Web page looks pretty poor compared to Mathematica's
Dr. David Kirkby
http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/index.html
and then comparing it to
one would have to say the Mathematica one looks much better.
I've designed a few web sites:
But nothing as sophisticated as the Mathematica one, so would not be
able to help.
Would it not be worth spending some money on paying a competent
professional web designer, and charging him with a task of making the
sage homepage as good as the Mathematica one? Ideally more pages, but of
course it all costs money. Just a really nice homepage would be nice.
I do feel the current Sage page gives the wrong impression.
It's clear one needs to be quite artistic in designing good looking web
pages. It really is a specialist skill and not something likely to be
had someone who studied maths.
I also looked at the Maple web page:
and in my opinion, its not as good as the Mathematica one.
The MATLAB one looks pretty good to me:
http://www.mathworks.com/products/matlab/
Though of course these things are subjective.
Dave
Jason Grout
> Taking a look at
>
> http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/index.html
>
> and then comparing it to
>
> http://www.sagemath.org/
>
> one would have to say the Mathematica one looks much better.
>
> I've designed a few web sites:
>
> http://witm.sourceforge.net/
>
> But nothing as sophisticated as the Mathematica one, so would not be
> able to help.
>
> Would it not be worth spending some money on paying a competent
> professional web designer, and charging him with a task of making the
> sage homepage as good as the Mathematica one? Ideally more pages, but of
> course it all costs money. Just a really nice homepage would be nice.
I think we have a very competent web designer that has done an
outstanding job (you should see the old web page!). I think what we
need now is marketing ideas! The big difference I see in a short glance
between the two pages is that the MMA one screams "I AM MATH SOFTWARE
AND YOU WANT TO USE ME! (and here's why you want to use me)", while the
Sage page says, "I am a piece of software you may be interested in;
here's lots of helpful information about me."
>
> I do feel the current Sage page gives the wrong impression.
>
> It's clear one needs to be quite artistic in designing good looking web
> pages. It really is a specialist skill and not something likely to be
> had someone who studied maths.
>
I think we (collectively) definitely have the technical competence on
board to implement whatever designs people come up with. I think we
(collectively) also have at least a decent amount of design experience
and taste. I think what we could use is a very experienced advertising
person (or lots of good marketing ideas). But I also get the impression
that that is basically what you are suggesting.
Jason
Timothy Clemans
<jason...@creativetrax.com> wrote:
>
> Dr. David Kirkby wrote:
>> Taking a look at
>>
>> http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/index.html
>>
>> and then comparing it to
>>
>> http://www.sagemath.org/
>>
>> one would have to say the Mathematica one looks much better.
>>
>> I've designed a few web sites:
>>
>> http://witm.sourceforge.net/
>>
>> But nothing as sophisticated as the Mathematica one, so would not be
>> able to help.
>>
>> Would it not be worth spending some money on paying a competent
>> professional web designer, and charging him with a task of making the
>> sage homepage as good as the Mathematica one? Ideally more pages, but of
>> course it all costs money. Just a really nice homepage would be nice.
Jason that focusing on marketing would help a lot.
Professional designers charge thousands of dollars. I've heard of
people getting paid a couple grand for a far less complicated site
than sagemath.org. I think the money would be much better spent on
hardware and adding functionality to Sage.
Harald Schilly
wrote:
> professional web designer, and charging him with a task of making the
> sage homepage as good as the Mathematica one? Ideally more pages, but of
> course it all costs money. Just a really nice homepage would be nice.
like some time ago. second, i think the website is okay in a way, that
it serves it purpose and after 10 seconds you know what it is about.
There are much more important things to do before we think about a mma
like page and there a couple of things they do, which we won't. one
thing is flash for dynamic stuff (i don't have any idea how flash
works and i oppose it since it's close source) and dynamic webpages.
we only serve static pages at the moment, that's the reason why we
don't have a cms, too.
also, don't expect a web developer to produce any content. they
present you designs with stubs and then you are restricted by their
specific layout. what we would need are "content developers" for
documentation and wiki pages. i.e. somebody like paid students ...
i also thought about some changes to the current design. some things
can be improved without too much work. i'll look into that this
summer. and last but not least, if someone wants to write some content
or improve something (like the /tour.html pages) email me!
harald
Dag Sverre Seljebotn
> Taking a look at
>
> http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/index.html
>
> and then comparing it to
>
> http://www.sagemath.org/
>
> one would have to say the Mathematica one looks much better.
The Mathematica one looks like every other commercial software website
out there. The glossiness kicks me instantly into a mode of trying to
skip the marketing hype, meaning I hardly read any of it.
I might not be the typical audience such a webpage must try to recruit,
but I have to say that I much prefer the Sage website.
--
Dag Sverre
Jan Groenewald
On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 04:47:51PM +0200, Dag Sverre Seljebotn wrote:
> The Mathematica one looks like every other commercial software website
> out there. The glossiness kicks me instantly into a mode of trying to
> skip the marketing hype, meaning I hardly read any of it.
>
> I might not be the typical audience such a webpage must try to recruit,
> but I have to say that I much prefer the Sage website.
