[Inqlude] [GSoC 2016] Improve categorization and search on Inqlude web site

Sun Mar 13 23:23:57 UTC 2016

Hi Nanduni,

thanks for your list of ideas for the web site. There is a lot of good input 
in there.

I still would like to take one step back. For finding a better design for the 
web page I consider it to be very important to get some data based on user 
feedback. Design solution become much more clear, if you can test them and 
decide based on how users actually would use the site.

So my proposal would be to not go immediately to the implementation, but plan 
a step of gathering feedback from users or people who could be users. I think 
the best way would be to do some user testing of a broad variety of quick 
sketches of possible designs. Based on the feeback on those we can narrow the 
possible solutions and settle on something where we know it's worth spending 
the effort on an actual implementation.

What do you think?

Regards,
Cornelius

On Thursday 10 March 2016 17:25:36 Nanduni Nimalsiri wrote:
> Dear Sir,
> 
> I have come up with following suggestions regarding the inqlude website
> improvements. I did a complete study on the website appearance and
> functionalities to come up with theses suggestions. Can you please express
> your ideas about these suggestions.
> 
> 1. Add a *filter box* such that when we type a letter or a piece of text,
> libraries starting with that piece of text are filtered. I came up with
> this suggestion as a solution to minimize scrolling. I believe that users
> including myself prefer *minimal scroll*. This would come in handy when we
> use this website with mobile devices.
> 
> 2. Add a small *drop down pointer *at the end of that filter box to search
> libraries by different options such as version, platform, licence etc. The
> user can tick the desired option and select the corresponding libraries.
> This is the intended task given in the GSoC idea description.
> 
> 3. *Responsive layout* - The current website is lack of a good
> responsiveness when it comes to small scale devices such as mobiles. In
> order to make responsive layouts, I have several suggestions.
>                        -  Use frameworks like W3.CSS which is  free to use
> and no license necessary.
>                        -  Set a meta view port tag, create a flexible
> layout / fluid grid, use media queries in CSS file
> Do you have any better suggestions on this? Please recommend me any
> approach you wish. These days, I am studying about developing responsive
> websites.
> 
> 4. On the development versions page, *the summaries of the libraries are
> only vertically aligned within each section, but not across sections*. This
> should be fixed to make the page look more balanced. This is *issue #19
> *which I found from the github issues list. I would like to resolve this
> issue during my project.
> 
> 5. I feel that it is sometimes difficult to identify the particular
> description for the library although they are horizontally aligned in the
> table. I would like to propose two colors ( *one row in white back ground /
> next row background in little darker than pure white*) for adjacent rows.
> This will make the user easy to go through different rows.
> 
> 6. Remove the *close button* near search button on top of the website or
> else add some functionality to it. I realized that it does nothing
> currently.
> 
> 7. *Show latest releases on web page*, it would be nice to have a section
> with latest releases on the web page, so user know which libraries have
> been recently updated. This is *issue #22* which I found from the github
> issues list. I would like to resolve this issue during my project. I
> thought of adding it as a separate page similar to '*stable releases*'.
> 
> 8. Apply *justify alignments* for the content in pages '*How to contribute'
> and 'About'.*
> 
> 9. Add a* search box *so that when user add some key words from summary of
> each library in manifest file, the search results will show the relevant
> libraries along with their summary text. I wanted to suggest this as there
> is no option in the current site to find libraries if the user does not
> know the name of the library exactly.
> eg: User wants to find a a library that provides integration of QML and KDE
> Frameworks. So user can type 'QML' in the search box and search results
> will display the library name 'kdeclarative' and summary if needed.
> 
> I am afraid if the search box at the top of the web site is designed with
> this intention. Currently, this search box does a google search. Can you
> elaborate me on this search box functionality.
> 
> 10. *Search button* near the google search box does not match with the
> existing web layout. Its color, size and orientation should be modified.
> 
> 11. *Look and feel *of the website is okay. It would be nice if we can use
> a different color for the top ribbon of the website. (not a completely
> different color, but not pure white) This is because that I felt difficult
> in distinguishing the title of the website with its content.
> 
> 12. *Lack of consistency* thorough the site. When we move to *sections :
> 'development versions', 'unreleased', 'commercial' and 'all'*, the
> description text of the website that appear with '*Stable libraries'
> *section disappears. I feel it as a bad ui design, but I would like to hear
> your comments on this.
> 
> 13. At the top ribbon of the website, the links to 'A*bout', 'How to
> contribute', 'How to find libraries' **seems unnoticed* and *rarely being
> used* by the users. We need to make those tags/links look more attractive
> and noticeable.
> 
> 14.* Add some title* to the table of libraries. For eg: Library name and
> description. This is because that I myself felt difficult to understand
> what these two columns are about.
> 
> 15. Add some *small description of the library to appear on hover over the
> library name*. This is because that most modern websites(eg: facebook)
> follow less navigation across pages which many users prefer.
> 
> 16. This is an additional suggestion. Why don't we *add the link to mailing
> list* in the page of the library?
> 
> These are some ideas which I felt. I am very happy to hear your ideas on
> these suggestions. I can create some mock ups on my ideas to elaborate
> these ideas further.
> 
