On Mon, Aug 18, 2003 at 05:50:00PM +0200, Mario Mommer wrote:
Keeping a fixed, timeless mini-article in front gets the timestamp off the radar.
Hmm. I'll need to mull over this. I see your point, but am not sure if I agree.
- Besides, I like to think that our vantage point should be put to use by giving someone who doesn't know Common Lisp all the important facts right away.
I suppose the question is do we primarily cater to people already using Common Lisp or people who hit our site nowing nothing about Common Lisp.
Personally I do believe that we are "morally responsible" for providing newbie-pointers given our domain-name, but I'd still make actual users a priority.
Remember he is skeptical, so we shouldn't expect him to want to click on anything.
Do we really want to cater to people who are too lazy to click on "Learning Lisp" ro "About Common Lisp"?
How about:
What Is Common Lisp (3-5 lines, followed immediately by link to "Learning Lisp")
About Common-Lisp.net (3-5 lines)
News...
BTW, that is why I'd like a small page on "getting started", so that after two clicks and two pages of text the newcomer is downloading nice tutorials & demos and whatnot.
Sure. I'd love to see this, but am not too keen on working it myself.
As a sideline: I've been thinking that one of the major problems for writing CL tutorials is the diversity of environments -- and unlike so many pother languages Common Lisp is sort of "environment-centric". The best way to go is probably to take the "use this environment for tutorial" route, and finish the tutorial by telling them about other options.
That said, I would put news in a box on the right, just above new projects. But it should be either fed with something, *anything*, on a daily basis (be it a new release of whatever) or disappear if no new news appear after a week or so, and then move that to a page called "press releases" or something that isn't supposed to be "new"...
Boxed news is fine, but I really don't think they should disappear. We don't have to call them "news" if thats any help. ,)=
What about "Noteworthy"?
Cheers,
-- Nikodemus