Start page for KDevelop 4

[Matt Rogers]

On Tuesday 17 February 2009 13:39:12 Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen wrote:
> Heyas!
>
>   Thanks for the overwhelmingly positive responses, guys, this is a
> brilliant example of a community working well - seriously :) Even the
> negative comments were always with a positive twist, in that they were all
> constructive. Thanks!
>
>   i've looked them through and tried to create an amalgamation of them and
> put them into html/css form. It is worthy to note that you need to view
> this in Konqueror, as parts of the thing requires things so far only
> available in khtml (and in some cases not even webkit, it looks slightly
> odd in Arora).
>
>   There's three of these now, they're all the same html, just with two
> additional stylesheets added on top of the other.
>
>
> http://leinir.dk/temp/kdev-startpage/index.html
> The first thing a user sees upon starting the program. Tells the user a bit
> about the UI and such. i'm pondering if it might not be an idea to put the
> Possibilities box at the top, but thought i'd run it past you guys before
> doing anything with it (it's fairly straight forward, maybe fifteen
> minutes' worth of work, but still ;) ).
>
> http://leinir.dk/temp/kdev-startpage/index2.html
> If the user clicks on don't allow news, this is the view he'll get on the
> subsequent startups. Items moved around a bit, more central, and news pane
> hidden away.
>
> http://leinir.dk/temp/kdev-startpage/index3.html
> If the user clicks on allow news, this is the view he'll get... This is
> basically what you had before :)
>
>
> A few noteworthy changes:
>
> * Colours ;) Everybody seemed to agree on that, and well, so do i ;)
> * News optional stuff. i wanted to do this before as well, but thought i'd
>   throw it to you before doing anything to it, you know, feedback and such
> :) * Links are underlined. As David Nolden pointed out, some controls
> that're buttons didn't quite look it. As buttons would look desperately out
> of place, i thought i'd make them look like links in stead :)
>
>   A final idea, actually brought on by Kris' comment on not liking the news
> pane so much. The Possibilities pane could very well contain a link to the
> help system and the website, where such information could be managed in a
> pleasant way. An entry in the list such as "New to programming?" with a
> link to the KDevelop Tutorials page, or better yet, a page on kdevelop.org
> with a collection of appropriate links (to the tutorials page, to
> techbase's kde coding section and so on)
>
>   Enjoy and comment! :)

I would make the possibilites section larger, and get rid of the news view 
entirely. From my point of view, the start page is to get people into using the 
IDE by making it more friendly. The news section (even with the 'do you want to 
view news?' section) takes too much focus away from getting into the IDE. 

Perhaps you could switch the placement of the news and possibilities section in 
an update? I think the news is useful, but it shouldn't take center stage.


Thanks
--
Matt