I have to agree with that. The sage site attracts me, the mathematica one
puts me off. Perhaps we are typical users after all.
Jan
--
.~.
/V\ Jan Groenewald
/( )\ www.aims.ac.za
^^-^^
bump
mathematica page.
I have one constructive comment, which is that one gets misled
in looking for the documentation. There are two buttons, one
called "help" and one called "library". If you want the docs you
want help. But if you guess that the documentation would be
under library, the first thing you see is "documentation project".
If you go there, you miss the main sage docs.
To me it would be better if the "help" button were supplemented
by a button called "documentation", and "help" was reserved for
links to sage-support etc. Moreover the "library" links that are
documentation related could be moved to documentation, and
the remaining links could be relabelled "news" since the word
library could mean different things to different people.
This is just a suggestion. There could be a better way, but I
do think there is a minor problem here. When I go to the main
page I want to see the word "documentation", not guess where
to look with multiple choices.
simon...@uni-jena.de
On 23 Mai, 18:43, bump <b...@match.stanford.edu> wrote:
> I agree that the sage web page is good, and preferrable to the
> mathematica page.
absolutely no doubt that Mathematica is about mathematics. Sage, on
the opposite, could be about cooking/gardening/botanics, about wisdom
(at least in French) and about accounting (the other Sage software).
Hence, it might be a good idea to make it clearer that SAGE IS ABOUT
MATHS, FOLKS! This might be achieved by Eye Catchers: Some nice
graphics; some icons illustrating what a link links with (e.g., a mini-
screen-shot of the notebook for a link to sagenb.org), etc.
These are things that the Mathematica web site has. On the other hand,
these are exactly the things that I DO NOT like on the Mathematica web
site! Simply the look of that page makes me nervous, one has all these
tiny little icons and the big sharp scary-looking surface, and it
would definitely take a couple of minutes before I knew what link I
need to follow in order to get anything interesting.
In conclusion:
I find the Sage page looks better than the Mathematica page. One thing
to improve: Make it obvious (by one big carefully placed picture) that
Sage is for mathematics.
> I have one constructive comment, which is that one gets misled
> in looking for the documentation.
A "library" is about books. A (reference) manual and other "static"
documentation is (at least virtually) a book. Hence, I strongly
believe that the link to both documentation and tutorial should be
under Library.
And what is "help"? I believe that "help" is an active process. Hence,
a manual, that is passively read, is certainly useful to solve one's
problems, but it is not "help" at all, IMHO! Reading a manual is
helping oneself, not getting help.
Help is:
- sage-support (get new answers by people)
- FAQ (get answers by reading old answers)
- Search (get answers by a machine)
My suggestions:
1. The six big icons in the middle of the page should be re-arranged.
Search should be beside help (since search is help), and feature tour
should be beside library (since a feature tour is something like the
foreword of a manual)
2. Provide a direct link to the FAQ on the main page. Actually it took
me a while to find them.
Best regards,
Simon
simon...@uni-jena.de
On 23 Mai, 19:34, simon.k...@uni-jena.de wrote:
> Hence, it might be a good idea to make it clearer that SAGE IS ABOUT
> MATHS, FOLKS! This might be achieved by Eye Catchers: Some nice
> graphics; some icons illustrating what a link links with (e.g., a mini-
> screen-shot of the notebook for a link to sagenb.org), etc.
notebook servers. Is "Running Sage Online" clearer?
And, by the way, the link "milnix.org" seems not to work.
Best regards,
Simon
Harald Schilly
> I have one constructive comment, which is that one gets misled
Well, you know, two points for my defense: I'm not a native speaker
and these things evolved over time. i.e. help vs. library happened
incrementally and not at once.
Below help is a link "documentation". I can exchange help and
documentation. what about that? deal? :)
Simon:
(docs, groups, search and irc)
And about rearranging. I think it makes no difference and i hesitate
to change it. Also, the most likely watched page for new users is the
feature tour, therefore i wouldn't like to move it downwards, too.
More important for me would be an improvement of the feature tour
itself. I'll upload more graphics soon and I still have the wish to
post something about benchmarks: tour-benchmark.html with code on the
left and explanation + timings on the right. Written in a way that it
attracts new casual visitors, very simple, nothing technical...
H
Harald Schilly
> 2. Provide a direct link to the FAQ on the main page. Actually it took
> me a while to find them.
mean that one?) has very poor quality. i just looked there and old
things like "How do I use the notebook with Firefox 3.0 beta 5" are
still there. Unless we have somebody who maintains those things better
its kinda risky, because someone who seeks for answers might be
shocked by such a poor site.
an example of a wiki page that works better is in my opinion the
interact page. one day i splitted it up into smaller sub categories
(since then there are new ones and so on) and everytime i look there,
i find something new. It is also the most often viewed wiki section
(especially due to the fact that it is linked from the tour.html page)
so, to get something going with the faq page on the wiki site, someone
has to split it up by topic (install, general, project, ... ????) and
remove silly/old questions. Then, there should also be an introduction
on the main faq page, linking to documentation and help, and also
links back to the main faq page from every sub topic.
