The last time we made a major update to the FreeDOS website was maybe ten years or so. Things are definitely feeling a bit dated, such as certain design elements. And over time, we've added content where it seemed to "fit" so the usability has degraded since the last update.
I have been "backburner" planning a website upgrade for the last two years, and sponsored several rounds of usability tests against different website designs. And I think I'm finally ready with the new FreeDOS website: https://test.freedos.org/ This is a preview to the new website on our "test.freedos.org" website. I'll move this to the "freedos.org" primary website soon. What do you think? I think new website is more streamlined and more modern. I've tried to improve the navigation, and place the most important information right up front where it's easy to find. For example, the new website has a very obvious "Download FreeDOS 1.3" button that takes you to the Downloads page. We know from user surveys that most people use FreeDOS to 1. play classic DOS games, 2. run their favorite DOS applications, and 3. create new FreeDOS programs. So now we have "info boxes" on the front page that let you explore these different ways to use FreeDOS; they each link to a separate page with more details, information, and links. For example, the "Games" page has links to different archives of DOS games, and links to drivers that you might need to support DOS games on new hardware (like SBEMU) - and the "Developer" page has links to developer tools and technical information, as well as links to the source code and the "how to contribute" page. The header and footer have the links that we know most people are looking for right away: read the wiki for more information, links to the email lists and forums where they can ask questions, and links to the bug tracker to report a bug. I may tweak the website over time, but I think this is a good design that's ready to go live. But I'm looking for comments - if anything seems broken or lost (didn't make it to the new website) let me know so I can fix it or add it back. I haven't moved over everything yet. For example, the "History" page is quite old and needs updating. Same for the "FreeDOS in the news" page. So while I've copied over that content to the new website, I haven't linked to them. I don't plan to link to them until I have more time to update them. Or maybe that historical info should go into the wiki. I also haven't moved the "Books" pages. These really should be moved to the wiki, and I plan to do that instead of just migrating the pages. *Speaking of the wiki: Now that the website is pretty much ready to go, my next project is to update the wiki. The wiki effectively "degraded" when SourceForge updated the PHP version on their hosting website. The wiki content is all there, but the wiki pages are not styled. I don't know why. I could spend time fixing things on SourceForge - but I'd been planning to move the wiki to a new hosting website for a while, anyway. I'll do that next. Jim _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
