New homepage under testing

[Kevin Stange]

Casey Ho wrote:
> Just a heads up for everyone- I just pushed a new version of the
> homepage to www.pidgin.im.
> 
> It's currently being displayed as part of a Google Website Optimizer
> test, so you may OR may not see this page.  More importantly, please
> refrain from making any edits to index.php or home.php for the next
> several days (in order to keep the test data accurate).  Of course,
> comments/suggestions are welcome.
> 

The main problem with the screenshot on the front page is emphasizes a
non-default configuration with protocol icons and the "small list" view,
both of which are not our recommendations.  Several of the screenshots
are taken with non-default settings, which is misleading since the
screenshots do not specifically promote the alternative settings used
within them.  This includes the appearance Facebook plugin which Pidgin
actively recommends against using due to stability issues and which does
not ship with Pidgin.

I also find the new home page reads like marketing material, provides
less information in the initial view than the original text we had
there, requires more vertical space, and now requires javascript to view
additional information.  If you have Javascript off (or attempt to
middle click for a new tab) the "View Screenshots" link does something
unintuitive.

"No ads
"100% free and actively supported by the open source community"

This makes it sound like Pidgin is something that just came into being
and then a mysterious "open source community" found it and decided to
promote its use.  "Maintained as free software by an active open source
community" is more accurate, but I question the need for "NO ADS!!!"
marketing text on the front page of our web site.  Our old text on the
matter explained that the program was free to both use and modify and
indicated what open source was, which I thought preferable.

I do not like the way the download link box looks compared to the
softness of the old download box and the upper part of the box does not
connect to the middle and lower sections in my browser, Firefox 2.x
under Linux.

Several of the captions for screenshots are somewhat misleading:

- "Set your status across all IM networks with a single click"

You need to click twice or click and drag at minimum to change your
status.  I'd rather just say "quickly change your status across all IM
networks directly from the buddy list."

- "Hundreds of plugins are available to help tweak every aspect of Pidgin"

I am not sure we have evidence to indicate there are hundreds of plugins
available.  We certainly don't list hundreds on our wiki.  While
promoting Pidgin's extensibility with plugins is arguably a good thing,
this screenshot lists many plugins we do not ship with Pidgin, which
could lead to confusion.  The caption does not make this clear and some
of those plugins may even be among those we recommend users not use for
various reasons.

- "Pidgin supports these IM networks. Additional protocols are available
through plugins."

This screenshot lists two networks which we may implicitly support, but
we do not show in our UI which will only serve to confuse new users, and
it doesn't list facebook, accurately which may confuse those who see its
logo listed elsewhere in the screenshots.  IRC is conspicuously missing.

Basically, there is nothing I like about the new home page that wasn't
an element of the old home page.  Honestly, I find most of these changes
fairly disturbing and I am resisting the urge to disapprove them and go
back to what we had.  I see haven't seen a compelling reason for making
these changes other than to mislead potential users into thinking Pidgin
is something slightly other than what it actually is and simply get as
many users to use Pidgin as possible.  I don't think any developer of
Pidgin has ever expressed concern that we don't have enough users or
that having a small number of happy users would really do us any harm.
I tend to think we sort of dread the prospect of a large influx if users
with improper expectations of Pidgin.

So... I vote nay... in general.

Kevin

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