In article <200706171013.31748(a)zamez.strcprstskrzkrk.co.uk&gt;, James Bursa <james(a)netsurf-browser.org&gt; wrote: [numbered by me for reference] 1. a non-user who wants to know what NetSurf is and why he should get it 2. a non-user who wants to install NetSurf 3. a user who wants to upgrade to the latest version 4. a user who wants to report a bug 5. a user who wants to contribute in some way 6. a user who needs help or documentation 7. a webmaster who's seen NetSurf in their log and wants to know what it is 9. a user or web designer who wants to know which standards NetSurf supports 10. a new developer who would like to get the source and contribute 11. a new developer on some device or platform who's looking for a browser to port 12. someone who wants to contact us The only one I can think of right now is: 13. a non/potential-user who wants to know if NetSurf is available for their platform. I think we need to cater for [1] directly on the front page. The front page should also be able to point all the other types of visitor towards the page they're looking for. I also think the front page needs to give some indication that NetSurf is an active project. Perhaps by including a News section, that is regularly updated. So content-wise, we'd have a bit about what NetSurf is and some indication of what's currently happening on the front page, to indicate that the project hasn't stagnated years ago. The front page also needs to provide links for all the other types of visitor to find what they're looking for in a straight-forward manner. I also think the site should do much more to mention that NetSurf is a portable browser and that it is available for multiple platforms. However I don't think that RISC OS should be down-played at all. NetSurf for RISC OS is the most advanced version and NetSurf is pretty much the flagship, "mainstream" browser for RISC OS users. I think some of that doesn't need to be on the front page. Certainly, "themes" needn't be there. I also think some things like the plan and progress page could be grouped. I liked the idea we had on IRC; the site would would have a separate "Developer area" for developer stuff and a "Webmaster area" for webmasters. Each of the areas would be like a home page, catering for that class of visitor. The "User area" could either be the main front page, or another separate home page type thing. I think we need to finalise the sections we want (e.g. User, Developer & Webmaster) and then work out both what content we need to provide, and what section it all belongs in (or needs to be accessible from). -- Michael Drake (tlsa) http://www.netsurf-browser.org/

In article <200706171013.31748(a)zamez.strcprstskrzkrk.co.uk&gt;, James Bursa <james(a)netsurf-browser.org&gt; wrote: The staging area for the new website is here: http://www.netsurf-browser.org/test/ So far, only the front page exists, so none of the links will work. Most of the text in the left content column was kindly supplied by Chris Williams. The news section is just made-up stuff. Currently it uses the following things that NetSurf doesn't support: "max-width" property Not a major issue; the web page just always takes up the full width of the window in NetSurf. "min-height" property This causes the top of the NetSurf logo to be cropped in the download box. I'd like to see this implemented in NetSurf before the site is used in its current state. More padding can be added around the list to mitigate the problem or another solution involving an extra DIV could be used. ":after" pseudo element and "content" property This adds a ">>" character after links like "See more screenshots". Not a major issue as the site still makes perfect sense without that styling. As far as I'm concerned, all the major parts of the front page design and content are now done. So please poke me if you want stuff changed. The next thing I'll do (but not until the weekend, probably) is work on one of the sub pages - e.g. the download page. This will show how the navigation bar will expand to show the contents of subsections and where breadcrumbs will go. We need to decide about dynamic generation of the pages. I'd like us to have the pages dynamically generated, purely from an ease of maintenance perspective. I have ideas on the matter, however, I don't want to implement it. Translators: Please don't bother translating the new site yet, as it is still subject to change. Also, I wouldn't update the translations of the old site now, unless you really want to. I'm not sure how long until the new site will be ready to go live, but there is active work on it. -- Michael Drake (tlsa) http://www.netsurf-browser.org/

On Sun, 23 Sep 2007, Michael Drake wrote: Cool. Some general points: + The site must be standards compliant (this should be obvious ;) + I think we should strive to make the site as accessible as possible. Therefore, in addition to technical standards compliance, we should try to be WCAG compliant, too. Here's an online checker (warning: it's slow as hell): http://checker.atrc.utoronto.ca/index.html I think the source icon should be more obviously different from the RO binary one. Rationale: 1) Invariably, people don't fully read the page -- they just click on the thing that most looks like what they want. Thus, making the source icon more unique would reduce the likelihood of someone downloading the sources when they actually wanted the NS binary. 2) Use of text within icons is bad. Firstly, it assumes the user understands the language the icon text was written in. Secondly, it requires reading, which defeats the pointt of an icon being a visual hook for the user. We should probably mention RISC OS 6 in the requirements for the RISC OS version -- I can guarantee that someone will get confused. I'm aware of the arguments as to whether we're in a position to actively support it, so it may be better to resolve that question first. Other than that, this page is fine. This page is fine. This page is fine. See comments about the source icon, above. I think there should be some mention of the SVN revision number in relation to the tarball (so as to avoid confusion). Ideally, this will also be encoded in the tarball name. Typo: s/reffered/referred/ [Aside: We need some documentation for cross-compiling NS for RO using GCCSDK.] Other than that, this page is fine. I think NSTheme should have a version number. I also think that the themes page link should be more obvious. Other than that, this page is fine. This page is fine. Fine by me. We should probably have an FAQ entry explaining this, however. I have no problem with this; see comments above about the obviousness of the theme page link on the extras page, however. Presumably. That said, when we make a new release, we shouldn't make our own packages for those platforms which package earlier versions (unless, of course, there's some demand for it due to the platforms' packaging lagging behind) On Linux and BSD platforms, it's pretty common to build from source or wait for the distro to package it. Thus I have no problem with this. At the very least, we should make it obvious that there are packages available in distro repositories. This should prevent people trying to build from source when they don't need to. J.

