Subject: Re: [sup-talk] New website design for sup - preview

From: Tero Tilus <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2010 10:25:03 +0300

Rogutės Sparnuotos, 2010-04-11 22:33:
> It looks like what you are proposing is not a new website, but a
> shift in targeted audience.

I don't think it is.  But it might be just me.

> You seem to be addressing the naive user, while forgetting the more
> technical ones.

I don't really agree with this point either.  Except that the features
list is missing configurability & extensibility (keybindings and
hooks).

The features list is an issue worth a conversation.

> There is this sentence at http://sup.rubyforge.org/:
> "
>   The goal of Sup is to become the email client of choice for nerds
>   everywhere.
> "

Thats a real point I think.  IMO "client of choice for nerds" is
relevant and will be for quite some time to come.

> 2. First 700px of the page show nothing useful, except for a screenshot
>    and big letters.

I find the features list, screenshot(s), main navigation and app name
very, very usefull.

> 3. Some very useful, even if technical, pieces information has been lost in
>    conversion:
>    "Handle massive amounts of email."

The point is there, though not with those exact words.  Introduction
starts "Sup is a console-based email client for people with a lot of
email".

>    "
>      you can clone the git repository like so: 
>      git clone git://gitorious.org/sup/mainline.git
>    "

Link to gitorious project page (which is there) is IMO better than
cloning instructions.

> 4. You have replaced the credit to Xapian and RubyMail with the credit to
>    the authors of the website :)

Xapian credit is in the features list, but RubyMail credit is indeed missing.

> As for the GMail guide, wouldn't it be very useful in the wiki?

+1

HOWTOs should IMO be in wiki.  That helps to keep them up to date.

-- 
Tero Tilus ## 050 3635 235 ## http://tero.tilus.net/
_______________________________________________
sup-talk mailing list
[email-masked]
http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/sup-talk

---

From: Philipp <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2010 22:47:57 +0200

Excerpts from Anirudh Sanjeev's message of 2010-04-11 17:54:21 +0200:
> Hi,
> 
> I took the liberty to give the Sup frontpage a facelift. I re-used some
> creative commons work without much modification to make something that
> looks really good. Please check out the current work in progress here:
> 
> http://anirudhsanjeev.org/temp/supsite/
> 
> I also wrote a detailed guide on getting Sup up and running with Gmail as
> many people aren't able to figure out what exactly to do initially. The
> guide is available in the same page.
> 
> I feel sup is really good and is the only client that scratches my itch.
> I want more people to start using it and feel that an aesthetically
> pleasing website and a better introduction will help convince people sup is
> worth the effort of moving.
> 
> Also, I was under the impression writing a project in ruby and not having a
> really nice website for it is a syntax error :)
> 
> Please provide any feedback about the design and contents.
> 
> Thanks,
> Anirudh

Hi,
I don't try to put down your work, but it's not something I'd fall for.
It's too web2.0ey for me, too much attention hog, too much bragging.
It's very well possible that I wouldn't have tried sup with that website.

The JS thing with description and changing image is a nice idea, but I'd
either not click it (because I'd read the site first and had to assume
it leads me to another one) or tried to open it in another tab and
wondered why it didn't work or I'd click it on purpose, assuming it
would lead me to another page and would have been negatively surprised
because of the little bit of bragging information I got.

The gmail featured so prominently would have put me off as well, I'd
assume it's written mainly for gmail.

I don't claim the current sup page is great, it also lacks in a few
areas. I focused mainly on the negative aspects of your page, but it has
a few improvements over the current page as well, mainly the links at
the top, which make navigation to other parts of the page a bit easier.

Regards,
Philipp

---

From: Ben Walton <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2010 12:39:24 -0400

Excerpts from Ramkumar Ramachandra's message of Sun Apr 11 12:15:33 -0400 2010:
> Neat design. Small quirk: I noticed that the "# ui =

Agreed.  This has a very nice look to it.

-Ben

-- 
Ben Walton
Systems Programmer - CHASS
University of Toronto
C:416.407.5610 | W:416.978.4302

---

From: William Morgan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2010 08:32:03 -0400

> http://anirudhsanjeev.org/temp/supsite/

Personally I like this design. I think it's a lot more visually
appealing than the original page, without going too much into world of
web 2.0 gradients and shiny bubbles, which is something I would like to
avoid.