Harald
Dr. David Kirkby
> I think we have a very competent web designer that has done an
> outstanding job (you should see the old web page!). I think what we
> need now is marketing ideas! The big difference I see in a short glance
> between the two pages is that the MMA one screams "I AM MATH SOFTWARE
> AND YOU WANT TO USE ME! (and here's why you want to use me)", while the
> Sage page says, "I am a piece of software you may be interested in;
> here's lots of helpful information about me."
I think that pretty much sums it up. The Mathematica home page tells you
why you want to use Mathematica.
But the Mathematica page is also much more aesthetically pleasing. The
use of nice colours helps - I'm not convinced using only blue and black
is a good idea.
The Mathematica logo is very attractive. I know one can dismiss these as
irrelavant/unimportant, but I feel they give the impression the product
is more professional.
I personally don't find the flash on the Mathematica site irritating
(unlike some other sites that use flash), but I know it's not to
everyone's taste.
>> I do feel the current Sage page gives the wrong impression.
>>
>> It's clear one needs to be quite artistic in designing good looking web
>> pages. It really is a specialist skill and not something likely to be
>> had someone who studied maths.
>>
>
> I think we (collectively) definitely have the technical competence on
> board to implement whatever designs people come up with. I think we
> (collectively) also have at least a decent amount of design experience
> and taste. I think what we could use is a very experienced advertising
> person (or lots of good marketing ideas). But I also get the impression
> that that is basically what you are suggesting.
I am sure some marketing ideas could be taken from the Mathematica,
Maple and MATLAB web pages. One might as well take the best ideas of
these sites and use them.
Marshall Hampton
-M. Hampton
Serge A. Salamanka
simon...@uni-jena.de wrote:
> Hi!
>
> On 23 Mai, 18:43, bump <b...@match.stanford.edu> wrote:
>> I agree that the sage web page is good, and preferrable to the
>> mathematica page.
> These are things that the Mathematica web site has. On the other hand,
> these are exactly the things that I DO NOT like on the Mathematica web
> site! Simply the look of that page makes me nervous, one has all these
> tiny little icons and the big sharp scary-looking surface, and it
> would definitely take a couple of minutes before I knew what link I
> need to follow in order to get anything interesting.
!!! this is true !!!
hard packaging of Mathematica's website with flash, colors, boxes and
other stuff makes me very nervous.
Usually I skip such sites as profit orientated because it is really hard
to find useful things straight away.
Sage website is just perfect. I thought some professional was designing
it...
>
> In conclusion:
> I find the Sage page looks better than the Mathematica page. One thing
> to improve: Make it obvious (by one big carefully placed picture) that
> Sage is for mathematics.
>
The first thing one reads is:
Sage is a free open-source mathematics software system licensed under
the GPL.
What more does it need to make it clear that Sage is about math ?
Probably that blue background space could be modified somehow adding
mathematics look.
Regards,
Serge
J Elaych
sucks, for reasons that have already been posted here. I decided to
adopt Sage after the new page was up, but I remember the older page
and can tell you that the new one is a big step forward. It really
makes
Sage look like a professional project.
Of course one can improve the page, but let's recognize that we're
starting from a cool page already and not do anything to move
backwards.
On May 23, 3:43 pm, "Dr. David Kirkby" <david.kir...@onetel.net>
wrote:
Gonzalo Tornaria
<david....@onetel.net> wrote:
> But the Mathematica page is also much more aesthetically pleasing. The
> use of nice colours helps - I'm not convinced using only blue and black
> is a good idea.
IMHO, the sagemath.org webpage is very nice and lean, but a little
bit too "plain" wrt colors, and a lack of contrast. In addition, the
border color (around the white box with the actual content) is too
bright, which draws my focus away from the content (my browser window
is 1280 pixels wide).
Maybe changing that to a darker color, together with a judicious use
of a second color tone within the content (maybe matching the border)
would give some more depth/contrast to the page.
Here's a 5 minute hack of something along those lines:
http://sage.math.washington.edu/home/tornaria/sagemath.png
Incidentally, that shade of green comes from
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sage_green
> I personally don't find the flash on the Mathematica site irritating
> (unlike some other sites that use flash), but I know it's not to
> everyone's taste.
The fact that a web page *uses* flash is what I find irritating. OTOH,
their home page doesn't obviously look like it's missing anything for
me, so I wouldn't call it irritating at all (I haven't checked how it
looks with flash).
One thing I like is that their web page just fits nicely in my
1280x800 web browser window, although that of course is dependent on
the resolution I'm using (they may be targetting 1024x768 as a
sensible minimum, except for netbooks). But it just seems that
sagemath.org needs 1200 lines to fit in a browser window.
Best, Gonzalo
Harald Schilly
> IMHO, the sagemath.org webpage is very nice and lean, but a little
> bit too "plain" wrt colors, and a lack of contrast. In addition, the
> border color (around the white box with the actual content) is too
> bright, which draws my focus away from the content (my browser window
> is 1280 pixels wide).
it is too dark. i think it's nicer now and there were no complaints
for months until yours... you see, it's complicated :)
the monochromatic look makes it much easier to build something that is
automatically aestetically "correct". the eye likes clear and easy
patterns and therefore i got something without too much work that is
still ok.
