Website style guide

[rolandlo]

In this issue I would like to share thoughts and ideas on the style in which we want the website to be. Looking through previous issues on the repository website I found issue #1444 where @Technius indicated the general direction:

That's a good point to note. The readme/documentation definitely needs to be updated to be more accommodating to end users and non-technical people, since Xournal++ is meant for the everyday user. We also have plans to set up a website, but the entire team has been low on free time recently. :(

So the goal is to create a website that

• is accommodating to (and easy understandable for) end users and non-technical people

This means that we should avoid going into too much technical details or at least move those details to specialized sections. Sometimes things need to be simplified a bit. Non-technical people should not need to visit the github pages to find basic infos. I would add, that the website ideally

• makes it easy to find information quickly

For this purpose we benefit from the search utility provided by mkdocs and from the clear design with clickable titles and subtitles. That is not enough, though. According to mrnwebdesigns.com

You only have 10 seconds to make an impression on a visitor and to let them know what they’ll get out of visiting your page. If they aren’t impressed within that time, they’ll leave.

So the website ideally also

• looks visually appealing and gives a visual impression how working with Xournal++ looks like

For a positive example see how our competitor Openboard.de presents their features. From just the image on the top you already know pretty much how working in Openboard looks like and what it is designed for. An example of a website partially created with mkdocs that has similar visual appeal is the retropie website.

From perspective of creating the website one more point seems important, namely that the website

• has a simple enough design, so that it is easy to contribute

By using mkdocs as website creator this should not be the most difficult point to achieve.

So these are the four most important points that came to my mind. Do you agree with all of them? What are your ideas about what we should aim for with the website?

[pktiuk]

I think we should add link to this page in main Xournal++ repository (although it is still under construction), because this would inform more people (including contributors) about existence of this site and would speed up its creation.

[rolandlo]

@ptiuk I think so, too. Where would you like to link it? In the Readme.md that is displayed on the main page of the repository? Or with a pinned issue?

[pktiuk]

I think it should be put in README and in About section.
In case of pinning i think, that we could pin Promoting xournalpp xournalpp/xournalpp#2045, and just ask for editing first message (i mean this point about creating new page)

[pktiuk]

It would be good to add buttons to top bar (like on example site), but I don't know how to do it.
Then we could move on to creating custom main site.

[Dioprz]

I don't know if the style of the website is still a priority (or even something with minimal relevance), but I recently ended up on this website from the polybar project and I think it is very very good. His style is very clean and the colors remind me of recycled paper or something.

What do you think?

Note: I know almost nothing on the technical side, so if the suggestion breaks Rolando's last point about the simplicity of the design, just ignore it.

[rolandlo]

I don't know if the style of the website is still a priority (or even something with minimal relevance), but I recently ended up on this website from the polybar project and I think it is very very good. His style is very clean and the colors remind me of recycled paper or something.

What do you think?

Note: I know almost nothing on the technical side, so if the suggestion breaks Rolando's last point about the simplicity of the design, just ignore it.

From the technical side this looks hard to combine with mkdocs. We should stick to mkdocs (and the material theme).

[arjun-krishna1]

I think one project that we can take inspiration from is Visual Studio Code
Their documentation is simple, to the point and accessible even to non-technical people

[YellowOnion]

The website needs screenshots, the README on github has some already!

[rolandlo]

@YellowOnion Sure. This will help to achieve the goal

looks visually appealing and gives a visual impression how working with Xournal++ looks like

We'll wait until the new icons (PR #2886) are merged though (which should happen soon).