There are some tweaks I would make to the content--in particular, I like
the tagline "the email client of choice for nerds everywhere", and
references to IMAP should probably be removed--but I'm fine with the
design as a whole.

I also do like having the Gmail "quick"start guide readily available.
The wiki has an aura of decay around it (if someone wants to clean it
up, I will award Sup Points (tm)). Having the guide on the homepage
would be super convenient. I'd prefer to have it be a separate page, and
sit alongside an mbox/Maildir quickstart guide.
-- 
William <[email-masked]>
_______________________________________________
sup-talk mailing list
[email-masked]
http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/sup-talk

---

From: Anirudh Sanjeev <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2010 23:13:33 +0530

Excerpts from Ramkumar Ramachandra's message of Sun Apr 11 21:45:33 +0530 2010:
> Neat design. 
Thanks!

> Perhaps you want to shorten it for the benefit of those who're blindly
> copy-pasting?
Then they shouldn't be using sup in the first place :)

Thanks,
Anirudh
-- 
http://anirudhsanjeev.org
_______________________________________________
sup-talk mailing list
[email-masked]
http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/sup-talk

---

From: William Morgan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2010 08:34:22 -0400

Reformatted excerpts from Tero Tilus's message of 2010-04-12:
> Which reminds me of logo.  Would it be cool to have one for sup?  I
> missed a sup-icon when i was setting up "one touch to sup" (just plain
> quicklaunch `ssh myself@mysupbox -t screen -drU`) for my n900.

Let's just steal the gmail logo and replace the M with an S. :)
-- 
William <[email-masked]>
_______________________________________________
sup-talk mailing list
[email-masked]
http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/sup-talk

---

From: Michael Stapelberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2010 21:56:58 +0200

Hi Rogutės,

Excerpts from Rogutės Sparnuotos's message of 2010-04-11 21:33:58 +0200:
> Why is the original site bad? I think that it provides more information
> and takes less vertical space. Only the screenshots could be bigger
> (and perhaps 4 instead of 6?).
It is hard to read and does not look good, IMO.

> 1. Your design doesn't work without javascript:
I didn’t notice that. I was able to view it just fine without JavaScript.
That being said, I very much suggest not using JavaScript for such a
website (containing static information only).

> 3. Some very useful, even if technical, pieces information has been lost in
I think the website draft was not final on which information should be on it,
just an idea where the design could go.

Best regards,
Michael

---

From: Michael Stipicevic <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2010 14:30:51 -0400

On Sun, Apr 11, 2010 at 11:54 AM, Anirudh Sanjeev <
[email-masked]> wrote:

> looks really good.

I'm a huge fan of the quick instructions to get an offlineimap/msmtp stack
set up. You can't properly use sup without these (or another Maildir/smtp
setup) and a user installing sup for the first time might be disappointed
when IMAP takes half an hour. I think it would be important to shy away from
calling it 'up and running with gmail' -- it makes sup look just like 'gmail
on the console' and might discourage users from trying it out -- if sup is
just gmail on the console, why should I care?

- Mike

---

From: Anirudh Sanjeev <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:00:23 +0530

Hi Roguetes,

Excerpts from rogutes's message of Mon Apr 12 04:17:00 +0530 2010:
> But the frontend of Sup is the ncurses client, isn't it? I do care about
> my e-mail client's UI, I care less about its website.
Please don't mix up a good UI and a graphical UI. Sup has a fantastic user
interface. If it put all of the information in a non-organized
non-efficient manner, the result might not be as pleasing as one might have
originally thought.

As for the website, I think that the proposed changes with the content
migrated will make it more appealing to potential users, and for hardcore
users who do not care less about a website, and rather evaluate a product
on it's own merits - it wouldn't bother them.

> _Wasted_ vertical space is bad: the more you see of the real content, the
> faster you skim through.
If you need to "skim through" then the content should be very precise,
highlighted and in a very simple manner - which it currently isn't.

