Talk:Why
Discussions and ideas for why.openoffice.org website. Use edit button near each section below to contribute to existing discussions or use the PLUS (+) sign above to start a new discussion with a different subject.
Contents
Brainstorming: Other sections/areas/ideas for WHY.OOo
There might be other sections or ideas needed at some point and to be presented in the why.openoffice.org site. To add to this list: Login, [edit] this talk and place your ideas with bullets below. It's brainstorming and any idea is good. Might come in handy later. P.S. don't forget to sign.
- Section for those preparing to argument and give speach to a certain target market ? I mean, having links to the best materials argumenting Why... for a certain market. In the same idea, how about podcasts to listen while traveling to the meeting ? (Cdriga 17:57, 22 April 2006 (CEST))
- Countering the missleading arguments used by the competition: There is a lot of FUD and a lot of missleading arguments brought in especially by MSFT when it comes to why MSFT and NOT OOo. We must have clear responses to give in an open debate when trying to convince (Cdriga 17:57, 22 April 2006 (CEST))
- A section introducing the community. There are a lot of materials about this. We can link to them. In therms of advantages we can say for instance: "A community consisting in more than one corporation (like with the MSFT support) ensures a quicker improvement of the product and better support for end-users. You would be able to choose for instance the best support service. You don't have that option with single companies developing alone a product.".
There can be other approaches too, this was an attempted example in therms of advantages of having a community behind. Then invite to exploration of the community and more info in existing pages. (Cdriga 18:23, 22 April 2006 (CEST))
Directory structure for why.OOo
How to discuss
Start a new sub-section by [clicking here] and adding at the end of all the texts your new title between three equal signs (=== Ttitle ===), or edit an existing sub-section to contribute your ideas.
why.openoffice.org in your native language
Even if all the native language projects have pages presenting the product and community in their way, how about having versions of the why.OOo site in those languages too ? This could show the true international nature of OpenOffice.org and could be reached faster and present the WHY! arguments in therms of advantages right from the start in the respective languages and then send for more information to the NLC websites.
For example:
- http://why.openoffice.org/ --> the main English site
- http://why.openoffice.org/de/ --> german version
- http://why.openoffice.org/es/ --> spanish version
...etc for each native language. Another way would be to simply have those replica sites on the NLC sites directly and only point to them. And another one, to keep a simpler directory structure would be by having all the NLC versions in one folder:
- http://why.openoffice.org/nlc/de/ --> german version
- http://why.openoffice.org/nlc/es/ --> spanish version
Just an idea worth considering for reaching faster and in an unified form to a larger audience. Opinions ? (Cdriga 19:23, 22 April 2006 (CEST))
Then we should include a "Select your language" dropdown on the homepage.
First I thought it would be better to link directly to the NLC projects, because they will have to keep them updated, but for visual identity reasons I'd like to keep the replicas of the homepage under our control. These pages should only be translations of the homepage - and the subpages should be linked to the NLC projects. If they haven't created own pages, there should be a redirection to the English ones (best with a short explanation, that the page doesn't exist in the moment).(BeDipp 23:30, 22 April 2006 (CEST))
Design Ideas for the Homepage
We want to tell very much with just a few words - that's not easy at all. In my eyes Cristian's ideas here are the maximum we can include in the homepage - but I'd like to add the link to the community mentioned above...
The page should be based on graphics and links, with additional informations, when the mouse hovers over such a link. So the abbreviated decriptions can be expanded:
- Administration -> governments and public administrations
- Education -> educational establshments (schools, colleges, universities)
- Libraries -> public libraries
- SME -> small and medium enterprises (SME)
- non-profit org. -> Not-For-Profits (NFP): NGO, charity, voluntary...
- Distributors -> Own-Equipment-Manufacturers (OEM), Linux and other CD/DVD Distributors
further ideas for the draft attached to the issue
- graphics should be designed following a single theme (I just collected them from Openclipart.org) - we'll have to create graphics for "it's great/free/easy" too - the section in the right lower corner should be easy to be updated (a table with different background color for example) where we can add the links to actual topics. If they can start with "Why", it would be great.
The large blue gradient part (Why! OpenOffice.org) could be repeated in a small version as link back to the homepage on every subpage of this project.
Let's see what will be done here...
BeDipp 23:30, 22 April 2006 (CEST)
Charles Schulz did comment inside the issue - for continuing in one place I add his comments here:
"-There is an entry for the SME but not for the large companies (why? :) )
-The drawing for non-profit is good; but the cross on the top of the building (incidently letting us understand that this is a church) is... well, it may appeal one category of NPOs and NGOs but not all of them. Our worldwide size and structure makes these kinds of allusions difficult to pass on to everybody. It may be wise to redesign the picture."
My answers:
- I took the entries from Cristians proposals (how would you call larger companies?), for me there is no problem adding more categories (except with the space - 7 entries go quite easy with a table, with eight it's no longer symmetric...).
- As mentioned above the graphics are just placeholders for a final set of graphics, so if you have any better idea for the icons, please tell us! (I sent a message to the art mailing list, but didn't get an answer by now).
BeDipp 13:43, 23 April 2006 (CEST)
Why categorize companies by size? I suggest using a term like Enterprise or Businesses for any size business. I also have problems with 'adminstration' I think we should use a more general term like 'public sector'.
Some remarks about the test-page attachement of the issue. I made them to the french team, but they are probably better here:
- IMHO the Why rectangle on the top should have some rounded angles and a small border to make it less hard. I thought at the mozilla home page rectangle borders.
- the "OpenOffice.org" blue and the why rectangle one aren't the same: it looks a bit strange to me
- Perhaps the icons could be in another rectanle with a light background instead of being separated by a dotted line. This is only an idea which may not be better than this one.