Hi, I've been working on the web site redesign / rewrite again. This message is just an update on what's been done and what work is still remaining. The following pages have been done since last time I did an update here: http://test.netsurf-browser.org/about/ The content here was just rushed off so we'd have something to start with -- it was never intended as the final version of the page. Since the page is all about our project goals and ethos, it really needs to be discussed by everyone. http://test.netsurf-browser.org/about/news Currently just place holder content and not real news. (Same as news on front page.) http://test.netsurf-browser.org/about/screenshots/ All screenshots are just place holder. I'll do new screenshots once the site is closer to completion. http://test.netsurf-browser.org/about/team I really need every core team member to submit something for this page. Please can people reply to this message with what they want me to put on the page. http://test.netsurf-browser.org/about/awards Complete as far as I'm concerned. http://test.netsurf-browser.org/documentation/ Documentation contents page now links to all web site based docs. Maybe layout could be improved but it's not going to delay replacing the proper site. http://test.netsurf-browser.org/documentation/progress Extended an revamped. I'd particularly like James, John-Mark, Richard and Adrian to comment on the accuracy of the status of the core and RISC OS related items. Also I need the status of nsgtk features from Rob. http://test.netsurf-browser.org/documentation/info Updated to reflect current position of JavaScript. Removed RISC OS specific info. http://test.netsurf-browser.org/documentation/roinfo New page for RISC OS specific user info http://test.netsurf-browser.org/documentation/guide Content is largely unchanged, so it's very much RISC OS orientated. The user guide is absolutely vast so I don't intend to update this for multi platform stuff until after the new site goes up, or else it will never happen. http://test.netsurf-browser.org/documentation/translations Pretty much unchanged although I think we should organise proper procedures for keeping translations in sync or at least tracking how up-to-date various translations are. http://test.netsurf-browser.org/documentation/nstheme Not much changed. Waiting for new theme format anyway, so this should need replacing at some stage anyway. http://test.netsurf-browser.org/documentation/develop Updated for multiplatformness. Note that there is currently no documentation on how to cross compile NS for RISC OS. http://test.netsurf-browser.org/documentation/robuild Not really changed much. http://test.netsurf-browser.org/contact/ New page for getting in contact with us; tracker, ML, IRC and general e-mail address info. I changed many of the other docs to just link to a part of this page instead of having contact details dotted around all over the documentation. So the overall picture is: Front page I'm happy with this. It just needs real News added before it goes up as far as I'm concerned. About section Needs a fair amount to work: main about page content, news and screenshots. Documentation section I'm happy with this and it could go up as it is, as far as I'm concerned. The only thing it needs is some checking and additions on the Progress page. Downloads section It can be improved but that shouldn't delay upgrading the site; it can be improved after. Contact section Done. "User support", "Developer area" and "Webmaster area" sections all still need done. I have plans for them though. In general I think it's coming together quite well and will be much better than the existing site. The whole of the new site is much better at making it clear that NetSurf is multiplatform and which bits apply to RISC OS and which don't. I expect the new site will be done by some time around Christmas. Michael -- Michael Drake (tlsa) http://www.netsurf-browser.org/

In article <1194987182.6720.13.camel@trite>, Rob Kendrick <rjek(a)netsurf-browser.org&gt; wrote: [snip] Win! Thanks. :) Cool, I've added all that. Thanks. Well it's always nice. Maybe the old one can be tweaked to use the new code? Best regards, Michael -- Michael Drake (tlsa) http://www.netsurf-browser.org/

OK, here's something for me... When he finds time away from his day job as an international man of mystery, Richard enjoys flailing his arms towards a keyboard and trying to make NetSurf as beautiful as the contours of a Cuban virgin's thighs. He is responsible for implementing various sections of NetSurf -- the ones he'll admit to include GIF, BMP and ICO support, the current frames implementation, minor sections of the CSS and layout code, the hotlist and global history, toolbars and themes, URL auto-completion, buffered rendering, interactive help, the RISC OS GUI and image rendering code, RISC OS image virtual memory / compression, and probably 90% of the bugs. Unfortunately Richard has had precious little time for development work recently, but an aged RiscPC is his partner when he does. R.

On Tue, 13 Nov 2007, Michael Drake wrote: John-Mark spends most of his time avoiding the layout engine, as he thinks that overexposure to it will result in the early onset of dementia. Over the years, he has contributed to a number of areas of NetSurf -- particularly anything that doesn't involve touching any user interface code. He has also spent a great deal of time tracking down and fixing Richard's bugs. In the past, most of his development work was undertaken on an Iyonix, using a Linux desktop running Debian for compilation purposes. Nowadays, development occurs on the Linux desktop using RPCemu for testing purposes. Strictly, the DOM stuff is "just started", I guess. The vast majority of DOM3 Core is there, at least. I'm dubious as to whether selectors can be considered complete if the pseudo stuff isn't supported. Typo: s/stated/started/ -- Find text (nsgtk) I don't particularly see the value in duplicating things for both RO and GTK when the feature in question is complete. I think I'd also be inclined to s/nsgtk/GTK/g. The last sentence of the JS section seems strange in the context of the description of our current state. I think we can safely lose it, or reword it such that it doesn't appear as if we're expecting someone to come along and implement DOM 0-3, the JS bindings and heavily modify the layout engine to cope with dynamic content. I've currently no suggestions here. Perhaps we can look at how other OSS projects have tackled this problem (e.g. Gnome or Firefox) I started some of this some time ago. It was never finished, however. That said, it's basically the same as the instructions for targetting GTK -- you "just" have to build the dependencies yourself with gccsdk. Looks cool. Nice work! J.