Fedora Workstation Downloads Page Revamp (first cut, looking for feedback!)

Project Discussion
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#1

Hi everyone, here’s another the Fedora Website Revamp project design update!

I have an initial first-cut (read: still very much open to change and feedback and ideas) draft of the Fedora Workstation download page that will reside within the revamped Fedora website. This page will be used as a model to base other Edition download pages from, so even if Workstation isn’t your main concern, your feedback on this mockup will be useful.

You can view the full mockup here on Penpot:

As with previous mockups, I’d like to walk you through it below using snippets of the mockup from top-to-bottom to provide some context.

Some upfront notes:

  • The current working thought is that this page would reside at https://fedoraproject.org/workstation/download .
  • The content is an iteration of the pre-existing content on our current Workstation download page here: Download Fedora Workstation
  • It is the intention we would have a dark-mode version of this page and various elements have been designed with that possibility in mind, but I don’t have a complete working version of that mocked up yet.
  • The screenshots have grey around the borders because that’s the background color for Penpot… that grey is not intended to be part of the page design.

TOP HEADER AREA

Screenshot from 2022-04-26 10-28-38
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We have something new here that will also impact the front page design - a global nav. The contents of the global header may change during design development, but for now it’s a rough stab (and is based on the new footer design, which is mostly based on our current footer design.) The approach these individual designs are taking is to give each of the editions their own space, so the purpose of the global nav is to bring viewers back to the main Fedora page / allow them to jump to another edition if their first landing on our website is to a particular edition page and they want to explore further what Fedora’s offerings are.

Screenshot from 2022-04-26 12-12-10

The local nav for Fedora Workstation is the same as it was for the the front page design.

Screenshot from 2022-04-26 10-33-46

This idea here is to make clear the lifetime of the specific release before you download it to set expectations. Also to reinforce that the release is supported. The (i) icon should provide a popup that explains you can update to the next release when needed to continue support. Does this sell the release short seeing as you’ve virtually infinite support if you upgrade to the newest release? How would you word this?

Screenshot from 2022-04-26 12-08-40

The most relevant docs - release notes, installation guide - right on the page here as well as a link to community support (ask.fpo, maybe could point to a tag or topic specific to the release at hand.)

MAIN DOWNLOADS AREA

This area has a toggle switch for showing beta downloads depending on what time during the release cycle it is presented.

Screenshot from 2022-04-26 12-16-34
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This area demonstrates a feature I’d like to appear throughout the website, and that is an “open door” icon with an on-ramp to becoming a contributor. Here, it gives visitors to the download page a just-in-time, contextual (related to downloads) hint as to how they can become a contributor if they’d like - by downloading and testing beta releases:

Screenshot from 2022-04-26 12-17-50

Should they choose to enable the toggle, they get similar hints per beta download, which is also highlighted with a slightly different background color to the download area:

Screenshot from 2022-04-26 12-19-12
Screenshot from 2022-04-26 12-19-121192×902 102 KB

SECURITY & ALT DOWNLOADS AREA

Screenshot from 2022-04-26 12-35-17
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To be honest, this is as the current page is without any change in design or content.

LEARN MORE ABOUT FEDORA MEDIA WRITER

Screenshot from 2022-04-26 12-21-42
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Again, this is pretty much the same as it is on the current download page.

JOIN A FEDORA COMMUNITY

Screenshot from 2022-04-26 12-23-47
Screenshot from 2022-04-26 12-23-471183×524 34.8 KB

This is another contributor on-ramp hint… basically, hey now that you’re downloading Fedora, why not join one of our online communities? (These are also good places to get help if you run into trouble.) I checked with @riecatnor and Mindshare about how to classify these (officially-support vs community-maintained), I think that’s good language to use, but of course open to discussion.

TERMS & CONDITIONS

Same as today.

Screenshot from 2022-04-26 12-24-18
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FOOTER

Screenshot from 2022-04-26 12-24-32
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I don’t think there’s anything new here, but do note the parallelism with the global nav at the very top :slight_smile:

FEEDBACK WELCOME!

So here you have yet another update on how things are going for the design on the Workstation page. My next step besides sharing this with you here and evaluating your feedback and rolling it back into this to iterate and improve, is to start framing out the main Fedora landing page, taking a look at some of the great work @likeanushkaa has been doing for docs.fpo to see how to address that in the redesign as well. After that more server & IoT edition work.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this!

7 Likes
#2

Should “Fedora 35” be “Fedora Linux 35”?

#3

I opted to not use that phrasing because I didn’t want something generic like net install media that can install anything to be mixed up with a specific edition payload.