> Your proposed list of features seems to enforce structure by design, but
> it fails to carry out its mission by succumbing to javascript fun. But
> yes, the current website could put some kind of emphasis on the features
> section.
If I see a new project's website, the number one question on my mind is
"How will this impact my life positively". I want people to understand that
sup will definitely change how they work for the better.

> The point is that the wiki, not the homepage, needs a facelift. And the
> homepage could list the most visited pages of the wiki.
> I've seen the GMail guide in the wiki prior sending my mail and I still
> feel that such a guide is more appropriate there.
The guide is still there on the wiki, and I just thought it might be useful
to put more important "Getting Started" information readily available. I
noticed one interesting thing however - sup-config presents a nice "wizard"
to configure your email, and is very user-friendly (as opposed to editing a
.suprc).

However, if a user feels that all he/she needs to get started and get
efficient is just sup (and doesn't know about offlineimap and msmtp), then
he/she might not get the full blown experience.

> copying the content, you replaced it with your version. If yours would be
> chosen as final, I would mourn the current one, so I raised my points
> about it.
I still have to migrate most of the content - I tried to include as much as
possible. You have already mentioned a few which I've already incorporated
(but can't push changes right now as I have some connectivity issues), but
this isn't a problem specifically.

Still, you have a very valid point - this isn't the optimum iteration of
the frontpage for sup's intended audience. But the question I ask is if the
old variant is, and if the new variant is better/worse off than the old
one.

> Anyway, our dialogue looks incompatible: you seem to be worried about
> projects lost in web space, whereas I am worried about the trends of the
> web. One more issue adding to the incompatibility might be the destructive
> tone I initially chose. Sorry about that.
I just find one thing disheartening - so many developers write a great tool
but lose motivation as it doesn't gather a great following. And also so
many users are looking for a good tool (how many people are out there
looking for a better email client), and even when the find the right one,
they're so "numbed" by the quick-click internet out there, that they just
ignore it unless it absolutely stands out.

As for trends on the web, I'm not a big "web2.0" person either. But I know
the value of good typography (for instance, are you happy putting a bad
font on your console), and presenting content in a manner that's easy to
grok.

Thank you,
Anirudh

---

From: Ramkumar Ramachandra <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2010 21:45:33 +0530

Neat design. Small quirk: I noticed that the "# ui =
Noninteractive.Quiet" line breaks due to the (very) long comment.
Perhaps you want to shorten it for the benefit of those who're blindly
copy-pasting?

-- Ram

---

From: Rogutės Sparnuotos <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2010 22:33:58 +0300

> Please provide any feedback about the design and contents.

I am not a user of sup - might try again when 0.12 comes out. But I am
sensitive when it comes to websites, so here goes my feedback.

It looks like what you are proposing is not a new website, but a shift in
targeted audience. You seem to be addressing the naive user, while
forgetting the more technical ones. I would suggest to aim for the middle,
going for the aesthetic looks (or at least matching the style of the
homepage and the wiki), but keeping the technical tongue (is there any
need to change the content of the current website?).

> > Then they shouldn't be using sup in the first place :)

But you do contradict yourself and that statement with the proposed
design:
1. Your design doesn't work without javascript:

    * Why would an overview of the features need animation? What does the
      animation give to the user, besides hiding a handful of text?
      Perhaps a feeling that the software in question might have hidden
      features?

   "
     The current version of Sup is 0.11, released 2010-03-07. This is a beta
     release. It supports mbox and Maildir mailstores.
   "
   
   "

-- 
--  Rogutės Sparnuotos

---

From: Anirudh Sanjeev <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2010 01:42:21 +0530

Hi,

I'm sorry, I don't buy the "intelligent/experienced/developer users don't
care about the frontend design" idea.

What I'm talking about is, for lack of a better term, "professionalism". If
anyone comes to a website, regardless of how experienced they are, the
decision is already made. If there isn't any apparent effort gone into the
user facing landing page, the user might get the impression that the
project isn't mature or worthy enough for active usage as well.

A funny story I just wrote to someone about:
Someone wrote a python web framework called "Denied":
http://denied.immersedcode.org/

Go check the website. It looks very interesting - a new minimalist
lightweight python web framework - complete with code snippets and
screencasts. It got a lot of positive response from the intelligent Hacker
News and Github communities.

