On Fri, Nov 20, 2015 at 5:27 PM, Pat David wrote:

I'm afk for most of the day today, with sporadic phone connectivity. I'll do my best to address any questions. Anything more complex will have to wait until the evening here (-06:00UTC).

The new site SGO (http://static.gimp.org) is ready to be migrated whenever it's needed. I have also put a simple file as a news post for the 20th anniversary. It's a markdown file located in the source at:

/content/news/2015-11-18 20-years-of-gimp.md

If someone (looking at prokoudine) wanted to write an announcement, this is the file to do it. If you don't have the build environment up, feel free to email me the .md file and I'll put it up this evening ahead of a switchover.

I'll only be able to have a go at it tomorrow morning (I'm in +3:00UTC), and I'm still to complete release notes for 2.9.2.

If there are any lingering things that need to be addressed (there are), I'll get to them after we push the new site. I don't think there's anything that's a show-stopper at the moment. If so, please let me know asap, and I'll try to get it patched up this evening.

Debug messages in the footer of every page?

Alex

On 11/20/2015 09:27 AM, Pat David wrote:

I'm afk for most of the day today, with sporadic phone connectivity. I'll do my best to address any questions. Anything more complex will have to wait until the evening here (-06:00UTC).

Some comments, fwiw:

The Home page (http://static.gimp.org/):

1. Regarding the link at the bottom of each page for "Books": Is it appropriate to link at the bottom of every page to a page of mostly commercial? books about GIMP?
It seems more appropriate to have a link to the page of books about GIMP from only the Documentation page, instead of from every page on the website (on the actual Books page it would nice to show what version of GIMP the various books were written for).

2. The printed credits to individuals for artwork on the GIMP home page seem visually distracting. What about using an "on hover" credit like the very attractive on-hover credit (which doesn't seem to need any scripts to work) used by the Krita home page (krita.org), and maybe also give credit on the "about/authors" page?

3. What is the line drawing at the bottom of the page about? Maybe it's obvious to everyone else, but I don't have a single clue why that line drawing is there.

4. According to a study, a website viewer's gaze "tracks" the gaze of people in photographs. The lady in the "High quality Photo Manipulation" image is looking to the left, completely out of the frame. Flip the image left to right and she's directing her gaze, and also the reader's gaze, towards the text and the page.

5. The section for "Key Component in a Desktop Publishing Workflow": Could this section be made smaller and put side-by-side with the section on Extensibility & Flexibility, so that visually these two sections match the visual weight/space devoted to Photo Manipulation, Original Artwork, Graphic Design, and Programming Algorithms?

* This section has a larger, bolder headline font than the other "equal weight" items (editing photographs, doing graphic design, etc) and a whole lot more page space devoted to it, which makes it seem like GIMP is mostly meant for desktop publishing.

* The sentence "It is best used in workflows involving other free software such as Scribus, Inkscape, and SwatchBooker" almost makes it sound like GIMP can't be used very well or easily without also installing these other softwares.

All pages: The site requires javascript enabled to display the icons at the bottom of the page. Otherwise, except for the GIMP icon, the icons are just place-holders.
Some people consider scripts to be a security risk. Is there a way to make the icons at the bottom of the page display without requiring the user to enable scripts?

The about page (http://static.gimp.org/about/):

* The "about/authors" page starts and ends with GIMP 2.6.

* For the "Important GIMP Links":

* The GIMP toolkit. The linked-to page doesn't show any connection to GIMP. A lot of people won't know that GTK started as part of GIMP.

* The GNU links: following those links, again the relationship between GNU and GIMP isn't clear except to people who already know the relationship between GNU and GIMP.

The donations page (http://static.gimp.org/donating/): It almost seems like donating to GIMP really is donating to GNOME? At least some of the methods for making donations don't give a warm feeling that GIMP specifically will get the donations.

The download page (http://static.gimp.org/downloads/): The download page uses a script to detect the user's operating system:

* Again, some users consider scripts to be a security risk.

