[Ur] New website?

[Timothy Beyer]

At Tue, 28 Jul 2015 13:32:18 -0400,
Adam Chlipala wrote:
> - It's not clear that the large background graphic from Torstein's 
> design is the way to go.  Somehow it may be out of keeping with the 
> "character" of the Ur/Web project.

I for one don't dislike the current Ur/Web site, but there are modern ways to
achieve the same effect as frames that work properly with search engines
(eg. Bootstrap navbar "Fixed top" [1]), and have better simplicity than frames.

The site needs to look trendy, so things like bootstrap widgets would be
important in promoting Ur/Web.

Plus, a menu that toggles between desktop or mobile menu (ex. SmartMenus [2]
with Bootstrap 3 addon [3]) also looks really modern, although it might be a bit
overkill for this project.

> - Adding a live-coding demo section seems like a no-brainer.  I started 
> a separate discussion thread looking for someone to spearhead an 
> implementation.

Possibly a prerequisite for the above, but it would be cool if we had a webhost
available with Ur/Web and PostgreSQL installed so that it would be easier to
host Javascript style interactive demos.  These types of demos could really
make a big selling point for Ur/Web, especially to newcomers and those
skeptical of its practical uses.

> - Moving to Git & GitHub also seems like a no-brainer.  One concern 
> about GitHub was expressed, regarding censorship.  I personally am not 
> too worried there, as it's easy to maintain "mirrors" of a Git 
> repository all over the place, to be ready in case one main provider 
> goes over to the dark side.  The pros seem to outweigh the cons, 
> considering how many potential contributors already have GitHub accounts 
> and are used to using GitHub.

Not directly related to github, but we should implement support for syntax
highlighting libraries such as highlight.js (perfect for webpages and
markdown), pygments (for TeX/LaTeX).

If we are going with github, we should also have a "Fork me on github" ribbon
on the top right of the page.

Personally, I'm fine with any version control system or host that the project
uses.

> - It may still be worth tweaking the graphical design of the Ur project 
> site, but I'm not seeing a clear consensus right now on exactly how that 
> should look.  (I really don't mind the current site. :P)

See my comment on Twitter bootstrap widgets above.

> Another very useful thing would be a tutorial that doesn't assume ML and 
> Haskell familiarity, ideally written by someone beside me, since 
> Ur/Web's design has been in some sense optimized for my brain. :) Any 
> takers there?

I would like to make some tutorials at some point, although I'm curious which
tutorials people would like to see?

Right now, I'm focusing on library stuff, rather than tutorials, such as GUI
components similar to what I've used on big Javascript projects, and JSON RPC.

Regards,
Tim

[1] http://getbootstrap.com/examples/navbar-fixed-top/

[2] http://www.smartmenus.org/

[3] https://vadikom.github.io/smartmenus/src/demo/bootstrap-navbar.html