease of use" - and the current Forge is the absolute opposite. Everything about it screams "RTFM!!!! CODERS ONLY!!!! KEEP OUT - GURUS AT WORK!!!!"

And expecting the Forge folks to emulate an environment we're all comfortable with is unfair at best. We all rely on the coders to get their cool work done - and they certainly should have access to the "coolest" geek-centric developer forge, set up with their needs in mind.

But it really is kinda BS to expect that system to serve the greater community.

[Peter Koch]

2) No reviews. Maybe I'm asking too much from a forge But I think if this is going to be the "hub" for all things Joomla, then there should be a review system built in. I know that there are various independent sites attempting to set this up, almost every attempt has failed. And I think the primary reason for these failures is that they "splinter" the community. I actually bought joomlareview.com and joomlareviews.com - then decided against it because I felt that the Joomla community would (hopefully eventually) supply a one-stop shop for everything Joomla.

Maybe you could join forces with Alejo http://www.xtdratings.com/. A dedicated review site would help much, currently it is mixture between review site and xtdratings component support site which may be confusing non-geeks. I think a review site should be independant of the forge. Also many common 3rd party add-ons having theire own sites and are not being in the forge can be included in the review then.