DojoToolkit.org Request for Comments
The new website has been online for a while now. Not too terribly long, but long enough for users to form an opinion about it. We'd like to know what those opinions are, and this post is exactly where we'd like to see them. You all know that we start using Drupal for our website since it provides a fully featured Content Management System that is just oozing with features and modules that are capable of providing our users with a better experience when browsing DojoToolkit.org.
We have been running Drupal with a minimalist feature set (visible to the users) primarily because it looks clean; however, we are curious if there are features that would improve your user experience. A few examples of things that we aren't currently using are:
- Recent comments (display X most recent comments)
- Forum activity (display X most recent posts from Forums)
- Most popular content (display X most popular (highest viewed I believe) nodes)
These are just a few of the options available through Drupal. Obviously we can do a lot more than that, but we are curious what would improve ease of use of the site. Keep in mind that with the current design, these would all be moving to the left column if used, and this as well was one of the deciding factors in not using any of these by default. There are no promises on what may or may not make it onto the site, but we are always curious what the community thinks.
remaining work
Hi Karl. Not sure what kind of comments you are looking for. For me, the main thing is all the remaining work left:
- move pages from dojo.jot.com
- make email notifications nicer so they include all the text, not just a teaser
- convert developer/dijit to be in book format so it's not so hard to add new pages
Those are the three I can think of off the top of my head but I'm sure there's more.
Looking for what the users
Looking for what the users see, I'm aware of the Dev side (for the most part). I wasnt aware of the book idea for Dijit Notebook... thats definately an easy fix I think. I'm curious what the users think needs work useability wise, not necessarily content wise since we know that is a problem.
-Karl
demos
I miss the more elaborate set of demos that used to be on the old site. Always handy to show people what Dojo can do and sometimes even for pointers on how to use a particular widget.
It seems the current demos are mainly focussed around SVG stuff
regards,
Jeroen
demos were really the nightly tests.
Jeroen--
Most of the "demos" were really pointers to the nightly tests, which have always been available:
http://archive.dojotoolkit.org/nightly/widget/tests/
(or pick your "edition"). Eventually we will be adding a more extensive set of demos (if they aren't around already) but even the old site simply loaded many of these tests in an IFRAME.
That link is broken.
Looking at http://archive.dojotoolkit.org/nightly/dojotoolkit/dojo/tests/runTests.h..., I was redirected to a selection of tests seem to run in a thing called DOH, though none of the test groups appeared at a glance to be for widgets.
Ah, I see. The tests are scattered about in http://archive.dojotoolkit.org/nightly/dojotoolkit/dojo/tests/ There seems to be less of them than before, though I've not looked thoroughly, and I can't see a menu system like there was before.
[Looks a bit more]
Ah, the rest is at
http://archive.dojotoolkit.org/nightly/dojotoolkit/dojox/tests/
and
http://archive.dojotoolkit.org/nightly/dojotoolkit/dijit/tests/
including widget tests.
Oh, and I got this error. I'll file a bug later if need be, I just want to make a note of it.
GROUP "dojox.tests.date.posix" has 5 tests to run _AssertFailure: http://archive.dojotoolkit.org/nightly/dojotoolkit/dojo/dojo.js:189 doh._AssertFailure: assertEqual() failed: expected |Sunday, January 1, 2006 6:23:00 PM| but got |Sunday, 1 January 2006 18:23:00 GM| doh._AssertFailure ERROR IN: (function test_date_strftime(t) {... stuff ... }) FAILED test: test_date_strftimeIn the middle of switching things...
http://archive.dojotoolkit.org/dojo-2007-05-15/widget/tests/
Sorry. We've been having major issues with the nightly builds taking the machine down (which is why the site was down yesterday morning for a bit), and it looks like Dustin has switched the nightlies to point at the new 0.9 fork, which is a complete break from the past.
The link I posted above should work for you just fine, but understand that that is probably it for the 0.4.x branch.
DOH is the new "Dojo Objective Harness" tool, which is the new unit-testing platform. It does not include any widget tests if you go through the Dojo project, but you can see widget tests with the Dijit project (which is an actual project, no longer part of Dojo itself).
About the demos
IMHO you should take more care to make sure that dojo newbies have access to the demos. Doesn't matter to me if you call them tests or demos, but since there is no working documentation for most widgets, the demos is all we dojo users have to figure out how to use dojo.