* The message displayed when scripts are disabled is very long.

* Sometimes users "spoof" the OS in the header information.

* Sometimes users want to download software for an operating system other than what they are using.

Why not just cut to the chase, disable the OS-detecting script, and use the one line:

"Show downloads for GNU/Linux | OS X | Microsoft Windows | All"

Also the download page has MD5 check-sums for all the GIMP 2.8 releases. It might be better to only offer check-sums for the last GIMP 2.8 release, and maybe offer some of the more secure types of check-sums plus "how to check" information.

Best, Elle

Page loading speed:

Starting from an empty cache, http://static.gimp.org/ takes a slow count of four to six seconds before the above-the-fold content finishes loading. The picture at the top is the last item to load.

I have a relatively slow internet connection (cable, but not "high speed download"). I wonder how long the page takes to load on a modem connection.

It might be worth checking https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ to see if some of the bottlenecks can be eliminated.

Best, Elle

Branding:

The new website has a lot going for it. The font is larger and easier to read. The website layout seems more spacious. It looks more "modern", if that makes sense. I suspect it will be easier to maintain.

But something about the new website has seemed odd to me from the beginning. I think the problem is a lack of consistent branding.

The current GIMP website has excellent "branding", meaning the user absolutely knows she's on the GIMP website, no matter which page she navigates to:

* All the main pages (gimp.org) have the same consistent and distinctive color scheme: dark green, gray, and orange.

* All the pages have a recognizable header across the top, which is an orange bar with Wilber on the left edge, plus the word "gimp" as an image, and on the right side, the words GNU Image Manipulation Program.

* The image in the header bar is a link taking you to the home page. This "link to the home page from the header at the top" is something every website needs on every page.

* The wiki pages (wiki.gimp.org) have a different, but also consistent layout, with Wilber wearing his construction hat prominently featured at the top of the right-side column.

It seems to me that the new website could benefit from clearer and more consistent branding:

* Wilber is on the new home page, but he's sort of lost against the background image at the top, and he's missing from the other pages. It would help with branding if Wilber were prominently visible at the top of every page.

* There's no consistent color scheme tying the website together. A consistent color scheme would help with branding the website. On the pages that aren't the home page, putting a darker "branding" color outside the center column with the text would make that text look a little less lost than it does in the current large expanse of surrounding white space. On a small screen, this is less of an issue. On a large screen, the pages look a bit unfinished.

* There's no "identifying header bar" on the other pages.

* There is no link to the home page from the (nonexistent) identifying header at the top of the page. Every website needs a link to the home page from the top of every page - users shouldn't have to scroll to the bottom to get back to the home page.

I think readers are fairly sensitive to these kinds of "website branding" issues. A clear branding for every page on the GIMP website inspires a certain amount of confidence that you really are on the official GIMP website (rather than on one of the many websites that wants to convince you to download malware).

Best, Elle

On 11/21/2015 07:44 AM, Elle Stone wrote:

* Wilber is on the new home page, but he's sort of lost against the background image at the top, and he's missing from the other pages. It would help with branding if Wilber were prominently visible at the top of every page.

* There's no "identifying header bar" on the other pages.

* There is no link to the home page from the (nonexistent) identifying header at the top of the page. Every website needs a link to the home page from the top of every page - users shouldn't have to scroll to the bottom to get back to the home page.

I stand corrected. There is a header at the top of each page, with Wilber in the header. But the user must enable scripts to see the header.

This is not good. Users shouldn't be required to enable scripts to see the header at the top of the page.

Best, Elle

Elle Stone writes:

I stand corrected. There is a header at the top of each page, with Wilber in the header. But the user must enable scripts to see the header.

Even with scripts, it's tough to tell that icon is actually Wilber. It's so small that the eyes aren't identifiable as eyes, and the "negative space" nose and mouth only make sense if you're already very familiar with that particular Wilber variant.

This is not good. Users shouldn't be required to enable scripts to see the header at the top of the page.