>
> Maybe changing that to a darker color, together with a judicious use
> of a second color tone within the content (maybe matching the border)
> would give some more depth/contrast to the page.
>
> Here's a 5 minute hack of something along those lines:http://sage.math.washington.edu/home/tornaria/sagemath.png
>
together some time ago (used an online tool and some experiemnts) and
i created this:
http://sage.math.washington.edu/home/schilly/newColorScheme.html
i'll use those colors if i ever manage to find a layout for multiple
colors.
> One thing I like is that their web page just fits nicely in my
> 1280x800 web browser window, although that of course is dependent on
> the resolution I'm using (they may be targetting 1024x768 as a
> sensible minimum, except for netbooks). But it just seems that
> sagemath.org needs 1200 lines to fit in a browser window.
it adopts to much smaller screen sizes and expands util an upper limit
for bigger screens. i.e. sagemath.org should be fine with 800x600.
h
Dr. David Kirkby
> On May 24, 3:14 pm, Gonzalo Tornaria <torna...@math.utexas.edu> wrote:
>> Here's a 5 minute hack of something along those lines:http://sage.math.washington.edu/home/tornaria/sagemath.png
>>
>
> sorry, for me, that's just ugly. i tried to find more colors thaat fit
> together some time ago (used an online tool and some experiemnts) and
> i created this:
> http://sage.math.washington.edu/home/schilly/newColorScheme.html
> i'll use those colors if i ever manage to find a layout for multiple
> colors.
I do tend to agree the revision is ugly. I do however think a splash of
colour makes a web page look better.
I personally think some of the sales ideas from the Mathematica website,
such as 'INDUSTRY SOLUTIONS' would be good.
Anyway, I seem to be in a minority of one, so I'll shut up!
BTW, http://sage.milnix.org/ does not appear to be alive. I noticed that
a day or so ago, and it is still dead.
Justin C. Walker
On May 25, 2009, at 04:00 , Dr. David Kirkby wrote:
> BTW, http://sage.milnix.org/ does not appear to be alive. I noticed
> that
> a day or so ago, and it is still dead.
I've lost track of where and when milnix.org arose, but it looks like
the system is awake. It's just not listening for HTTP (at least on
port 80). Could be the server wasn't started?
Justin
--
Justin C. Walker, Curmudgeon-At-Large, Director
Institute for the Enhancement of the Director's Income
--------
The path of least resistance:
it's not just for electricity any more.
--------
Skylar Saveland
mathematica page making me nervous +1 I don't like flash either +1 the
sage page is nice. ...
Maybe if there was some sort of cms/videos it would be great. I had
no idea that the whole thing was static. Maybe tack a little django-
cms on it or something and have a prominent link to a few screencasts.
Maybe if the background of the body had some semi-opaque math symbols
or 3d renderings. I really like the site the way it is for the most
part and think that more underground rebels will be attracted to it
over the stock-commercial-schlock that is the mathematica webpage.
Hey! They are using a table-based layout too. What a bunch of
baloney!
But if that glassy nav bar really tickles pickles... idk, it just
seems so .. idk .. I like the sage site.
http://www.wolfram.com/common/images2008/headerBackground.gif
William Stein
>
>
> On May 25, 2009, at 04:00 , Dr. David Kirkby wrote:
>
>> BTW, http://sage.milnix.org/ does not appear to be alive. I noticed
>> that
>> a day or so ago, and it is still dead.
>
> I've lost track of where and when milnix.org arose, but it looks like
> the system is awake. It's just not listening for HTTP (at least on
> port 80). Could be the server wasn't started?
>
I've removed the links to milnix.org. Harald, I did this by directly
editing www2/index.html and www2/inc/header.shtml. Obviously, this
isn't the right thing to do, since there is no way for me to check in
my changes. Please add a message that is printed on the login to the
sage@sagemath account that points to a file documenting how to make
changes to the website.
Regarding ideas for improving the site, I'm not afraid of change. If
this whole discussion ends with "everything is fine now, let's do
nothing", than I'll be disappointed. I'm sure our site isn't optimal,
and even if it was optimal one year ago when Harald rolled it out,
there is no harm in refreshing it and giving it a new look.
Instead of comparing the site to Mathematica's (which I personally
also do not like, as it also makes me feel very nervous,
uncomfortable, and frustrated), maybe people could point out what
software project web sites they really love. For example, I really
like the SQLAlchemy homepage: http://www.sqlalchemy.org It's really
clean, easy to find links to important things quickly, looks good,
etc.
I'm all for a redesign of the Sage website. I designed the first
version, and I was able to relax and let Harald totally redesign it
when he came along. I think Harald will consider further redesign in
a similar spirit of continually renewal and reinvigoration.
-- William
William Stein
> On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 1:02 PM, Justin C. Walker <jus...@mac.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On May 25, 2009, at 04:00 , Dr. David Kirkby wrote:
>>
>>> BTW, http://sage.milnix.org/ does not appear to be alive. I noticed
>>> that
>>> a day or so ago, and it is still dead.