Other than that I really like the new website. :-)
One person's usability review
Think about what the user coming to the site needs to see:
1) what is dojo?
2) what is it good for?
3) where do I get it?
4) how do I use it?
5) where do i get help?
6) who else is using it?
Right now, it feels as though the homepage in particular is good at 3), but not very good at the others.
I'd propose that there should be a less bloggy feel to the home page and that the top half of the main content area be more about 1, 2 and 3. As others have pointed out, building a showcase area: demos, nightly tests, and 3rd party sites using Dojo.
Other comments:
-- the layout loses a lot of real estate to the ratings. They could be 80% smaller and still be functional. Do we really need ratings for every page? Do they really need to be over 3 lines?
-- the book area is hard to read -- having to get a new page for what feels like each paragraph makes reading a "book" very painful.
-- the fonts seem huge. Especially on http://dojotoolkit.org/demos. That page should be an intro to the set of demos available, not just a blog of demos, since the last demo to be added might not deserve 100% of the above-the-fold area.
-- In general, I think the layout could be tighter. The home page doesn't have enough content, and takes way too much space. Read it with a 13" screen and it takes a lot of scrolling & clicking to get to info. The bit that says:
Login or register to post comments
Read more
Unsubscribe post
Is confusing and uses a lot of space. I've never read of "Unsubscribe post". Why do I see "unsubscribe" even if I'm not logged in? "Login or Register to post comments" shouldn't be repeated on every entry. Instead it should be "Add comment", and that should ask me to login/register in order to submit a comment.
-- "0.4.2" is the most prominent thing on the home page. Is that really what we want to tell people? Three meaningless (to them) numbers? I suggest that it's "Dojo Ajax Edition (version 0.4.2)".
You asked for comments =)
--david
Regarding the 1-6... are
Regarding the 1-6... are Menus not used by most people? The first thing I see are "Demos Documentation Downloads Support" right at the top... and then as I move down "About Demos (again) Developer Documentation (again) Downloads (again) Foundation (tells a bit about who uses it) Support (again)
Ratings, arent appearing very useful right now... and they have a flaw... (users shouldnt be able to rate their own post... so far we have a bunch of repeated topics in the forums all with 1-5star vote...) (going to disable ratings in the teasers for now if possible...)
The book... Drupals book module is getting overhaulled for Drupal 6 actually... its not perfect obviously, but it is limited in how it lets you create books.
The huge 0.4.2 image... not my idea ;) Not sure why Drupal would show anon users "unsubscribe post" but thats for registered users who subscribe to updates to a node or page... so you can stop recieving them.
Thanks for the comments! Will definately look into some of these right away, (demo page for example) and the Ratings obviously.
-Karl
menus
I think you'd find if you did an eye tracking study that the first things people would see is the big pink button. They'd spend some time trying to figure out what it meant. Then they would go to the top left and see the pretty logo and the tag line -- aha, a javascript toolkit!. Then they'd look for information about what makes this toolkit different than all the others, and they'd be swamped with 0.4.3, 0.9 M2, 3DNY (more acronyms!), and walk away, because we didn't tell them that:
Dojo is the coolest JS toolkit because ____.
I doubt they'd ever see the menus, which are in a tiny font compared to much of the rest of the page. Even if they did, they're not at that level of commitment yet -- they're still just "looking". Clicking on a menu is way too much commitment for a first date. And even if they did want to click on a menu, the only place that describes Dojo is About, which isn't in the most prominent menus on the top right.
Aside: As a logged in user, I see a "submit spam" button -- shouldn't that read "Flag as inappropriate" or something? Also, the capitalization in all of those links is inconsistent, and the spacing between the various areas is odd. I think it'd be good to use styling to separate what appear to be 1) source of the post, 2) comment I/O, 3) categories, and "verbs" (unpublish, etc.).
Comments from a newbie
I just started working on an existing project that makes heavy use of Dojo, so I came here to learn more about it. These are my initial impressions, after about 30 minutes of poking around:
Thanks!
