Re: Website impression

> - the overall impression was that of a website that is not completely  
> geared towards attracting and informing users. I think the open source  
> (non-commercial) world suffers greatly from this, and you can see it at  
> http://www.jabber.org for a start. That website does a great job informing  
> would-be developers or technical linux fans, but the unsuspecting user  
> that has heard about jabber.org as a cool or good Instant Messenging  
> platform just doesn´t get treated to a good show. 

And are end users really interested in a "Messaging platform"?  No.
System and network administrators are,  and the first thing they are
going to do is go server shopping.  Then the user will be given a Jabber
client and configuration instructions.  And end user is interesting in
the fact that their friend Billy uses a IM system call Jabber so they go
searching, probably via Google, and install the first Jabber client they
find [ except on a corporate workstation where they probably don't have
sufficient privileges to install anything ].

> Compare with http://www.gnome.org/projects/evolution.
> Their interest is in informing would-be users. 

And evolution is an end-user application, a groupware server is not.

> Not even technical users want technicalities. Not until they start using  
> it, and that´s when they need user manuals, not frontpages.

I completely and 105% disagree.  I am a technical user, and
technicalities are the very first things I want to see.   I want to
filter out the non-viable or non-applicable
applications/services/servers as fast as I can.  Give me the features,
dependencies, protocols supported, etc...  as up-front as you possibly
can.

> - I don´t really ´get´ from the introduction material, what exactly is the  
> nature of OGo. Is it a server? Is it a client/server solution?

http://www.opengroupware.org/en/about/index.html
"Mission: To create, as a community, the leading open source groupware
server to integrate with the leading open source office suite products
and all the leading groupware clients running across all major
platforms, and to provide access to all functionality and data through
open XML-based interfaces and APIs."

How much more plainly can it be stated.  This states "server" and
mentions "groupware clients".

> both Outlook and Evolution, among others, AND has a native webinterface  
> that is just brilliant (if it actually is, haven´t tried yet ;)), 

Well, the web interface is certainly not "brilliant", IMHO.  But it is
certainly well-able usable.

> the first thing I want you to do ;). Of course, telling me that it is a  
> groupware solution that provides [name many applications here] is the very  
> first thing, but then comes what I just mentioned. That is the way to  
> inform ppl as fast as possible about the nature of your solution. It also  
> provides the reader with a good overview of its environment, and the  
> environment is where the user now exists. What you did with that very  
> short Mission statement and then immediately describe the History and the  
> connection to SKYRiX is just not a good solution. That is to say, if  
> ¨About¨ is the starting point, then you should change your ¨About¨.  
> Because the History and the SKYRiX connection are not relevant AT ALL to a  
> new visitor to the website. So you should juggle with what ¨About¨ means,  
> is it the starting point, or is it something for telling the user ¨About  

I agree here. The "applications" section should be linked to from within
the "about" page, since the applications are what this is about.  But I
don't think the SKYRiX bit should be removed,  when an organization
makes a nice donation or contribution then they deserve to be tooted
about somewhere where people see it - that is just fair and, basically,
how the world works.

> So, it seems your cute lil´ project has more to it than I at first  
> suspected. 

Condescending much?

> part of the email I sent Helge. It was about getting an ¨Opera M2¨-level  

A what?

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