+1

...Akkana

On 11/23/2015 12:06 PM, Pat David wrote:

We could, but this does rely on CSS animations, which I can't assume everyone has available (IE8-9 don't for instance). I can look into possibly showing something like that, but for now I'm going to keep the attributions plainly visible for the authors. Maybe I'll have a look at styling it slightly different

As a fallback styling, the css "title" attribute is very widely supported and displays upon hover.

On 11/23/2015 11:06 AM, Pat David wrote:

On Sat, Nov 21, 2015 at 7:01 AM Elle Stone >
wrote:

I stand corrected. There is a header at the top of each page, with Wilber in the header. But the user must enable scripts to see the header.

I have scripting turned off and the top navigation header renders just fine. So I cannot replicate this. Could you please elaborate on what you are doing to trigger this behavior, and verify that it is correct?

Hmm, until today I never saw the navigation header on the home page. Has it been added recently?

Back when I posted the original comment, I didn't see the navigation header on the News page (or any other page), until after I enabled scripts. But when I reloaded the page, the navigation header was there, which perhaps was caused by reloading the page instead of by enabling scripts?

In any event, today the home page and also other pages have a navigation header, with or without scripts enabled. Only once, upon first time loading the page with the Pale Moon browser (Firefox derivative), there was no header across the top. But upon reloading it appeared, even though scripting was disabled.

Best, Elle

On 11/23/2015 12:06 PM, Pat David wrote:

On Fri, Nov 20, 2015 at 3:18 PM Elle Stone

All pages: The site requires javascript enabled to display the icons at the bottom of the page. Otherwise, except for the GIMP icon, the icons are just place-holders.
Some people consider scripts to be a security risk. Is there a way
to make the icons at the bottom of the page display without requiring the user to enable scripts?

The site does NOT requite JS to show the icons in the footer. You are likely using an extension to block scripts in your browser (noscript?). If this is the case, you'll need to examine your settings to understand what is happening, which is that you're actually blocking the fonts (which those icons are packaged as).

So yes, you can easily view the icons in the footer without scripts running (try turning off just javascript and you'll see).

Javascript and "objects":

Hmm, you might be right about "just disabling javascript" and leaving everything else allowed. However, I don't just block javascript when I browse the web. Other stuff, including "objects", which includes the downloaded fonts, is also blocked.

I suspect most people running noscript/etc block "objects" as well as scripts.

On older/slower/low-ram computers, blocking "stuff" is not just a security issue - it's also just about necessary to be able to browse the internet at all.

Nice fonts are nice to see. But downloading fonts and such from another location to the user's computer does add to the weight and download speed of a page, and as "objects" they are going to be perceived as "not good" by security-conscious people.

Checking other browsers that aren't using Noscript/etc:

I checked using some other browsers and still don't see the icons.

Here's a screenshot of what I see in four different browsers - top to bottom the browsers are Rekonq, Konqueror, Opera, and Firefox:

http://ninedegreesbelow.com/bug-reports/gimp-site/rekonq-konqueror-opera-firefox-screenshot.jpg

I don't use Rekonq, Konqueror, or Opera except for testing to see how websites render. So I'm not sure what settings they are using.

I did check the Rekonq browser preferences. Rekonq was set up to allow scripting and was probably more or less "default as set up by KDE". So I don't know why the icons and images aren't showing up - the line drawing, and the DTP images showed up, but not the image at the top or the nice images for the photo editing/painting/etc. Konqueror also failed to load some of the images.

As an aside, on my computer the page loading speed is very slow today, even considering my "not fast" internet connection. For example, just now it took 29 seconds to completely load the GIMP "about" page. Sometimes pages actually timed out with Rekonq and Konquerer. As reference, other websites don't seem to be taking any longer than normal.

Best, Elle

On 11/23/2015 11:06 AM, Pat David wrote:

I have scripting turned off and the top navigation header renders just fine. So I cannot replicate this. Could you please elaborate on what you are doing to trigger this behavior, and verify that it is correct?