#4

It shouldn’t be mixed up, all editions should be “Fedora Linux” editions, IIRC we (as project) decided to use “Fedora Linux” and “Fedora Project” wherever possible and this feels like a fit for “Fedora Linux”

1 Like
#5

What would you call the net install then?

#6

Fedora Linux net install? Not matter what Solution is going to be installed, the result would be a Fedora Linux Solution

#7

It’s going to make the text more denser though, I’d prefer to be taking text away not adding text. So for example, to avoid this conundrum, I’d suggest then to put “Version 35” or something like that. Because whether or not it’s Fedora, Fedora Linux, Fedora GNU/Linux isn’t what the user cares about or needs at that moment. They just need visual confirmation they’re downloading the right version they intended. Does that make sense?

#8

Sure it makes sense, it always made sense, since the whole discussion about using Fedora Linux and how more wording was going to cause this kind of discussions and throwing work, like the magazine editors’ work, away when not using the full Fedora Linux for the software and Fedora Project for everything else.

I’m not telling you what to do, your and your team work is amazing, and the page look awesome (hopefully it will look the same or at least very similar when passed from design to css or wherever language) but this discussion could be avoided if we keep things simple all the time.

#9

Also, I’m sorry, I don’t want to drive the discussion away of the design, let’s talk about it.

The square with the triangles that are being used as background over the white background are thought to be coded or implemented as image?

I take that because I had to do something similar with the theme in the podcast site and it doesn’t work well with images, it works the best with css code that can be adjusted per screen size

#10

Yeh I definitely advise that be done in CSS and it should be able to be without much stress.

1 Like
#11

Dark mode?

#12

What about it?

#13

Are there intentions to do a dark mode site? I use dark reader on my browser, but still, normally sites that implement their own dark mode tend to look better, mostly because of images, that have a weird negative mode or just doesn’t have anything that an extension can use to create the negative mode

#14

Yeh - I’d put that in the initial post on this thread - I’m choosing colors, etc. with a mind to make this easily dark-mode themable. I don’t have it mocked up yet.

1 Like
#15

Sorry that this is a little off-topic. But I think it might be important for this page in particular. I suspect (but do not know for sure) that part of the reasoning behind wanting to use “Fedora Linux” when referring to the OS is to get those pages to rank a little higher in search engines when people search for “Linux”. Presumably, people who enter “Fedora” already know what they are looking for. (And they might be a bit disappointed if they were looking for clothing accessories. :stuck_out_tongue:) Since this is the page we would like people to find when they search for “Linux”, it might be important to include that in the design.

Just my 2¢.

1 Like
#16

Do you know where that analysis came from?

#17

Yes. It comes from me and my limited experience with Fedora Magazine’s “SEO” (search engine optimization) engine. It is constantly hassling me about increasing the frequency of keywords in the articles. :slightly_smiling_face: I don’t know for sure if that is what Matt was going for when he recommended using “Fedora Linux” more frequently, but that is how I took it.

#18

Ah OK. I can ask him about it, but I think it was more to address the confusion - when people say “Fedora” do they mean the people/community or the bits/software. So the idea was to call the community “the Fedora Project” and the bits “Fedora Linux” to distinguish what you are talking about. I don’t think SEO is involved but I will ask. In any case, I’d definitely prefer SEO to not dictate the design, and repeating “Fedora Linux” down a row of buttons just for the sake of SEO seems troubling to me. I suspect we don’t need to do that in either case though.

#19

Gregory is right that that’s part of the motivation — I got the advice to use that term from RH SEO folks several years ago. But does it work? I don’t actually know! [1]

Additionally, I’m afraid a lot of repetition might actually cause more harm than good. It’s a matter of spammer algorithms vs. anti-spammer algorithms… and I think probably mere human brains can’t even guess what the current state of the battle is. [2]

I don’t really love this, but in most official communications we’ve come down to “Fedora Linux” when it’s about the OS but no specific deliverable — so, “Fedora Linux”, but “Fedora Workstation” or “Fedora Server” rather than “Fedora Linux Workstation”.

That kind of leaves “Fedora 35” in a gray area (since the version number makes it clear enough practically speaking) but I think I prefer “Fedora Linux 35” there (and that’s what we’ve been doing in announcements, the official schedule, etc.)

Like I said, this doesn’t seem perfect to me, but I think it’s an okay compromise. We get “Linux” in there some without seeming like we’re spamming it everywhere.

I’m open to all of your thoughts on this, tough.

  1. @glb do you have any data from Magazine articles that might show the difference? Perhaps incoming metrics on searches containing the word “Linux” — do they hit pages where we say “Fedora Linux” more? ↩︎

  2. It might be interesting to give ourselves the option of doing some testing once it’s live? ↩︎

#20

I don’t know if such metrics exist or how to access them if they do, but I’ll look into it and report back here.

1 Like