>>
>> I've lost track of where and when milnix.org arose, but it looks like
>> the system is awake. It's just not listening for HTTP (at least on
>> port 80). Could be the server wasn't started?
>>
>
> I've removed the links to milnix.org. Harald, I did this by directly
> editing www2/index.html and www2/inc/header.shtml. Obviously, this
> isn't the right thing to do, since there is no way for me to check in
> my changes. Please add a message that is printed on the login to the
> sage@sagemath account that points to a file documenting how to make
> changes to the website.
Harald, never mind, as I was able to easily figure out what to do by
looking at history.
Is this right:
(1) edit ~/www2-dev/www/*
(2) Run the script go_live.sh in www2-dev.
I did hg status in the www2-dev directory and get:
sage@sagemath:~/www2-dev$ hg status
M go_live.sh
M www/contact.html
M www/inc/header.shtml
M www/index.html
! options_tidy.txt
! tidyall.sh
! www/library/prize.html
? attic/jsMath-3.6a.zip
? attic/jsMath-fonts-1.3.zip
? www/development-prize.html
? www/media/sage-codeswarm-3.1.1-v2_color.avi
Maybe this should be cleaned up a little. I'm checking in, then
fixing the Milnix.org links right now.
Also, I'll add something to the login message about www2-dev and
go_live.sh after you confirm that this is the right workflow.
-- William
Kwankyu
The Sage website looks pale and gloomy to me. But I don'like
Mathematica's website either.
Also I want to express my opinion again here that I don't like the
Sage logo (but I like Cython's logo very much). Perhaps what I don't
like is the science fiction-ish glyph. I wish someone artistic (not
me) redesign the Sage logo. I already know that my opinion is not
shared with many others though.
Kwankyu
Dr. David Kirkby
> Hi,
>
> The Sage website looks pale and gloomy to me.
That's what I feel - it needs brightening up somewhat.
> But I don'like
> Mathematica's website either.
>
Fair enough. These things are very subjective.
> Also I want to express my opinion again here that I don't like the
> Sage logo (but I like Cython's logo very much). Perhaps what I don't
> like is the science fiction-ish glyph. I wish someone artistic (not
> me) redesign the Sage logo. I already know that my opinion is not
> shared with many others though.
>
I agree with you about the Sage logo.
The Cyclon one looks better, but I can't say I like it a lot.
Again I quite like the Mathematica ones, which change with every new
major release. They are generated from mathematical equations with
Mathematica. I think they are designed by Micheal Trott
I used some of his basic ideas and tweaked them somewhat to generated
the one I created for WITM
Some quite interesting, attractive and mathematics related logos could
be generated by the use of fractal equations. There's a few examples on
the Fractint web site.
http://spanky.triumf.ca/www/FRACTint/fract-gal.html
It should not be too difficult to use Sage to create a nice looking
fractal and use that as a logo.
Dave
Dr. David Kirkby
> Regarding ideas for improving the site, I'm not afraid of change. If
> this whole discussion ends with "everything is fine now, let's do
> nothing", than I'll be disappointed. I'm sure our site isn't optimal,
> and even if it was optimal one year ago when Harald rolled it out,
> there is no harm in refreshing it and giving it a new look.
>
> Instead of comparing the site to Mathematica's (which I personally
> also do not like, as it also makes me feel very nervous,
> uncomfortable, and frustrated), maybe people could point out what
> software project web sites they really love. For example, I really
> like the SQLAlchemy homepage: http://www.sqlalchemy.org It's really
> clean, easy to find links to important things quickly, looks good,
> etc.
>
is quite nice.
Perhaps substituing "SQLAlchemy powers such websites as: ..." with "Sage
is used in the fields of" and then things like "Pure maths",
"Engineering", with links to some examples.
I'll have a hunt around and see if I can find some other software
projects web sites which I find attrative
I asked on uk.net.web.authoring for someone to compare the sage and
Mathematica sites. Here's one persons view. I think it is pretty useful.
What he covers, which I'd not thought about, is now they look when
printed out.
---------- Comments from dorayme...@optusnet.com.au ---------
The wolfram site has 12 errors but 2 warnings in validation matters,
whereas the sage site has 14 errors. Perhaps we can can call it neck and
neck at this stage of the race.
The one uses transitional 4.01 and the other XHTML 1.0 Transitional, in
neither case is it clear what they are transitioning from.
The w site looks nicer, classier in colour and print. All clean and sort
of neat. The s one is too lurid with the purplyblue.
The w site author uses a flash box which is sort of annoying
unannounced. The w top menu text wraps unnecessarily at larger user text
sizes and the drop down menus then get confusing. The search box starts
to disappear into the red. On other pages, the top menu items can
actually disappear at bigger user text sizes. Other blemishes due to
poor fixed pixel dimensioning where text breaks out. Irritating
horizontal scroll bars when strictly unnecessary. A source (see View
Source) that looks rather incompetent in too many ways to list. It's a
bloody wonder the show gets on the road.