Turns out it was an April Fools' joke. But that proves a point - people are
highly influenced by the quality of the tool.

> (and perhaps 4 instead of 6?).
Why is vertical space bad? I am not saying that the old website is bad. It
isn't immediately obvious what the exact _killer functionality_ of sup is,
unless you take a very close look.

My design makes it _immediately obvious_ why sup is going to positively
affect their lives, and reinforces it with visual feedback.

If you notice, the ruby language does the same thing:
http://ruby-lang.org
They don't need to show a code sample, but they do it anyway as people need
to _see_ what is so great about it.

> need to change the content of the current website?).
While I'm a programmer now, I spent a very large amount of time learning
about Usability. Usability is what makes GMail and Sup so much better to
use. And usability is not only about making buttons bigger or keyboard
shortcuts nicer.

It's a lot about putting the important information in the places where
people are more likely to look - so that people avoid having to look and
give up.

> But you do contradict yourself and that statement with the proposed

By the extension of your logic, the ruby gems website:
http://rubygems.org/
Needs to be coded solely in <h1> and <h2> as well. I'm sure that the
website is not the way it currently is because it's intended to be that way
to attract the targeted audience, but rather because the devs just didn't
have the interest to work on the design.

> 1. Your design doesn't work without javascript:
Agreed. Nor does the rest of the Internet.

>       Perhaps a feeling that the software in question might have hidden
The animation gives the user nothing. It merely makes it seem slightly more
appealing. Also, the user can find out more about specific features that
interests him/her.

> 2. First 700px of the page show nothing useful, except for a screenshot
Have you heard of "minimalism"? There's a reason why clean desks and rooms
are more enjoyable than cluttered dirty ones. It's not a developer/end-user
thing it's a human thing.

>      git clone git://gitorious.org/sup/mainline.git
I just hacked together this website for a few hours, even despite having my
own projects to work on. I will be putting the source code up on github
soon. I never mentioned this is the final design, let alone the final
content.

>    the authors of the website :)
Again, that slipped my notice. Thank you for pointing it out. I'll put it
up there. I am required to put up the main author's website because of
attribution laws. But I will be removing my own name as my contribution
isn't significant enough to merit credit.

> As for the GMail guide, wouldn't it be very useful in the wiki?
It's been on the wiki for four months. I wrote it. It's very hard to find
on the wiki.

I hope this again, reinforces my "don't make everything harder to find just
because you target advanced users" belief. Instead of taking the most
important information and putting it somewhere you'll have to google around
for, put it right where people would expect to find it.

tl;dr: It has nothing to do with a target audience. Saying a more pleasing
website does not appeal to hackers is mild stereotyping, and I am not sure
whether to be flattered or offended.

I've seen this issue a lot before - we write awesome, incredible code and
put it up on a wiki, and don't put in even a hundredth of effort doing
design as it's not intellectually satisfying. So you've got great projects
which fail to distinguish themselves from the crowd - on wikis and github
accounts around the world, there are great projects just like sup nobody
takes notice of.

And then you wonder why nobody is interested in your project. It happened
to me and my projects as well.

What I'm hoping is that if someone visits the sup site, they should be
excited and interested to try it out - and having something mildly
professional and something that seems to have some effort put into it will
surely help. More people trying it out is better for all of us.

This is just a proposed facelift. The devs decide what happens and what
doesn't. I just posted to get some constructive feedback and I'm sure I'll
get some real soon.

Thanks,
Anirudh

---

From: Anirudh Sanjeev <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2010 02:44:32 +0530

Hi Phillip,

> It's very well possible that I wouldn't have tried sup with that website.
I understand what you're saying. I didn't do any of the design - I should
mention this upfront. I'm not a design person at all. I just thought some
other Creative Commons licensed work was good and thought I could modify it
to benefit some other project.

> because of the little bit of bragging information I got.

The tone does seem like it's a little pretentious, yes. Any suggestions on
how the content can be changed will be addressed. The fact that the link is 

> assume it's written mainly for gmail.
I only put it up as I wrote the content earlier and many people mentioned
it helped them get started with sup. While IMAP is supported out of the
box, most people use OfflineImap, and msmtp support is not that
significantly documented.

