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Středa březen 01, 2006

Homepage Redesign Nightmares

Today we exchanged lots of e-mails about how to redesign the homepage of www.netbeans.org so that it's more friendly for new users and people can download NetBeans easier (inspired by Firefox). There's a lot of conflicting requirements: the homepage should be simple, it should contain up-to-date and relevant information, we need to put about 100 links to things people have a hard time to find, it should provide guides for new users, but it should remain appealing, we need to features hottest news, we need to feature newest technical guides, etc., etc. Designing the homepage is a nightmare!

So we're now all a bit frustrated but this video of Microsoft marketing team designing an iPod box from Talley helped. We'll definitely do better than that :)

Comments:

Hi The Netbeans homepage is pretty good, IMHO. What could really use improvement is the knowledge base and bug lookups. It's terribly confusing for a relatively new user to find if other people have reported similar problems, and if so, what the solution was, etc. Thanks!

Posted by Keith Blackwell on březen 01, 2006 at 07:56 odp. CET #

I agree - but unfortunately the bug database is under control of Collab.net and any changes are very difficult :(

Posted by Roumen on březen 02, 2006 at 10:51 odp. CET #

Hum i think you are trying to do too much... define a goal, to me goal one of the homepage is to get people to download the product, then have the product help new users. If you look at the firefox webpage that is the only goal, to get people to download it, simple and effective.

I don't think that trying to please to all people is the right way to go, i personally don't like the nb site at all, it is always making me log in, bug hunting is a mess, and downloading requires way to many steps (and just got worse with the extra categories for 5.5, 6.0), simply not a good design. I wish you best of luck redoing it.

Posted by Daniel Mendes on březen 05, 2006 at 03:07 dop. CET #

The problem is that we have too many people to satisfy :( We need a focus... we'll see... The problem with login and bugs is a problem of the collab.net infrastructure - we're pushing it hard, but collab.net is not very flexible in this :(

Posted by Roumen on březen 05, 2006 at 09:28 dop. CET #