The s site is simpler to look at, and (with javascript off at least)
more pleasant to negotiate and read...
Both authors would benefit from being simpler, dropping every fancy bit
of javascript and flash, and reading:
but using Strict 4.01 doctype.
Harald Schilly
wrote:
> whereas the sage site has 14 errors.
warnings and the remaining 12 are the snippet from
mailhide.recaptcha.net .. obviously they provided an erroneous code. i
fixed that.
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fsagemath.org
if someone finds something odd on any of the other pages, please tell
me. the main reason for using xhtml 1 transitional is, that it can be
made valid (in contrast to xhtml 1 strict) and at the same time be
used across all browsers and rendered correctly!
>
> The one uses transitional 4.01 and the other XHTML 1.0 Transitional, in
> neither case is it clear what they are transitioning from.
non transitional things never worked out in ie6 since it always fell
back to quicks mode. on pages where this happens, ie6+7 renders the
sage page without a background and using the full width... (ignoring
much of the css code)
Kwankyu:
think it makes any sense to change it again.
i really would wish someone would write me some text for the tour
pages, just like the statements Kirkby about engineering and things
like that. I'm really bad and way to slow in writing things that sound
good on a website. I can also help with a html template and everything
else on the technical side + proofreading.
h
Harald Schilly
> Is this right:
>
> (1) edit ~/www2-dev/www/*
> (2) Run the script go_live.sh in www2-dev
sandbox/ subdirectory. see ~/www2-dev/README.TXT
> Also, I'll add something to the login message about www2-dev and
> go_live.sh after you confirm that this is the right workflow.
> I'm all for a redesign of the Sage website. I designed the first
> version, and I was able to relax and let Harald totally redesign it
> when he came along. I think Harald will consider further redesign in
> a similar spirit of continually renewal and reinvigoration.
menu and layout totally different, but no changes with the overall
organization (same sub sections ...) I can try to design a mockup so
that everyone can make comments.
From my experience, the biggest problem is that website administration
takes much more time than i thought. Especially, because there is no
right and wrong and you get conflicting wishes on the list or by
offline email. It's really hard to find a way that does on a
functional level what it should (new visitors go around and learn what
it is about and hopefully download it), satisfy most of the people and
doesn't take much time to administer. I also wanted to create a page
that is a bit different from the others (no 08/15 template with some
changes in the colors) and gives you something to remember.
h
Michael Brickenstein
By the way: If there are problems with cross browser CSS,
then a CSS framework like tripoli
might help.
Michael
Dr. David Kirkby
>
> if someone finds something odd on any of the other pages, please tell
> me. the main reason for using xhtml 1 transitional is, that it can be
> made valid (in contrast to xhtml 1 strict) and at the same time be
> used across all browsers and rendered correctly!
>
Sometimes its a hassle keeping up with the validators:
used to validate ok as HTML 4.01 strict. Now I note there is one warning of
"No Character encoding declared at document level"
I'm sure I can fix that.
It certainly is possible to get documents to validate as strict - I've
done it on numerous sites.
The only benefit (and perhaps quite a useful one on mathematical
software), is that is shows a degree of attention to detail, and
exactness. I can't really see what other benefits it brings. CSS and
HTML errors do give the impression things are not checked as carefully
as possible. But then I'm pretty sure Google does not validate properly
- it did not last time I checked,
> well, someone artistic has already redesigned the logo ... and i don't
> think it makes any sense to change it again.
>
I can't say I'm keen on it either. Was the author given the brief of
only using one colour? I would have expected most people designing a
logo would use multiple colours.
> i really would wish someone would write me some text for the tour
> pages, just like the statements Kirkby about engineering and things
> like that. I'm really bad and way to slow in writing things that sound
> good on a website. I can also help with a html template and everything
> else on the technical side + proofreading.
>
Even if you don't like Mathematica, I would be tempted to borrow some if
their ideas if you feel they are appropiate.
To avoid the possible perception Sage is a university project for
universites, it would be worth showing its use in non-academic
environments if possible . For Mathematica they list the following
catagoires of 'INDUSTRY SOLUTIONS', then several sub-catagories.
* Engineering
* Science
* Biotechnolgoy and Medicine
* Finance, statistics and business analysis.
* Software engineering, Application Deployment and Content Delivery.
(Not, mathematics is not actually listed!)
There is also "EDUCATION SOLUTIONS" on the Mathemaitca web site.
I'm sure you would have no problem filling in edication examples
I do not know what fields people are using Sage in, but others must do.
But as catagories I would look at having
* Mathematics with sub catagories of algebra, calculus, number theory,
graph theory, exact linear algebra,
* Engineering - again with sub catagories.
* Science
* Biotechnolgoy and Medicine
I would personally think the home page should be aimed at convincing
people that it would be worth using the product, as lots of others have.
That seems to be the point that all the commerical products (MATLAB,
Mathematica and Maple) all do, which the Sage web sites does not (at
least not to the same extent).
It's fairly obvious they have employed marketing professionals that come
up with the suggestion of putting 'industry' solutions on the home page.
