revised download page mockup

[Garrett LeSage]

On 09/12/2012 03:18 PM, Ewoud Kohl van Wijngaarden wrote:
> First of all, I do like the new design.
>
> = Navigation =
> Should the navigation label be different from the page header? I do like
> 'get started', maybe more than 'download'. OTOH, getting started might
> be ambigous because a user has a different starting point than a
> developer. Perhaps this is no issue because there's already a develop
> link as well.

The navigation definitely should have the word "download". People look 
for that. It's a keyword/buzzword that is in common usage, and pretty 
much everyone looks for that.

It's a bit of a trick, however... as our goal isn't that people simply 
_download_ oVirt, but to get it working and to have oVirt be useful for 
them. That's why that page's focus is so much more than just downloading 
oVirt, despite it being named that in the heading.

The previous mockup[1] did make it super-obvious when it comes to 
downloading oVirt. An all-in-one installer enables us to do that. 
(Basically: "Here's *the thing* you download and do something with. 
Click the button to start.") Right now, oVirt isn't technically ready 
for that, so there's no real way to make it clear to download something. 
(Hopefully that'll be resolved soon?)

Our primary goals for someone downloading and installing oVirt are:
1) Successfully install oVirt
2) Have oVirt be useful
3) Get those happy with oVirt to participate in some ways (which usually 
isn't possible, unless they already meet goals 1 & 2)


[1] Here's the first mockup, which highlights downloading (and I think 
is more ideal): 
http://people.redhat.com/glesage/oVirt/website/mockup-1/download.html 
and thoughts behind its design: 
http://people.redhat.com/glesage/oVirt/website/background-info/design-download.html


> = Alignment of numbers =
> Right now they're not in the center and that kind of drives me insane ;)

It's a stylistic sort of thing. The numbers are aligned to the baseline 
of the lines of text, but I was trying for something there style-wise. 
It's not necessarily going to stick, but I kind of dig it for now. Once 
I get this implemented in an actual web page (and I'm working on that 
right now, actually), it should be easy to change, so we can play around 
with various styles.


> = Other distros =
> Personally I love the idea of supporting different distros and we should
> encourage people to adopt theirs / get a porting effort going. Maybe
> this page could use a small text with pointers on how to do that?
> (Though I'm not sure if we currently have such a thing.)

I agree.

I tried to address other distributions on both download page mockups now 
(the alt, which is a compromise for what oVirt is currently like, and 
the more forward-thinking install-everything ready-to-go single ISO 
download). In the one, I highlighted other distributions by showing 
distribution-specific logos clearly on the page. In the other, there are 
links at the top of the page.

When other distributions are supported fully, then we could show them 
more at a top-level. I strongly feel that we should only highlight 
fully-working ways of installing oVirt, yet still make it clear that 
it's possible to get oVirt running at least somewhat on other 
distributions (and that we want help making it better everywhere).

It's my understanding that some people are already making a push to get 
oVirt better supported elsewhere. Is there anything we could do to make 
this a bit more obvious on the website? My mockups are designed with the 
assumption that the links to the plea for help as well as the individual 
distro download pages all would have information about this. (It can 
also be mentioned in the community and/or develop main pages too.) If 
anyone has any ideas to improve this (without getting in the way of 
making it super-easy to install and use oVirt), I'm very happy to 
consider them in the designs.


> Keep up the good work.

Thanks for your feedback!

Garrett