Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 17:10:35 -0500 From: Seth <seth@psychotic.aberrant.org> To: Kent Stewart <kstewart@urx.com> Cc: mij@osdn.com, freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Web page suggestion Message-ID: <20010213171035.B70575@psychotic.aberrant.org> In-Reply-To: <3A89AB42.B5F0E207@urx.com>; from kstewart@urx.com on Tue, Feb 13, 2001 at 01:46:42PM -0800 References: <20010213104922.A70178@psychotic.aberrant.org> <20010213125007.B375@guinness.osdn.com> <3A898E22.39A43C02@urx.com> <20010213145515.B1203@guinness.osdn.com> <3A89AB42.B5F0E207@urx.com>
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What I see happening is this: people come to the website, but find there's no one link that tells them what to get and how to get it. There are plenty of places that explain both of these things, but they're in different parts of the site. What I'm proposing is to bring them together, so that an impatient prospective user can see, at a glance, what the latest version is (IMHO, this should be on the main page as well), find out where to purchase a copy, download the tools necessary to install over a network or burn an install ISO, and find the necessary documentation to guide him/her through the process. Again, all of this is available today -- but it requires wading through the site to find it, and some time on the user's part to find all of it. Whether or not we want users who won't take the time to hunt for the information notwithstanding, we should make it as simple as possible to find all the information on "what, where, and how". Don't change the site or its contents; just consolidate some of the links on another page that's highlighted from the main page. Give me a few days to come up with an example, but I'll beg your forgiveness in advance for my bad HTML. Seth. History truncated a bit.... On Tue, Feb 13, 2001 at 01:46:42PM -0800, Kent Stewart wrote: > > > Jim Mock wrote: > > > > On Tue, 13 Feb 2001 at 11:42:26 -0800, Kent Stewart wrote: > > > Jim Mock wrote: > > > > to click the very easily labeled links, they're surely not going to > > > > bother reading any of the install docs and will have an installation > > > > experience similar to trying to ram their head through a brick wall. > > > > > > Part of the problem is that when they get to the "Handbook Chapter on > > > Obtaining FreeBSD", they are presented with Appendix A. To a newbie, > > > Appendix A is a series of TLA's that are completely giberish until > > > they have been using FreeBSD for a while. There isn't a chapter on > > > obtaining FreeBSD and there also aren't any instructions. Using FTP to > > > download an iso or the bin files would be a section by itself. The > > > closest I have seen is Dan's web page at > > > http://www.freebsddiary.org/read.html. I don't think a newbie can use > > > CVS or CTM to install FreeBSD. So, you have a series of choices that > > > don't make any sense and more than half of them don't apply. > > > > I think you're talking about a whole different situation here. I'm > > talking about if you go to http://www.FreeBSD.org/ and look under the > > "Easy to install" header, you'll see a link that says "these > > directions". That takes you to the install chapter of the handbook, > > which then takes you to the floppy download and creation. > > > > I'm guessing you're talking about the "Getting FreeBSD" link under > > "Software" on the bar on the left side of the site. This should also > > point to the handbook's install chapter which explains getting the > > floppies. If no one disagrees, I'll change it to do so. > > Yes, that is the link I was talking about and the one I think people > are getting lost on. > > Kent > > > > > - jim > > > > -- > > jim mock <mij@osdn.com> O|S|D|N open source development network > > http://soupnazi.org/ http://osdn.com/ | jim@FreeBSD.org > > -- > Kent Stewart > Richland, WA > > mailto:kbstew99@hotmail.com > http://kstewart.urx.com/kstewart/index.html > FreeBSD News http://daily.daemonnews.org/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message
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