Draft v1.10 Press Release

[Dave Porter]

Hi all,

Attached please find my draft press release for 1.10. The goal is to give something to link to and to send around to your favorite bloggers during the publicity push. The higher-order goal of course is to drive a narrative that SproutCore is not only still alive but is just as alone in its class today as it was five years ago.

Press releases aren't for general consumption, they're to give the press information and perspective (our perspective of course). The tone is definitely assertive and superlative, which may be appropriate or not. Any input on tone, content and perceived effectiveness (especially in the context of an open source project) would be appreciated!

I hope nobody minds – for the purpose of being quoted I appointed myself community manager, a nonexistent and appropriately meaningless title.

Thanks,

Dave

[Tyler Keating]

Wow! You have a gift Dave. I cringed a bit at the "biggest release in 3 years bit"… but I really like the manner in which you highlight the key parts. It got me all excited to try it out... wait.

By the way, to complete the trifecta, there is also a demo highlighting optimized list views (see what I did there when adding these features to the framework?): http://showcase.sproutcore.com/#demos/Displaying%20Big%20Data.

Thanks for the stellar work,

--

Tyler Keating

ty...@sproutcore.com

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<Major New SproutCore Release.pdf>

[Dave Porter]

My thought with the biggest release bit was to convince the reader straight off that this merits a press release. Thoughts on alternative ways to do that (or less cringe-y versions of this one)?

I removed the big data demo in order to fit everything on one page. I'll play with the margins and get it back in there.

[Maurits Lamers]

You might want to add that it was created in 2007 by SproutIt and further developed by Apple.

The way I read it now is that Apple sort of created it.

cheers

Maurits

[mir ion]

Hi Dave,

Content is very good. I'm not so happy with the layout. I mean: the content is very dense and rich therefore we should make it as readable as possible (for the eyes). I think that you could reduce a little the margins and increase the rowspace. Also, you could add the logo.

[Dave Porter]

Maurits, you're right; I've added a callout to Charles himself.

Mircea, good eye; space between lines wasn't one of the dials I was twiddling. I shrank the margins, played with the spacing and added the logo as a watermark. I also switched the header font to Futura but I'm not sure how that looks. Thoughts?

[Topher Fangio]

I like the content, I agree that everything seems a bit squished, but that is a LOT of content, and I wouldn't edit any of it out, so I think it's good.

One question: could we shorten the links using something like bit.ly? They are kinda cumbersome and ugly and may give you a tad bit more space if reduced. Just a random thought :-)

Other than that, it looks great!

--

Topher Fangio

Director of Software Development
Pharos Resources

office: 325.216.2908
mobile: 325.660.7141

[Dave Porter]

I thought about bitly, and that would also address some keen observations that mirion passed along in IRC. I thought linking through bitly in a press release might be amateurish, but probably less so than having %20 visible in my URLs?

[Topher Fangio]

Yeah, not sure. I think the bit.ly approach is normal enough now that most people won't see it as unprofessional, but who knows. We could also try to register a new domain name that is shorter and use a white-label shortening service, but that seems a bit overkill and probably expensive.

Out of curiosity, is there a reason that we have the full link text in there? Are we sending this out as a document, or could we actually use HTML links and just change the link text to something more readable?

--

Topher Fangio

Director of Software Development
Pharos Resources

office: 325.216.2908
mobile: 325.660.7141

[Dave Porter]

The reason was that Pages and Chrome were somehow conspiring to turn those URLs' hash marks into %23 when I clicked on them, which threw a 404. If we're using bitly then there are no hashes so I can move them back into text links. Basically it sounds like bitly solves all the problems.

[mir ion]

For me the perception is opposite. Shorten links looks cool, but we'll have to wait some time see a serious company using them into a press release.

[Dave Porter]

Things in favor of text-linked bitlies won out. Here's the last-chance rough draft. Thanks for your input everyone. I'll send out an official final copy to the public list when we hit actual release.

[Tyler Keating]

Re: how does Futura header look? I would personally like something more similar to the body font. I find Futura a bit distracting.

Not a big deal. The final result is sharp.

Thanks again,

--

Tyler Keating

ty...@sproutcore.com

[Dave Porter]

Agreed, and important. Final draft unless anyone else has anything else.

[Umberto Nicoletti]

Well done, Dave!

[Dave Porter]

Thanks much! The PDF is now up and hosted on SC.com, Tyler is publishing a blog post today I believe, and I'll be spending tomorrow morning ahead of the meeting sending the PR out to anyone I can think of. :D

[Tyler Keating]

Yes, I'll publish a post later today with a link to the PR.

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Tyler Keating

ty...@sproutcore.com