For me, it's about conversion ratio. If n users come on to the site, and m
users finally end up installing and using sup, we need to make that ratio
better. Since most people use the IMAP setup - having the instructions for
that more prominently featured on the page will help them have a more
gratifying experience.

I speak very strongly about "gratification". If user X comes on, downloads,
installs and has to fish around just to get started, then there's a good
chance he/she will give up and move on with their lives, unless they are
_actively_ looking for a good email client in which case the website
wouldn't have mattered anyways.

> the top, which make navigation to other parts of the page a bit easier.
I don't have any issue with it either. I can recount my own experience when
I started out with sup.

I saw the sup website. Thought "oh, another console email client" and moved
on, but bookmarked it on delicious before leaving. I used to use mutt and
evolution at this point in time.

The pain points got to me and I finally ended up trying sup, and had to
figure out a good deal of things on my own - notably how to get
offlineimap, msmtp and sup to play together.

If I had seen a more appealing and in-your-face website, I might have
considered giving it a bit more interest. I guess it's not about looking
good as much as it is about standing out. There are a lot of other projects
and mail clients over there, and a more memorable and appealing design will
make people give it the attention I feel sup deserves.

Then again, I feel compelled to inform that I didn't do much of the design.
If the community feels that this isn't a step in the right direction,
it would be perfectly fine.

Thanks,
Anirudh

---

From: Anirudh Sanjeev <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:25:27 +0530

> web 2.0 gradients and shiny bubbles, which is something I would like to
Thank you :)

> references to IMAP should probably be removed--but I'm fine with the
I've put the entire code on github:
http://github.com/ninjagod/misc/tree/master/supsite/

Please send changes you feel fit as patches or send me a pull request. I am
unfortunately a little busy with university work till the weekend.

I plan to change the GMail specific guide to a generic IMAP guide. If a
user plans to use Sup, they can figure out how to change it for Gmail.

Thanks,
Anirudh

---

From: Anirudh Sanjeev <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2010 21:24:21 +0530

Hi,

Thanks,
Anirudh

---

From: Tero Tilus <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2010 09:53:12 +0300

Anirudh Sanjeev, 2010-04-11 18:54:
> I took the liberty to give the Sup frontpage a facelift.
[...]
> Please provide any feedback about the design and contents.

I like it very much.  The way the features are introduced is just
awesome!  Only without javascript the layout somewhat explodes.

Would it be too much to ask if the source-order and default styles (to
be modified using js) would be such that the feature introduction
texts and respective images would be laid out side-by-side aligned if
js was not available?

> Also, I was under the impression writing a project in ruby and not
> having a really nice website for it is a syntax error :)

Right about that...

Which reminds me of logo.  Would it be cool to have one for sup?  I
missed a sup-icon when i was setting up "one touch to sup" (just plain
quicklaunch `ssh myself@mysupbox -t screen -drU`) for my n900.
Currently sup is only a beveled, rounded blue square on my
communications-desktop. :)

---

From: Tero Tilus <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2010 10:56:03 +0300

Philipp, 2010-04-11 23:47:
> The JS thing with description and changing image is a nice idea, but
> I'd either not click it (because I'd read the site first and had to
> assume it leads me to another one)

Fair point.  The list should have some visual clue to suggest that
items are not links but just switch between "tabs".  Maybe a
surrounding box and small down arrow (kinda like
http://guides.rubyonrails.org/ "Guides Index" has) to give the feeling
of opening a box/list instead of clicking a hyperlink.

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2010 01:47:00 +0300

<..snip..>

<..snip..>

> thing it's a human thing.

Sup's home is a very good example of HTML minimalism. It has minimal
design, too. And is enjoyable. A matter of taste, I guess.

<..snip..>

> doesn't. I just posted to get some constructive feedback and I'm sure I'll

I was trying to compare the current website with the proposed one,
criticizing the latter. Even if you didn't make the design, you have
chosen it. I found the colors ok, but I didn't like non-degrading
javascript and the amount of vertical space wasted. Next, instead of
copying the content, you replaced it with your version. If yours would be
chosen as final, I would mourn the current one, so I raised my points
about it.