Hmm, until today I never saw the navigation header across the top of the page.

In one browser today the navigation header on the home page didn't show up until I reloaded the page. But in all the other browsers all the pages had the navigation header. So you are right, whatever was causing the header to not show up, it wasn't a blocked script.

Best, Elle

Sorry, this was a double post, didn't realize I'd already sent the other post on the same topic.

On 11/23/2015 02:13 PM, Elle Stone wrote:

On 11/23/2015 11:06 AM, Pat David wrote:

I have scripting turned off and the top navigation header renders just fine. So I cannot replicate this. Could you please elaborate on what you are doing to trigger this behavior, and verify that it is correct?

Hmm, until today I never saw the navigation header across the top of the page.

In one browser today the navigation header on the home page didn't show up until I reloaded the page. But in all the other browsers all the pages had the navigation header. So you are right, whatever was causing the header to not show up, it wasn't a blocked script.

On 11/23/2015 02:28 PM, Pat David wrote:

If someone is going to purposefully block content (whatever the reason), then they should expect things to not look as designed (but should still be functional). I think we're covering that.

Nice fonts are nice to see. But downloading fonts and such from another location to the user's computer does add to the weight and download speed of a page, and as "objects" they are going to be perceived as "not good" by security-conscious people.

Correct! See above. (If you are blocking stuff on purpose, don't be surprised when it doesn't show up as intended).

Most importantly, the
site works without those fonts (though it maybe ugly).

You are asking people to trust that the GIMP website hasn't been and never will be compromised and therefore it's OK to trust whatever "stuff" that might be downloaded.

Checking other browsers that aren't using Noscript/etc:

I checked using some other browsers and still don't see the icons.

Here's a screenshot of what I see in four different browsers - top to bottom the browsers are Rekonq, Konqueror, Opera, and Firefox:

http://ninedegreesbelow.com/bug-reports/gimp-site/rekonq-konqueror-opera-firefox-screenshot.jpg

I don't understand. All of the screenshots except for the last one (FF) show the font icons just fine? That's what it looks like to me.

Well, now I feel silly - other than Wilbur and the download icon, I didn't realize that the items beside the other links were icons instead of placeholders.

But comparing them more carefully to the Firefox placeholders, yes, they do look like icons instead of placeholders.

Maybe the icons could be larger?

Would color instead of just black and white maybe help distinguish the various icons, and also help better "brand" the GIMP website from one page to the next?

Could the word "GIMP" and also the Wilber icon both be made a bit larger and more prominent in the navigation bar?

Points of perspective:

* Not everyone has great eyesight.

* At least on my screen, those icons are small and not very differentiated one from the other.

* Properly used, color helps make things more distinguishable, as well helps to establish "yes, you are still on the same website".

* A larger Wilbur in the navigation bar would be *very* nice. A more prominent placement of the word "GIMP" in the navigation bar, emphasized by some appropriate color scheme, also would help.

Best, Elle

On 11/23/2015 04:50 PM, Pat David wrote:

Hi!

On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 2:23 PM Elle Stone >
wrote:
Well, now I feel silly - other than Wilbur and the download icon, I didn't realize that the items beside the other links were icons instead of placeholders.

Don't feel silly - you aren't the first to have this happen to them. Which leads me to looking sooner at addressing the issue...

Maybe the icons could be larger?

Would color instead of just black and white maybe help distinguish the various icons, and also help better "brand" the GIMP website from one page to the next?

Could the word "GIMP" and also the Wilber icon both be made a bit larger and more prominent in the navigation bar?

I'm fiddling with resizing those icons right now (as well as adding other icons to balance each link in that header navigation).

If you had a choice, what size seems to work well for you?

I spent some time looking at home pages of websites for several major newspapers. I was surprised by the uniformity of the navigation/header area at the top:

* The row of navigation links are just word links, no icons. * There's a large identifying icon, like Wilber is for GIMP, usually above and to the left.
* The newspaper name is in larger font usually above the row of links but sometimes to one side.

