Drop start.fedoraproject.org in favour of about:home
 

On Fri, Oct 05, 2012 at 16:21:43 +0200,
Elad Alfassa <elad@fedoraproject.org> wrote:


I suggest we just drop this page completely and use the default firefox
about:home start page instead.
Thoughts?


I actually like about:blank .
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Drop start.fedoraproject.org in favour of about:home
 

Hi,

In my opinion we should diff two situation. I think it would be nice
touch to have 2 (!) simple genshi template locally too as startup
page, that:

a, Says greetings at very first install (then it disappears on next
start), what is useful for those who are first met with the system,
and getting acquainted, provides descripiton about the system itself,
and few suggestions
b, Quick shortcuts to different resources. I mean here can be kept the
search field too, but I think we can bind active parts too, like login
to fas, and fedora people storage, wiki, and ask.fedora,
fedoracommunity international communities, and so on.

Zoltan

2012/10/5 Matthew Miller <mattdm@fedoraproject.org>:
> On Fri, Oct 05, 2012 at 04:35:28PM +0200, Kévin Raymond wrote:
>> So the real question is:
>> Do we want this page to be contributor or end user centric? As we try
>> to keep both with a simple page, it could not work easily.
>
> Making the page user-centric makes sense, but remember our target users are
> people we want to engage so they can become contributors -- even if they're
> not developers.
>
> We were talking in the Marketing meeting about updating the default
> bookmarks to point to Ask Fedora, and one excellent point is that those are
> only used for brand-new users. The start page is something we can (and
> should) refresh. It's unfortunate that it's not as pretty as
> the http://fedoraproject.org main page -- but we can fix that.
>
>
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Drop start.fedoraproject.org in favour of about:home
 

On Fri, Oct 05, 2012 at 11:07:31AM -0500, Bruno Wolff III wrote:
> Elad Alfassa <elad@fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> >I suggest we just drop this page completely and use the default firefox
> >about:home start page instead.
> >Thoughts?
> I actually like about:blank .

With Firefox 13+, I like "about:newtab" even better. But I think people who
prefer those things can easily set them, and the browser start page remains
an important way of getting new users engaged in our community.

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Drop start.fedoraproject.org in favour of about:home
 

*I second this motion. *start.fedoraproject.org is somewhat bland looking and generally useless. *There are a few*fun posts to read, and obviously Fedora-related announcements, but in general the page is lacking IMHO and*might put a damper on the Fedora experience for new users. *It -definitely- doesn't
function very well as a search*engine, especially with drop-down arrows that say stuff like "Free to use, share, or modify commercially". *WTF?
*Maybe we can be provided with a link in our favorites/bookmarks to this page, but start somewhere else? *Like**http://fedoraproject.org/* which is much nicer on the eyes, and has more interesting links and information for new*users.
*Just my two cents. *I might have already put it in, but here it is again.*
------"I am fond of them, of the inferior
beings of the abyss, of those who are full of longing."

-Wagner
"Quien a Dios tiene, nada le falta. Solo Dios basta."
-Santa Teresa de Avila

From: Elad Alfassa <elad@fedoraproject.org>
To: Fedora Websites Team <websites@lists.fedoraproject.org>; Discussions about development for the Fedora desktop <desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org>
Sent: Friday, October 5, 2012 7:21 AM
Subject: Drop start.fedoraproject.org in favour of about:home

This message is sent to two lists: websites and desktop.

start.fedoraproject.org has many problems [0], mainly:
1) it's ugly
2) it
doesn't serve a clear function

3) It's one of the first things people trying Fedora will see, so it'll effect their opinion about Fedora.
I suggest we just drop this page completely and use the default firefox about:home start page instead.

Thoughts?

[0] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Start.fpo_redesign
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Drop start.fedoraproject.org in favour of about:home
 

On Fri, 5 Oct 2012 12:37:23 -0400
Matthew Miller wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 05, 2012 at 11:07:31AM -0500, Bruno Wolff III wrote:
> > Elad Alfassa <elad@fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> > >I suggest we just drop this page completely and use the default
> > >firefox about:home start page instead.
> > >Thoughts?
> > I actually like about:blank .
>
> With Firefox 13+, I like "about:newtab" even better. But I think
> people who prefer those things can easily set them, and the browser
> start page remains an important way of getting new users engaged in
> our community.
>
I think speed dial is actually the best what we can use. I
suspect homepage is really useless unless you use it instead of rss
reader to read the news.