> Currently, I am undergoing the process of learning Ruby and understanding
> the existing code. I would be very grateful if you can share your ideas
> with me.
> 
> Looking forward to your reply.
> 
> Best regards,
> Nanduni.
> 
> 
> 
> On 8 March 2016 at 15:57, Nanduni Nimalsiri <nanduni.12 at cse.mrt.ac.lk>
> 
> wrote:
> > Dear Sir,
> > 
> > Thank you very much for the reply. I was eagerly waiting for a reply as I
> > am very interested in this task. I have some experiences of using Ruby
> > when
> > I was working with Kuberntes and Cloud Foundry stuff, but I need to polish
> > further. I have already been following the tutorialspoint
> > <http://www.tutorialspoint.com/ruby/> lessons on Ruby. As you have
> > suggested, I started learning Ruby through some online video tutorials
> > <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I539U5lXWY&list=PLMK2xMz5H5Zv8eC8b4K6tMa
> > E1-Z9FgSOp> by Jake Day Williams.
> > 
> > Thank you for the clarifications on $subject. I suppose that this project
> > would be able to provide solutions for the following issues in
> > cornelius/inqlude <https://github.com/cornelius/inqlude> github repo.
> > 
> > #27 List libraries per license
> > <https://github.com/cornelius/inqlude/issues/27>
> > #26 List libraries per platform
> > <https://github.com/cornelius/inqlude/issues/26>
> > #22 Show latest releases on web page
> > <https://github.com/cornelius/inqlude/issues/22>
> > # <https://github.com/cornelius/inqlude/issues/19>19 Align summaries on
> > development page vertically
> > <https://github.com/cornelius/inqlude/issues/19>
> > #20 Show Qt5 compability <https://github.com/cornelius/inqlude/issues/20>
> > #18 Check platform attribute for valid entries
> > <https://github.com/cornelius/inqlude/issues/18>
> > #7Add bugtracker URL <https://github.com/cornelius/inqlude/issues/7>
> > #6 Make layout responsive <https://github.com/cornelius/inqlude/issues/6>
> > 
> > In order to make responsive layouts, I have several suggestions.
> > 1. Use frameworks like* W3.CSS *which is  free to use and no license
> > necessary.
> > 2. Set a meta view port tag, create a flexible layout / fluid grid, use
> > media queries in CSS file
> > 
> > Do you have any better suggestions on this?
> > 
> > I would also like to know some means to host this website so that I can
> > share my designs with the you and the developers. Can I use something
> > like OpenShift or do you have better suggestions? As an initial step, I
> > can
> > also come up with some mockups.
> > 
> > I would be very glad if you would help me to clarify these doubts, so that
> > I can come up with a better project proposal.
> > 
> > One more additional thing: When I send emails to *schumacher at kde.org
> > <schumacher at kde.org> *it fails with a problem report from Mail Delivery
> > System which I suppose is the mail system at host postbox.kde.org.  So is
> > it okay to use* cschum at suse.de <cschum at suse.de>* instead. Thank you.
> > 
> > Beast regards,
> > Nanduni.
> > 
> > On 8 March 2016 at 12:20, Cornelius Schumacher <schumacher at kde.org> wrote:
> >> Hi Nanduni,
> >> 
> >> On Monday 07 March 2016 20:18:49 Nanduni Nimalsiri wrote:
> >> > I am *Nanduni Nimalsiri*, a third year undergraduate at Department of
> >> > Computer Science and Engineering, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. I
> >> > would like to take part in GSOC Programme 2016 with KDE Community.
> >> 
> >> Actually
> >> 
> >> > I am very interested in contributing to open source projects and I
> >> 
> >> already
> >> 
> >> > have experiences in working with a variety of open source projects. I
> >> > suppose that I am not too late to start working on this project. I am a
> >> > quick learner and I am very confident that I would be able to catch up
> >> > things very soon.
> >> 
> >> Welcome. It's great that you are interested in this project.
> >> 
> >> > Actually I have studied the flow of Inqlude web site by now. I have
> >> 
> >> several
> >> 
> >> > suggestions to improve its user experience. Meanwhile, I roughly went
> >> > through [1],[2] repos to get familiar with Inqlude functionalities. I
> >> > suppose that [2] is the repo which I need to work with.
> >> 
> >> That's correct.
> >> 
> >> > I have some doubts to clarify regarding this project. README.md of [2]
> >> > mentions "There also is an option to generate an HTML overview of all
> >> > available libraries. This can be hosted or used locally." Can you
> >> > please
> >> > explain me what this is? Does this mean the Inqlude web site?
> >> 
> >> Yes. The inqlude command line client has a sub command "view" which
> >> generates
> >> the web site as static HTML. This can be browsed locally, and it's also
> >> what
> >> is published on inqlude.org.
> >> 
> >> > I would also like to come up with improvements for web site interface.
> >> > I
> >> > can even change the website to have a responsive look and feel. Can I
> >> > change the orientations and formattings of the UI widgets. I like UI
> >> 
> >> stuff
> >> 
> >> > and I would like to know your ideas. If I am not causing trouble, can
> >> 
> >> you
> >> 
> >> > please explain me more on this project and I would also like to know on
> >> 
> >> how
> >> 
> >> > I proceed. Thank you.
> >> 
> >> Making the site responsive would also be great.
> >> 
> >> When working on the UI I think it's important to follow some design
> >> process
> >> which includes testing the design and possible options and improve it
> >> based on
> >> feedback from (potential) users. One of these processes is design
> >> thinking.
> >> 
> >> In terms of proceeding it might be a good idea to get some experience in
> >> Ruby,
> >> as this will be needed to work on the tool which generates the web site.
> >> There
> >> are many nice online trainings and sites with exercises available, which
> >> should help with that.
> >> 
> >> --
> >> Cornelius Schumacher <schumacher at kde.org>
> > 
> > --
> > *Nanduni Nimalsiri*
> > Undergraduate, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University
> > of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka.
> > Software Engineering Intern, WSO2 Inc. (http://wso2.com)
> > email : nanduni.12 at cse.mrt.ac.lk, nanduni at wso2.com
> > blog : http://nanduni.blogspot.com/
> > website: http://nanduni-nimalsiri.branded.me/
> > mobile : +94714114256

-- 
Cornelius Schumacher <schumacher at kde.org>