I'm not saying that GIMP's website should match those large commercial websites just because they are large commercial websites.

But it *might* be worth experimenting with eliminating the icons from the navigation bar, and just using them in the footer navigation. That would make the row of links in the header navigation bar less crowded and allow room for a larger Wilbur icon.

Reserving the navigation icons for the footer navigation would allow for larger icons without making the footer navigation seem crowded.

I can certainly play with color too. I don't think we have an "official" color scheme just yet for branding, but I'll see what everyone else thinks too.

Points of perspective:

* Not everyone has great eyesight.

What do you do on pages that are rendering fonts small? Everything _should_ scale ok if you zoom the page in. (This is not an excuse for the small icons, just a thought).

On websites that still think 10-12px font sizes are sufficient for readability, I zoom in until the text is readable. On websites that think there's no such thing as a line of text that's too long, or think lines of text don't need any separation, I make the viewport narrower and zoom in. On some websites I just give up and disable their styling through the browser.

On your redesign of the GIMP website, you already use very nicely sized fonts and good line spacing and line lengths, so I don't have to do any zooming at all.

Speaking of zooming in and/or making viewports smaller, your home page design for the GIMP website very nicely flows and rearranges itself when the page is zoomed in and/or resized even to narrow widths.

* At least on my screen, those icons are small and not very differentiated one from the other.

* Properly used, color helps make things more distinguishable, as well helps to establish "yes, you are still on the same website".

* A larger Wilbur in the navigation bar would be *very* nice. A more prominent placement of the word "GIMP" in the navigation bar, emphasized by some appropriate color scheme, also would help.

Let's see what we can do with fiddling with sizes and colors. I'm open to suggestions as well! :)

What color scheme will the GIMP 2.10 release use?

Best, Elle

On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 2:26 PM, Elle Stone wrote:

If someone is going to purposefully block content (whatever the reason), then they should expect things to not look as designed (but should still be functional). I think we're covering that.

Nice fonts are nice to see. But downloading fonts and such from another
location to the user's computer does add to the weight and download speed of a page, and as "objects" they are going to be perceived as "not
good" by security-conscious people.

Correct! See above. (If you are blocking stuff on purpose, don't be surprised when it doesn't show up as intended).

Most importantly, the
site works without those fonts (though it maybe ugly).

You are asking people to trust that the GIMP website hasn't been and never will be compromised and therefore it's OK to trust whatever "stuff" that might be downloaded.

Derailer here - asking for a webfont to be loaded is no less or more secure than asking for an image to be loaded. In other words, simply loading any web page is probably going to require loading external resources to render properly - requesting a web font doesn't install it in your system directory or anything. It's just a one-time deal on page load, just like an image.

Performance is an issue though. I'm a bit appalled that 4 or 5 seconds for "above the fold" seems to be OK. But I'm a late intro to this discussion, so maybe I'm off base.

Chris

On Mon, 2015-11-23 at 23:01 -0600, Chris Mohler wrote:

[...]

Performance is an issue though. I'm a bit appalled that 4 or 5 seconds for "above the fold" seems to be OK.

It's much faster than that here, and we have a below-average 1.5MBps connection at home.

Liam

Liam R. E. Quin 

On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 3:41 PM, Pat David wrote:

Performance is an issue though. I'm a bit appalled that 4 or 5 seconds for "above the fold" seems to be OK. But I'm a late intro to this discussion, so maybe I'm off base.

4-5 seconds for above the fold content is _not_ ok. It's also _not_ normal. The example I used above was under load, throttled to a 1mbit/s connection. We're under heavy load these past few days, so don't judge the page performance right now. After some slight abatement recently I was seeing 1-2 seconds for atf content, and 3-4 seconds for complete page load. ymmv, but we haven't even started optimizing things yet.

Glad to hear it ;)

Chris