How to get to Xfce 4.4

[masse_nicolas at yahoo.fr]

On Sun, 08 Jan 2006 12:23:47 +0100
Jasper Huijsmans <jasper at xfce.org> wrote:

> 
> All
> 
> * I think what we need most is people checking out SVN and report 
> problems. It needs to work in as many situations as possible.
> 

I will begin to do that, at least for the apps I use myself.


> 
> Documentation
> =============
> 
> Oh dear. Traditionally I have been very involved with the documentation, 
> together with Francois. However, Francois is extremely busy with real 
> life and I just started a new job, so I don't know how much time I will 
> have.
> 
> ...
> 
> Ideas about how to make it easier for people to help out with 
> documentation (using a wiki, maybe?) are very welcome.
> 

Yes a wiki will certainly help. Also putting the documentation in svn can be another solution.

> 
> Website
> =======
> 
> Xfce has grown from being a desktop project with a single website to 
> being a platform with many sister projects: goodies, i18n, installers, 
> thunar, xfmedia, mousepad, xffm, ... It would be very nice to have some 
> consistency between all the related web sites.
> 

Yes and No. In fact, I'm not sure they need to look all the same. One of the reason is that i'm not sure they target the same goals. For exemple, the main xfce site will have to explain what Xfce is, what are the (core) parts of it, show the xfce-related projects (the goodies) and give a link to each of them. The goodies site is intented to give a description of some xfce-related stuff. Also I'm trying to give there some news about what's happening in the Xfce world. There can also be other sites about some particular applications.


> The Xfce website could perhaps do with a little freshening up to better 
> help our users find what they need.
> 
> I have been playing a little with php and css to see if it would be 
> possible to recreate the Xfce site layout with only css and in a 
> slightly more maintainable way. Check the result at 
> http://www.loculus.nl/xfce/new.xfce.org/ . It is missing most of the 
> content, only 'Home' and 'About' have some ;-) I have tried to reduce to 
> number of toplevel links to make things a little easier to find.
> 

Not bad at all. (Can I have the sources? :) I can interest me for the goodies site.)

> As an example of what I believe is a well layed-out website take a look 
> a www.freebsd.org, especially other pages than the front page: a small 
> number of toplevel sections with a side bar  menu for subsections.
> 

Sure, but... from a navigationnal point of view, I think you're right. But, from an esthetical point of view, I think that the fact that toplinks are on a bar is a bit "redondant" with the banner on the top, containing links to the others xfce websites. Also, the top linksbar is a little too low I think (perhaps resizing the logo is needed?).
FreeBSD's site does'nt have a banner on top and don't show any logo. Also note that the first page is very different from the others. 

I' m wondering if the site won't be better if we:
1)Remove the toplinks bar and move it to the menu on the left. Something like:
+home
+about
-download
   Binaries
   Graphical installer
   Source
   Developpement Version
+Screenshot
+Documentation
...
2)Show the logo and the "Everything goes faster" text only on the home page, letting more space for the rest on the others.

> It would be nice to have a small team to take care of the maintainance 
> of the site, hopefully together with Francois. Someone probably needs to 
> have a look at what kind of information we have to show and how this can 
> best be presented.
> 

I think websites needs to be rethink (roles, content, layout, ...) then possibly rewritte an updated accordinately. 
This will require some guys to do the work.

> 
> Other Xfce Projects
> ===================
> 
> I'd like to see Xfce develop further towards a small desktop project 
> with a number of independent subprojects that provide additional 
> functionality. It should be easy to find links to these projects on 
> xfce.org.
> 
> www.xfce.org
> - i18n.xfce.org
> - goodies.xfce.org
> - xffm.xfce.org
> - thunar.xfce.org
> - orage.xfce.org    | maybe some smaller applications could better
> - mousepad.xfce.org | be part of goodies.xfce.org or even
> - xfburn.xfce.org   | applications.xfce.org
> - xfmedia.xfce.org
> - forum.xfce.org
> - wiki.xfce.org
> - xfce-look.org
> - bugzilla.xfce.org
> 
> 
> Ok, now, all of this won't happen without people actually taking time to 
> work on it. And this has always been our problem :(
> 
> 

Yes, the main problem is there. (I mean lack of time/work for the sites).

> Me
> ==
> 
> Now for me personally things have changed a bit because of the new job. 
> I will not have as much time for Xfce and I will need to limit myself to 
> the panel and maybe some related library work.
> 
> I need someone to manage and coordinate the plugins on the xfce goodies 
> project as well as handle the possible move to the xfce server and 
> update of the website. I'd like to propose Nicolas Masse for this job, 
> if he agrees, and maybe some other active goodies developers to help 
> out, like Fabian Nowak and Nick Schermer (or anyone who volunteers).
> 

Thanks for thinking to me :D. OK, i'll help there. I think I will begin to do a list of the apps and try to see who is the maintener of each.
Also I will begin to see if all the panel plugins were ported to the new panel, and perhaps port one or two of them if necessary.
I will also continue to post some news on the goodies site. 
Note that if someone would help ... everybody is welcome.


Bountykiller.