But lets look at the current one first. What's in:
1. search -- superfluous, current web browsers have search integrated
in their UIs and in my experience people use it
2. fedora planet posts -- that's what default configs of rss readers
should include, why duplicating it in a web browser?
3. announcements -- well this one's hard, the mailing list probably
does not have a rss feed, or does it?
4. a bunch of links -- can be better managed with initial speed dial
config

Furthermore, since major players in the browser feed are already using
speed dial (chrome by default, firefox for new tabs), people are most
likely used to that.

There's only one thing that bugs me a little. One of the biggest sources
of traffic on my blog is from start.fedorapeople.org (even more than
from the planet itself) so what we are discussing *might* not reflect
the real state of things, actually... Are there any statistically
significant data (I realize one low-traffic blog is not statistically
significant) regarding the real-world usage of start.fp.o?

Cheers,
Martin
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Drop start.fedoraproject.org in favour of about:home
 

On Sun, Oct 7, 2012 at 2:10 AM, Martin Sourada <martin.sourada@gmail.com> wrote:


But lets look at the current one first. What's in:

1. search -- superfluous, current web browsers have search integrated

* *in their UIs and in my experience people use it
True. Furthermore having a Google powered search as a fedora branded page doesn't really fit with the project values, because Google is not open source.


2. fedora planet posts -- that's what default configs of rss readers

* *should include, why duplicating it in a web browser?
Excellent point. Plus, we have the planet in the default bookmark set


3. announcements -- well this one's hard, the mailing list probably

* *does not have a rss feed, or does it?
Actually, every mailing list has an RSS feed, that's* how we get the announcements on start.fpo :)


4. a bunch of links -- can be better managed with initial speed dial

* *config
Or better set of default bookmarks.



Furthermore, since major players in the browser feed are already using

speed dial (chrome by default, firefox for new tabs), people are most

likely used to that.***

There's only one thing that bugs me a little. One of the biggest sources

of traffic on my blog is from start.fedorapeople.org (even more than

from the planet itself) so what we are discussing *might* not reflect

the real state of things, actually... Are there any statistically

significant data (I realize one low-traffic blog is not statistically

significant) regarding the real-world usage of start.fp.o?
I don't know if we have any statistics, I never bothered to find out. if someone has them,* it's probably the infrastructure team.




Cheers,

Martin


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My suggestion after reading this long discussion:

We should have a first-run page which Firefox will show after you install Fedora.
After that, it should show the default upstream start page.

For other browsers and/or people who prefer to use it, we will keep start.fpo (maybe redesign it to look better) and anyway have start.fpo as part of the set of default bookmarks.


Sounds reasonable?
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Drop start.fedoraproject.org in favour of about:home
 

On Sun, Oct 07, 2012 at 02:10:23AM +0200, Martin Sourada wrote:
> 4. a bunch of links -- can be better managed with initial speed dial
> config

Are we permitted to change the initial speed dial config and keep using the
Firefox name?

> There's only one thing that bugs me a little. One of the biggest sources
> of traffic on my blog is from start.fedorapeople.org (even more than
> from the planet itself) so what we are discussing *might* not reflect
> the real state of things, actually... Are there any statistically
> significant data (I realize one low-traffic blog is not statistically
> significant) regarding the real-world usage of start.fp.o?

We surely have logs...


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Drop start.fedoraproject.org in favour of about:home
 

On Sun, Oct 07, 2012 at 02:20:11AM +0200, Elad Alfassa wrote:
> > 4. a bunch of links -- can be better managed with initial speed dial
> > config
> Or better set of default bookmarks.

The problem is that those are only loaded on the first time someone runs
Firefox, ever. We can't update them.

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Drop start.fedoraproject.org in favour of about:home
 

On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 6:07 PM, Bruno Wolff III <bruno@wolff.to> wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 05, 2012 at 16:21:43 +0200,
> Elad Alfassa <elad@fedoraproject.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>> I suggest we just drop this page completely and use the default firefox
>> about:home start page instead.
>> Thoughts?
>
>
> I actually like about:blank .

Yeah everything else is just useless noise IMO.
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