davorg writes "Looks like www.perl.com has had
a complete redesign. It now looks just like all of the other sites
in the O'Reilly Network. I don't think I like that idea very much. It
makes me slightly uncomfortable that the major Perl website is so
obviously sponsored by one company."
OTOH, before it made me feel bad that perl.com didn't look very good.
OTOH, this site doesn't look very good on my browser (Mac MSIE), either. Arial looks really bad on a Mac, and the page is wider than my browser window (which is kinda wide to begin with). Same thing with the other O'Reilly Network sites, though. They just don't look very good to me. Arial bad. Wide page bad. Clutter bad.
While you're at the new site, check out Why Not Translate Perl to C? and other recent articles over there.
Well at least they have current content.....
hfb on 2001-06-29T14:58:10
ORA may be a company and it may be obvious that they are all over this site...but c'mon, at least they are trying to keep it current and useful.
When was the last time anyone updated the www.perl.org page?! perl.com is the main page for perl if only because there are no other alternatives that come close to the content and freshness.
Thank you O'Reilly for all the thankless work you do on perl.com in spite of the fact that your web designer is a crackmonkey
:)
e.
New Look
malte on 2001-06-29T15:02:20
Actually, the reason why the site's font looks so bad in Mac IE is that the font is _NOT_ Arial but Helvetica and IE seems to not like Postscript fonts at all. You can find this out by downloading the css file (awkwardly named "linux-px.css").
Overall, a pretty bad design, and I hate it that they dont separate articles and mailling-list-summaries anymore.
->malte
Re:Well at least they have current content.....
davorg on 2001-06-29T15:07:48
All good points of course. It is current
and useful. And I am grateful for all of the support that O'Reilly gives to Perl. I just worry that it might give the impression that Perl is an O'Reilly product if you didn't know any better.
But you're right, the most positive thing to do would be to get working on www.perl.org to make that the community's main page for Perl. I'd be happy to get involved.
Re:Well at least they have current content.....
hfb on 2001-06-29T17:36:56
Well this is nothing new. http://www.perl.com/cpan-local, since it appears in most ORA books and seemingly everywhere else, led most to believe that CPAN was an O'Reilly thing. Even someone on the london.pm list wondered why the CPAN logo wasn't done in the 'Perl Font'
:)
You may have noticed the FUNET logo appearing on CPAN lately since we want to thank them for donating the rather large amount of resources needed for the archive and to help correct the impression that everything in Perl is an O'Reilly funded enterprise.
e.
OTOH
belg4mit on 2001-06-30T05:16:31
OTOH should be used only once
if a third thing is needed OTGH
(on the gripping hand, "The Mote in God's Eye", Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle)
Why perl.com has O'Reilly crap on it
gnat on 2001-06-30T14:07:23
(I work for editorial, not for the O'Reilly Network, so this is second-hand info. Just so you know)
The O'Reilly Network pays for the editor of the site, and for articles, and has done so for zillions of years.
The old design was a pain in the ass for them, because it wasn't like the other O'Reilly Network sites. This new design is the same as on all the other ORN sites, and run on the same content management system, so no special clue or coding is required to update and maintain it.
They feel like the Perl community's perception is "you grasping dirty bastards, defiling our pure Perl by trying to make a quick buck", when in fact the site has been losing money for years. I'm sure I hear people reaching for "but O'Reilly makes lots of money off Perl books". Yeah, but we like to think that's because they're *good* Perl books, not because perl.com is supported by O'Reilly dollars and staff.
Anyway. Criticize it all you like because it's ugly. I have :-). But hold off on the exploitation cries. They said that they're open to discussing a redesign in a few months, but for the time being they have work to do on site that might actually make money :-)
--Nat
Re:Why perl.com has O'Reilly crap on it
schuyler on 2001-06-30T17:38:26
I *do* work for the O'Reilly Network, and everything Gnat says is true. The old site was a big drain that we supported for the sake of the community, and the redesign will make a huge difference in how easy it is for us to manage the site, and keep it up to date.
Also, a lot of the "exploitation cries" sound like the kind of whinging people ordinarily reserve for enormous impersonal multinational megaconglomerates like AT&T or Time Warner or Disney or (ahem) Microsoft. This baffles me, because we're not an impersonal megaconglomerate, we're a company that's always prided itself on being a team player in the Open Source community. Each one of you can e-mail anyone at the O'Reilly Network with a question or concern about one of our sites, and get a response back from a real human being who cares about our readership and takes pride in what they do.
So, don't hesitate to contact me or Simon Cozens or our editorial director, Dave Sims. We're not a bunch of marketing drones -- a lot of you know Simon, and some of you probably know me, and know that *I'm* just another perl hacker like you. We at the Network really do want to maximize the benefit to the community from the resources we have to devote, and we hope you'll be patient and willing to work with us to make perl.com a useful and informative resource.
<Schuyler> So you want to see the problem get fixed, or do you just want to sit there and complain about it?
<yrlnry> Preferably, both.
;-)
SDE
Looks good to me
jjohn on 2001-07-01T03:41:58
Well, since the other ORA employees are chiming in...
I never cared for the blue banner look of perl.com (I miss the old oasis design). The new
design is presentable and that makes me happy.
The bigger issue, that doesn't direct affect readers is that the content management system for
perl.com was upgraded from PACE to CS (www.communityservers.com). This makes a lot of things much easier for all the other O'Reillynet sites (which are running on CS). That's a Good Thing.
Layout has never meant much to me. You're all using Lynx, right? mmm...
Hell, I use light mode for all slashdot sites, including this one.
