Website download section

[tim at filmchicago.org]

Looks nice!


Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

-----Original Message-----
From: Geert Janssens <janssens-geert at telenet.be>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:18:51 
To: <gnucash-devel at gnucash.org>
Subject: Website download section

I have made some progress with my proposals.

To see the intermediate result, surf to:
http://www.kobaltwit.be/gnucash/index.phtml
(Just ignore the php safe mode warnings. They are caused by my hosting 
provider but not relevant for the changes and will not appear on the official 
GnuCash website.)

What I did so far:
* Added a new page for downloading. While trying to organize all the different 
download mechanisms I came to the conclusion there are too many to fit on the 
start page. So instead I have created a new page where all the possible 
download/installation options are grouped together. This page has
  - direct one-click links to the installers we have available, 
  - information on how to install on linux using the native install tools
  - links to the source files
  - general links to the sourceforge download page (for those that want to 
download something not explicitly listed on this new page)
These links are grouped in stable and unstable, with a small introduction.

* On the start page, I added a highly visible floating box with download links 
for GnuCash. Windows and MacOS X users can download the latest stable release 
installer for their platform with a single click. For all other downloads, I 
refer to the newly added download page.

* In the navigation menu, I removed the separate download options and instead 
the Download item itself is now a link to the download page. I figured it 
didn't make much sense to duplicate this information again.

* PACKAGE MAINTAINERS, this bit is important for you. To minimize the amount 
of changes required when a new download is available (either a new stable 
release or in case of MacOS X a new stable subrelease), I have extracted the 
version information into a separate file: externals/global_params.php. This 
file contains a number of php variable declarations that are used extensively 
on the download page and in the download section on the startpage. Whenever a 
new GnuCash is released, please update the relevant variable in this file.

What I have not done yet:
* Fix the release news items
* Translations. The new elements are gettextized though, so ready to be 
translated. I prefer to wait with this until I have had some feedback on the 
actual texts. They may still change.

Some questions/remarks:
* General: please have a look at http://www.kobaltwit.be/gnucash/phtml and 
give your feedback (again: just ignore the php safe mode warnings).
* I'm not a native English speaker (Dutch is my mother tongue), so my phrasing 
and choice of words may be suboptimal. Suggestions for improvements are 
welcome.
* The original site had links to a USA and a European sourcecode-only "mirror" 
(for the lack of a better word). I have added those to the source code section 
on the download page, but not quite as they were before. I have added direct 
links to the source tarball for the latest stable release, instead of showing 
the full directory listing. Is such a directory listing still required ? I 
could add it to the "Other" section at the end of the page. Note that the 
European mirror still has issues in that case as I mentioned in a previous 
mail.
* As for generating a patchset later on: I have added a new page, a new php 
script and two new icons and I have changed two existing files. What is the 
best way to deliver this to someone with svn access ? svn diff doesn't seem to 
handle binary files.
* I have added short descriptions on how to install GnuCash for a number of 
Linux distributions via their native software installer tools. The ones that 
are there are those I use myself (plus the line Tim provided for Ubuntu). 
There are still some popular distros missing like openSUSE, Kubuntu, Gentoo, 
Debian,... I don't know about the installer tools in those distros. If anyone 
wants to add a line for another distro, just let me know.

Geert
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