That appears to be done on all of them.
Peter Jeremy
>http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/index.html
>
>and then comparing it to
>
>http://www.sagemath.org/
>
>one would have to say the Mathematica one looks much better.
"Flashier", not necessarily better. Both these products are aimed at
a technical audience and shouldn't need lots of frippery. For someone
who was evaluating which to use, the important issues would be what
features are supported and how easy they are to use (which makes
access to a demo version useful).
A more relevant criteria is probably how likely someone searching for
mathematical software will find Sage (compared to Mathematica, Maple,
Matlab etc). A previous thread suggests that Sage does quite well.
>Would it not be worth spending some money on paying a competent
>professional web designer, and charging him with a task of making the
>sage homepage as good as the Mathematica one?
IMHO, no. If the Sage Project has spare money, I think it would be
better spent on improving Sage - adding features, fixing bugs or
improving the documentation.
--
Peter Jeremy
ahmet alper parker
functional/aesthetic development/design of a web sites? Why not do it
more scientific? :)
Ronan Paixão
from the Mathematica site, what I think called the attention of the OP
is that it's red. Simply as that. From the wikipedia page on Marketing
(which by the way seems pretty informational):
"""
Requirements of a good advertisement
The AIDA principle. Attention, Interest, Desire and Action
* Attract attention (awareness)
* Stimulate interest
* Create a desire
* Bring about action (to buy the product)
"""
the trick to attract attention in the Mma case is the big, bold, red
top. It appears to me it is also what makes some people here "nervous".
To me, that much red hurts the eye.
>From this page
http://bizcovering.com/marketing-and-advertising/the-subliminal-effects-of-color-in-marketing/
one can read:
"The color RED implies an outgoing, aggressive, excitable, assertive,
courageous, and regal behavior."
and
"Words that describe the color BLUE include deep, mysterious, withdrawn,
peacefulness, dignified, knowledge, order, tranquility, and melancholy
or depression. LIGHT BLUE symbolizes healing, spirituality, soothing and
comfort."
yeah, Marketing people do study those things (and they tend to work)
Now, compare both: from that, it appears that the Mma site calls
attention and the Sage one is depressing. Actually, that was my first
impression, though on a second look, one can absorb the "knowledge" part
of blue.
Also, to me, the best of those sites are Sage's and Matlab's. The Sage
one does indeed need some rearrangements. First, I don't know why, but I
believe that smaller fonts make the site looks more professional. One
can note that the sites of all three commercial softwares have fonts
smaller than sage. The big boxy icons in the page give sage a unique
feel, but I think they waste space unnecessarily, so maybe they could be
resized too. The sage main page also needs some attention to the wording
as others have pointed out already. Notice: when cleaning up and making
things small, don't make menus like the one in the Maple (too long). A
nice alternative to put more links in a cleaner page is to use that +
symbols in the bottom of the Matlab page. No hovers, easier on the
mouse.
One of the things I like about the Matlab page is the screenshot right
in front. It does show some cool stuff that it can do, and one "feels an
urge" to click it. Everybody likes screenshots. Yet, I didn't like much
how they mixed blue and yellow. Also, I'm not sure if a Sage screenshot
would go well in the main page due to the mostly blue-and-white colors
(but it may fit well, since the notebook is also in the same colors;
only putting it there to know).
Disclaimer: I'm an electronics engineering student, so Matlab is THE
default app everywhere. I didn't like the Matlab page because of this.
To be true, I am the only one in my department who uses python and I
rarely use sage. It's just plain easier/faster to use plain python+pylab
with the occasional scipy (yes, I do all my assignments with that). From
my viewpoint, sage is a wonderful tool for mathematicians, though not so
good for engineers.
Cheers,
Ronan
Jan Groenewald
On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 06:33:16AM +1000, Peter Jeremy wrote:
> On 2009-May-23 11:09:09 +0100, "Dr. David Kirkby" <david....@onetel.net> wrote:
> >http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/index.html
> >and then comparing it to
> >http://www.sagemath.org/
> >one would have to say the Mathematica one looks much better.
>
> "Flashier", not necessarily better. Both these products are aimed at
I just think the mathematica website is Too Busy. I don't knwo what people
see in it, it's pretty bad imho.
I think sage could use a thoughtful second colour, perhaps on the icons,
perhaps text too.
Jan
Dr. David Kirkby
> Anyone know any technical paper about ergonomic and/or
> functional/aesthetic development/design of a web sites? Why not do it
> more scientific? :)
FWIW, I used to meet someone on the train to work, who lived near me and
worked at the same uni as me.
As part of his post-doc research, he was using eye-tracking equipment to
analyse how people view web pages, which information they read and don't
read etc.
I just tried to buy something from the Adidas web site. Well, if you
think the Mathematica one is overdone with the flash, take a look here.
This must be one of the worst sites from a major company I have ever seen.
There is a uk newsgroup, on web design. They might know of any
scientific papers on the topic. It would seem a sensible approach to take.
Dave
Michael Brickenstein
Keith Clawson
into Russian, and the great thing about the design is the simplicity.
