[New website] Download page
The Download page is overloaded with information and lacks clarity. For anyone scrolling below the three icons representing Windows, Mac, and Linux, what follows looks like a wall of text.
See http://transmissionbt.com/download/ for an example of a much lighter and more discoverable download page.
Specifically, I would suggest the following:
- Generally, mention only the most relevant information.
- Cut down the explanations for Linux distributions. If necessary, move them to a dedicated page.
- Add icons for Linux distribution for easier discovery.
- Offload information on nightly and development builds to a dedicated page and link to it. Perhaps, place it in the "Contribute → Development" section.
- Mention only the most important system requirements. For Windows, I reckon that would be the operating system version, Windows 7. I'd be very surprised if many people were not to meet the very low hardware requirements. For those interested in the detailed system requirements, offload those to a dedicated page and link to it. By the way, for Mac "OS X 10.7" would be adequate, no need to list all the different newer systems just because of the change in the naming scheme.
- Move information on the source to a page in the "Contribute → Development" area and link to it.
- Maybe more…
Comments
We will indeed rework the Download page. For now I'm mostly looking for data integrity issue due to bugs in the database migration or non functional things on the new site. I'll come back to this issue some time next week.
We have a cleaned up download section in place now at https://musescore.org/en/download
The top one is coded in, so not editable. We now have to edit the English page and throw out what is not needed anymore. Once done, we remove all the translations for the download page so every can be translated from scratch.
The download page was further worked out. Outstanding issues are:
* restore the unsupported version for Windows
* restore older portable apps too
* restore the nightlies
Put help strings in place such as
> Many distributions release a package of MuseScore with each new version of the distribution. However, with the exception of rolling distributions like Arch Linux, MuseScore releases rarely coincide with a distribution release so these packages are often out-of-date. If you want to run the latest MuseScore version and get support from the MuseScore developers, we suggest installing an AppImage (see above), however the distribution packages, even if older, are usually supported by the distribution’s package maintainers. Community images are provided by users for their distributions and have at best voluntary support.
Make all strings translatable
I see that the beta Snap package is incorrectly labelled as a Flatpak package (a major faux pas!). ;)
I too would support relegating all the many Linux and BSD distribution packages to a separate page and keeping only the universal AppImage package on the main page. Alternatively, the distribution packages could be there but hidden until the user clicks an "expand for more linux packages" button, or arrives at the page having clicked an anchor link like https://musescore.org/en/download#linux-distribution-package.
Good job, Thomas! Much, much better now. :-)
hi RobFog. Would you consider this closed. All the issues touched on or which Thomas has raised for himself, seem resolved?
The snap vs flat package issue also seems resolved (they seem to link to different sites).
I like the idea of having the Linux distribution specific section. Should that be a new issue?
I am taking the liberty of closing these long-standing open issues, where I believe they are closed, to bring them to a more manageable number.
Yes, thanks, Riaan.