Just out of curiosity, what
-Karl
Comments from another newbie
I agree with Jeroen 100% . For a new user visiting the site, the original demos showed power of Dojo in a very clear and impressive way, and the ease with which you could view the source code was very useful. I realize the demos are still available in the 'demos' directory of the package, but I think it's an invaluable resource to maintain on the site. Although I am very interested in the dojo.gfx rendering of svg/vml, I have had difficulty finding documentation on the specific implementation of dojo.gfx (aside from the API guide, or from viewing the source of the Dojo.gfx demos). Also, it would be great to have a clear-marked path to view the source code of the dojo.gfx examples right on the same page, as before.
Thanks!
--Steven
An editable wiki.
It would be good if there were a public editable wiki. This could be separate from the devs' one if required. How do devs get permission to edit (either the trac one or the jotspot one)? Why is it not clearly linked to from the main front page or the one of the developer pages? Should this be an FAQ if the answer is more complex than "we haven't set it up yet"?
Oh, and the API page's iframe refers to a broken link (just noticed the edit button).
http://dojotoolkit.org/api
Being able to delete and undelete your own posts would be good, too (I assume they're just flagged not to be displayed and are retained in the database).
The wiki's are going away...
The wiki's are going away... the whole purpose of the new site was to unify all the data into 1 website.
API link is fixed, thanks :)
As for delete/undelete... users will never have the right to delete posts... why? Because if they delete a post that has useful replies to it... all that useful information gets deleted as well.
-Karl
Disappointed Newbie
The removal of the old style demos is a real step back. So what if they were the nightly tests. They showcased what dojo could do. I really don't understand why they have been removed and why you seem to have such a reticence to put them up. There should be a demo of each and every widget.
I think the documentation is really really poor. This is the biggest problem with dojo.
dojo can obviously do many things really really well but it is very very very hard to get started. One ends up having to piece the information together by reading examples and dismantling the source code. Someone suggested an editable wiki and that would be a very good solution.
Have one page per widget that as those struggle through working how to use that widget have success, they can write the details on that page for the benefit of others.
The second biggest problem is that there do not seem to be any examples that actually show updating data in a database. Some examples with a php back end would be good for me and presumably java back end examples and so on would help people who use those technologies.
Thanks
The demos arent gone, they
The demos arent gone, they are still available, however they are not of the standard we want displayed on the new website. We are trying to work out a suitable demo engine (as we've said many many times already) that works effectively with the new site and not via IFRAME like the current Demos. Those demos are primarly a test case for us to find what works and doesnt with the new site. When a suitable method of display for the test cases is found, the demos section will be better than unit tests.
As for database... there are plenty of examples using dojo.io.bind. What you write in Dojo for updating a database is identical no matter what backend you use... you call your backend page with whatever parameters you wrote your back to accept...
-Karl
Projects
Hi,
I think it would be nice to have an area with references. Many projects do use dojo ;) , so the users can post links to them.
So long
tim
I agree. Having "showcase"
I agree.
Having "showcase" category in forums is great, but it should be a page listing successful projects using dojo. It will be very useful for people who want to know what dojo is capable of.
Also a hello world tutorial directly accessible from the left menu would be great.
That was the intended
That was the intended purpose for the Showcase area on the Forums, but people keep posting test pages instead of applications/websites.
-Karl
That was the intended
Anyway I think it should be a section in the site, besides the one that exist in the forums. Actually, I think there should a big link to that section in the homepage.
Marketing is very important if you want to get a big user community.
Issues with website ... As on 23 - may
hi ..
Well I could see some issues with website and they are :
1> 0.9 is not shown up on download page, but book of 0.9 claims tht it can be got from there .. Although I understand if book is addressing some future audience and becomes relevant after 0.9 beta is out
2> Next and previous link of 0.9 books r messed up .. Plz look at this
http://dojotoolkit.org/sample-part-1-section-1-quick-install#comment-238...
Dipen Chaudhary
http://dipen.co.nr (under Construction)
http://ajaxkarma.blogspot.com
I would like to see more
I would like to see more articles per page (not 4 per page as it is now)
Mmmm I like the rest as it is ;-)
___________________
Visit my blog
API fix
The api page still displays "The 0.4.x API is currently unavailable, we'll get this back up as soon as possible. Sorry for the inconvenience. In the interim Dante (one of the committers) has made a copy hosted on his server available until we get in touch with our ops people. It can be found here: http://dojo.inpdx.net/dojobox/trunk/api/ its revision 8582 from 0.4.2 but the API hasn't changed that much for 0.4.3.". Please fix this.