Re:OTOH
pudge on 2001-07-01T12:31:10
Nope. I was making a reference to the part of Fiddler on the Roof where Tevye would say "on the other hand" a half dozen times, then wonder how many other hands he had. Note that the character Tevye was concocted by a man named Arnold Perl, thus bringing us full circle.
The grasping bastards!
Simon on 2001-07-01T22:33:32
I say this with my editor hat
firmly off, but Dave, if you're unhappy for O'Reilly to be running the site, you really shouldn't have taken money from them for your article, should you? That is, if you have any integrity.
But here we go again. Someone does a service for the Perl community for years, and the minute they try to cover their losses - note, cover their losses, not make a profit - some ungrateful bastard jumps down their throat.
And you wonder why more people don't try and help the community. You're your own worst enemy, people.
Editor hat still off.
Simon on 2001-07-01T22:41:48
www.perl.com gives the impression that Perl is an O'Reilly product just like www.xml.org and www.onjava.com gives the impression that XML and Java are O'Reilly products. O'Reilly is just putting its money where its mouth is in terms of Perl; this is something you ought to be grateful for.
On the other hand, it's good to see that perl.org is moving again after a long period of stagnation. I'd personally like to see more interaction between the sites, with perl.com for feature articles and perl.org for community news. But now we have use.perl.org for news, it's not very clear what sort of thing should happen on perl.org
Better than whinging is...
Simon on 2001-07-01T22:48:38
(And I say this with my editor hat
on, this time.
:)
If you have any comments or complaints about the new design of the site, please send them to me at simon@oreillynet.com, or my boss, Dave Sims, at dave@oreilly.com. If you notice any bugs with the actual HTML or browser incompatibilities, you could take it up with nancya@oreilly.com, but please CC me so that I can follow it up and get back to you on it. We really do want you to get the best value for the money we're paying! :)
Re:Editor hat still off.
But now we have use.perl.org for news, it's not very
clear what sort of thing should happen on perl.org
Big/Important news, any kind of Perl user group type news and links, links to Perl resources, cute little RDF box off of use.perl.org, maybe an RDF box off of perl.com, too.
(Yes, I know some of that is exactly what's there; this means perl.org has some of exactly what I think it should have; though, the stuff on the left is almost exactly upside-down from what it should be...)
RSS feed
ask on 2001-07-02T03:44:07
schuyler, you forgot to include your email address.
:-)
The RSS file at http://www.perl.com/pace/perlnews.rdf
seems to have a syntax error. Please send me a mail at ask@perl.org (or get someone who can fix it to do so). :-)
- ask
ps. I think the new design is at least much nicer than the old one and that it looks like the rest of the O'Reilly sites can be thought of as a (nice) feature. :-)
Re:Not the grasping bastards!
davorg on 2001-07-02T08:35:05
Sigh
Sounds like I might not have been as clear as I
thought I was. Let me try and be clearer.
- I am very grateful for all that
O'Reilly does for Perl and the Perl
community.
- I think that the perl.com site is by far the
most useful web site for general Perl information.
On all of the training courses I give, I
recommend people visit it at least once a
week.
- I am well aware of the effort and cost that
goes into keeping a site like perl.com online
and up to date and realise that O'Reilly are
putting a lot of money into it and would
therefore like to make a bit of money back from
it. I have no objections to this.
- I have written paid articles for
perl.com in the past and hope to do so again in
the near future. I think that perl.com (together
with TPJ - another commercial enterprise) is
exactly the right place to publish articles of the
kind that I write.
I never intended to give the impression that
O'Reilly shouldn't be running the site and I
apologise unreserveredly to anyone who got that
impression or thought that I don't appreciate the
work that they put in.
Re:Well at least they have current content.....
delegatrix on 2001-07-02T12:16:57
More often than not, web designers are compelled to design for the boss, rather than for the user. I'll give the designer of perl.com the benefit of the doubt on this one.
Re:The grasping bastards!
hfb on 2001-07-02T14:22:37
*Ahem*
I don't think Dave was taking it to such an extreme level.
And, as I recall Simon, you had rather harsh criticism not so long ago about perl.org and it's management or lack thereof.
No good deed goes unpunished in this community, ever. As long as you get past that, it's all good.
e.
upgrade arial, pudge
n8 on 2001-07-02T18:11:00
Arial is super ugly on the Mac, especially the version that came preinstalled a while back (I dunno which Mac OS). But
Microsoft's typography site has a more recent version that is less ugly, especially at small sizes. It's still not as readable as Arial on Windows, but it is an improvement for a lot of sites.
Note I still think it's in bad taste to design using Arial without a Mac alternative first (i.e., "helvetica, arial, sans-serif")
Ooops.
schuyler on 2001-07-03T01:39:59
I did forget. I'm schuyler@oreilly.com. Flames welcome!
:-)
Re:Why perl.com has O'Reilly crap on it
footpad on 2001-07-07T02:14:06
A little late, perhaps, but I--for one--appreciate the recent changes to the redesign. Searching is far easier than it used to be and I don't mind seeing O'Reilly's presence more clearly associated with Perl.
Since they pay Larry to work on the language and have been instrumental with Damian's current position, I think they deserve a little credit. Hat's off for being so willing to take it on the chin from those that don't realize and for continuing to do what's right in spite of that.
At the very least, it certainly beats what a certain "
patron" of ActiveState's port has
done recently. O'Reilly has contributed much for the language. Sure, they charge us for the books, but, hey....they're good books. Name any other publisher that you can name five good books you bought without misgivings. I certainly can't.
YMMV...
--f
