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Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2012 16:58:26 +0900
From: Martin Heidegger <mh@leichtgewicht.at>
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To: flex-dev@incubator.apache.org
Subject: Re: Website
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On 04/04/2012 16:22, Ariel Jakobovits wrote:
> I strongly believe one of the most successful open source toolkits I have witnessed evolve was jquery.
>
> I believe a critical element to its early success was its plugins page, containing third party contributed plugins that got developers and users excited about the possibilities of jquery. This alleviates pressure on what we bring into the sdk while giving exposure to functionality and broadening the reach of the framework.
>
> Our current apache website lacks such a feature, along with other features seen on the jquery website. Does being an apache project mean we have to have the standard boring apache website, or can we develop it, style it, give it some life, etc?
>

Hello Ariel,

I have been thinking (and reading) into the homepage issue. Following 
Apache pages are interesting [1]. I like to quote from [2]:

"Podlings MUST coordinate with the Apache Public Relations Committee on 
all publicity activities by a podling."

Actually this also somehow relates to Twitter/Google+ but I havn't 
figured out that totally. The technical point is can be found here[3] I 
guess. My current
understanding is:

   *) Any tool used (cms, text editors, maven, ...) must generate static 
files (no public database is allowed)
   *) There is a Django-like system set-up for flex to edit pages [4] 
that uses a very simple backend - for PPMC members - we can use 
CSS/Images and theoretically flash quite freely

My favorite example of how a open-source project could be dealt with is 
Drupal [5] (a widely used PHP CMS), their homepage offers following things:

   *) A list of modules that work with drupal
   *) A integrated bug/tracking solution that automatically updates the 
status of inlined referenced bugs
   *) A patch upload system that automatically tests if the patch would 
break unit tests
   *) A rating system to rate modules

But that is a cms provider with a vastly bigger backend developer 
resource pool backing it.

*Most importantly*
In my experience any thing written is about content and its structure (I 
know I often fail to consider that in my emails). So I have thought a 
bit about flex and on
the main page I think we should make clear what flex _is_ by having 3 
sections:

   1) Flex is a development toolchain that has a compiler, asdoc system, 
etc.
   2) Flex is a AS3 User Interface framework that supports focus 
handling, layouting, binding, skinning etc.
   3) Flex is a set of components for that framework (HBox, Button, ... 
AdvancedDataGrid,...)

sorted from Low Level -> High Level. From then on the content of each 
section should keep the focus of the section in mind: i.e.: compiler 
should be focussed
on the compile/language features (mxml etc.).  The UI Framework should 
not be talking about the capabilities of the development toolchain and 
focus on
how to develop anything using this framework and the components should 
be strictly separate.

But that is just a suggestion.

yours
Martin.

[1] http://incubator.apache.org/guides/sites.html
[2] http://incubator.apache.org/guides/branding.html
[3] http://www.apache.org/dev/#web
[4] https://cms.apache.org/flex/
[5] http://drupal.org <http://drupal.org/>

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