The source html reads more or less like LaTeX to me in that all the
commands are meaningful and transparent. As far as the content, I
think it is important to consider how easy it is for a non-native
English speaker to understand. Definitely anybody who uses Sage must
know some English, but keeping the navigation clear and simple might
help visitors who perhaps think in another language, and it also makes
producing translations easier.
As for the colors and logo, to my eye the Sage site appears similar to
this Google page I'm typing on, so there is a counter-example to the
trend of using many colors on professionally designed sites. I
personally believe mathematicians would tend to prefer that the site
communicates the main ideas concisely, whereas commercial sites want
to provoke an impulsive decision to buy and buy again. Thus I believe
that the different intentions behind producing the sites naturally
leads to very different looking sites. I'd much rather see the content
change and help with that than change the navigation and appearance.
-Keith
ahmet alper parker
use like "did you find what you are looking for?", "could you please
rate this page?", or marketing research questionnaires like which
mathematics software you use?, what would you like to see at web
page?" etc...?
ahmet alper parker
free/opensource program instead of a commercial one. I think this is
far more important then money. In example, one of a professor at my
university has written a program on a language which has no support
now. And everything he has written for hydraulics engineering has to
be converted to some means of other programming tools, etc. I still
remember the vb6.0 and .net problem (http://classicvb.org/).
Predictable life cycle is a crucial topic.
Dr. David Kirkby
> Also, why not give them some real life example for why to use a
> free/opensource program instead of a commercial one. I think this is
> far more important then money. In example, one of a professor at my
> university has written a program on a language which has no support
> now. And everything he has written for hydraulics engineering has to
> be converted to some means of other programming tools, etc. I still
> remember the vb6.0 and .net problem (http://classicvb.org/).
> Predictable life cycle is a crucial topic.
There is a *lot* on the web about the advantages, and disadvantages of
open-source software.
http://eu.conecta.it/paper/Advantages_open_source_soft.html
http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articles5/open-source-software.htm
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=376255
I think it would be unwise to waste time replicating too much of that,
but if targeted specially at Sage vs the commercial competition, it
could be very useful.
You raise some interesting points there.
As you rightly say, money is not the only reason for choosing open
source. I can give you a couple of examples why the fact software is
free can be seen as a *disadvantage*.
1) I once had a discussion with someone at National Instruments about
making Labview free to universities. Apparently, this had been discussed
internally at National Instruments, but NI felt giving Labview away free
to universities, would decrease the perceived worth of Labview.
2) I once had a discussion with someone who critisied a company for
using a free software product (I wont say which software for
confidentiality reasons). But I pointed out to him that the free tool
they were using was the best for the job. He believed the company should
be using commercial software, not free software on this multi-million
pound project. I'm not sure I ever convinced him, as several months
later he was still winging about their use of free software.
This page
http://www.computereconomics.com/article.cfm?id=1043
claims the key advantage of open source is not cost savings.
I note Wolfram Research have a page comparing Mathematica to the
competition in 30 other fields or products - from hand calculators,
mathematical tables, other computer algebra systems etc etc. They really
have done the hard sell there.
http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/analysis/
The link to that page can be found on the Mathematica home page, (just
click on 'How Mathematica Compares'). In fact, it is one of the most
prominent links on the Mathematica homepage at
http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematic
Clearly the marketing people working for WRI consider it important to
point out the advantages of the product compared to the competition.
That 'sales pitch' is not seen on the Sage web site. Many people may
consider that a good thing. Someone trying too hard to sell a product
can be *very* off-putting. But I think *some* marketing ideas are needed
on the Sage web site.
Obvious things to compare Sage to would be
* Matlab
* Mathematica
* Maple
* Spreadsheets
* Powerpoint
Whatever you think of Mathematica, you must admit it has been a
marketing success, making a lot of money for the very modest and humble
Steven Wolfram. Their marketing people must be doing something right.
Dave
Anthony David
>
> Also, why not give them some real life example for why to use a
> free/opensource program instead of a commercial one. I think this is
> far more important then money. In example, one of a professor at my
> university has written a program on a language which has no support
> now. And everything he has written for hydraulics engineering has to
> be converted to some means of other programming tools, etc. I still
> remember the vb6.0 and .net problem (http://classicvb.org/).
> Predictable life cycle is a crucial topic.
>
in a dialect of BASIC, QuickBASIC I think, in the late 80s and
carefully backed up
onto 5 1/4" floppies. There are parts of the code published in a book
(missing a subroutine)
and the floppies are unreadable (without going to a lot of
expense/time with recovery
services and tools). The ODEs are all in a paper naturally so all is not lost.
After playing around with reimplementing the program in Scilab, I
reviewed my methodology
and realised I wanted to have something that is more reproducable in
the future with regards
test runs and results. NetCDF, while probably overkill, gives me the
means of recording metadata
with the input and output files. NetCDF support is available with
Python. Rather than building
my own Python development environment I remembered Sage and here I am.
As I need to
write as well as read NetCDF files, I am building NetCDF and pycdf
packages. having 'fun'
with libtool with the NetCDF spkg build, but that is for another email.