Hello Tom,
Thank you for your feedback!
On 4 Jan 2024, at 23:44, Tom Rymes tom@rymes.net wrote:
I really like it at first glance, though the red used in the banner on this page (and I think it’s all over the place, I just didn’t confirm) is too close to magenta to my eyes. It’s bright, but more tropical flower than fire, IMHO (it clashes a bit with the fire video on the homepage).
Is it a bad thing to be close to magenta?
The colour is not meant to represent fire. It is just, that for a firewall, we are generally in the “red” section instead of blue or green. There are some companies that have tried it, and I don’t think it has worked well.
Then, people have done the “blood red” approach, and to distinguish ourselves we used to have a darker (kind of maroon) red. And since I found that depressing, I thought that we could rather go lighter… and this is the result.
The fire video didn’t come from the designer and he was slightly opposed to it :) The red should however never be right next to the video.
https://www.michael.dev.ipfire.org/downloads/ipfire-2.27-core182
What I did get as negative feedback before was that the red is quite bright (as in: burns your eyes). I use Apple devices which have generally good colour representation and this feedback came from people that didn’t have calibrated screens (brightness and contrast up all the way).
-Michael
Tom
On Jan 4, 2024, at 11:44 AM, Michael Tremer michael.tremer@ipfire.org wrote:
Hello everyone,
(yes, yes, I am still alive…)
I would like to pre-announce our new website which Rico and I have been working on over the last couple of months, and collect some final feedback before we roll it out as soon as possible.
So here is an outline of what has happened and what will happen next:
Rico has helped me to implement a fresh design for our website which has been drafted by another friend. The goals were to get rid of the sad and grey website, which is also *way* too simplistic, and create something that is nice looking, memorable, and brings people in.
During that journey, we have waved goodbye to Bootstrap which is hard to work with once you have discovered Bulma (https://bulma.io/), our new CSS framework of choice. We have also rewritten and refactored some parts of the backend code. There is now less Javascript and less CSS - and I am sure that we could actually still go and save a lot more.
One of the biggest rewrites is fireinfo, as with a growing number of profiles, our PostgreSQL database started to suffer. We haven’t tested this in full production, yet, but I am sure this will be a lot faster than the older version. This all only affects how we store the data and nothing changes for the clients or users.
We have upgraded the PostgreSQL driver from psycopg2 to psycopg3, and we use async programming a lot more where possible (these are all lessons learned from the build service).
We have replaced memcached with redis. Not because memcache didn’t do its job well, but rather because of the reason that we have both in our infrastructure and it is a little bit easier to just deploy one.
There is a new integration with Asterisk to see current calls - previously the phone stuff didn’t work at all any more since we replaced FreePBX with Asterisk.
But that is enough about the technical stuff… Let’s talk about what has visually changed, and why:
First of all, we have brighter colours. Very bright! Because we are a fun project! The grey used to depress me slightly and if you ask a designer what would represent us as a community, you get this. I am a lot happier with that.
The tux is gone. This is kind of a bitter sweet moment, but the old IPFire “logo” is gone with this. I am sure it will be found here or there in a couple of places, but there is no way to make something ancient like this work with something modern-looking. I spent days together with professionals to draft a new logo, and we got nothing, well, apart from the simple things that is: IPFire_
IPFire_ is not supposed to replace the word “IPFire” in texts, but I think it is a nice way to highlight the nerdiness/console people/Linux things without becoming complex to understand, or confusing to the corporate people…
On top of the front page, we finally have some mission statement: More Than A Firewall. We need to talk more about what we are and what we can do, and we need to explain (I don’t know why, but we do) to people what opportunities IPFire can open for them. This still needs a lot of work and I am happy to hear any ideas what is a nice way to communicate what IPFire is to new people using as few words as possible.
Then, there are a couple of new pages: One of the bigger ones is the About page that explains in more detail what IPFire does (which is why it feels hard to repeat the same on the front page) and it has a large list of (hopefully) all features that IPFire can do/supports/etc. This needs to be updated with every core update, so please let me know if there is something missing in the future as I will probably miss them. Additionally, we have a section with us, the team. Being a faceless project is not very good to attract more people joining our missing, and here is now the place where people will see us for the first time - the people who make IPFire happen.
The download page has mainly been made shorter and now includes the change log. Cloud providers have been added to an extra page. If you know of any cloud providers that support IPFire, please let me know. Torrent downloads are gone.
Help: The help page has always been a hard one for me. This time it contains a sentence or two that explains what all those things are good for :) Let’s see how that is going to work out…
This is a big one: We are getting rid of the thousand subdomains that we are having. There is no more wiki.ipfire.org http://wiki.ipfire.org/, blog.ipfire.org http://blog.ipfire.org/, people.ipfire.org http://people.ipfire.org/, location.ipfire.org http://location.ipfire.org/, and so on (exceptions do apply of course). Everything is now in one place: ipfire.org http://ipfire.org/. The blog is a subsection of the website, people register accounts on the main page, log in, the documentation has moved there as well. This should hopefully make everyone happy who for a long time wanted buttons to change from one thing to the next here. Here it finally is!
But there isn’t enough space for everything on the main navigation bar. So at the bottom of the page, there is an extra link called “Sitemap” with all the other things that didn’t get a large link. There is a lot of development stuff on there, too.
When logged in, the users area is a bit tidier and hopefully we are able to bring a couple more features to this in the future…
Since users might also be logged in on the main page/the blog/etc. we show “join us now” and “subscribe to our newsletter” only when people have not already done so, which makes it a lot more obvious what the next step of action for users is and a lot less confusing for the people who have already done so.
There has been a large list of bugs/feature requests submitted by a number of people who have been fixed in this. We might have introduced a couple of new ones, so please file a ticket in Bugzilla if something is broken and that needs fixing.
All in all we hope that this is a big first step to make IPFire appear the modern distribution that it is, instead of having the dark image of some coders in their basements. To summarise this all in one email feels very short for all the labour that we have put into this over the years, but I suppose it is a good sign to have simplicity in the end.
We would like to ask you now for your feedback on all of this. I know that many of you have seen this before, but please help us to double check, that a big launch does not become an embarrassment for some tiny reason :) We have taken some risky decisions and we are happy to see how they are turning out…
The new website is currently running at https://www.michael.dev.ipfire.org/ to get to things like fireinfo, just change the subdomain like so https://fireinfo.michael.dev.ipfire.org/. A couple of things like editing your own profile won’t work because the development instance can’t write to our LDAP system, but apart from that, things should be running just fine.
I am exciting to hear some feedback and hopefully we can build a small roadmap out of it for the future!
Best, -Michael & Rico
On Jan 6, 2024, at 9:03 AM, Michael Tremer michael.tremer@ipfire.org wrote:
Hello Tom,
Thank you for your feedback!
On 4 Jan 2024, at 23:44, Tom Rymes tom@rymes.net wrote:
I really like it at first glance, though the red used in the banner on this page (and I think it’s all over the place, I just didn’t confirm) is too close to magenta to my eyes. It’s bright, but more tropical flower than fire, IMHO (it clashes a bit with the fire video on the homepage).
Is it a bad thing to be close to magenta?
Not at all, it’s the juxtaposition of the video and the color that clashed, in my opinion.
The two aren’t near each other on the homepage, but if you load the homepage and then click on another page, the magenta is right where the video was, so they’re adjacent while on different pages, in a way.
What I did get as negative feedback before was that the red is quite bright (as in: burns your eyes). I use Apple devices which have generally good colour representation and this feedback came from people that didn’t have calibrated screens (brightness and contrast up all the way)
This is a bit of an issue, I suppose, but less so. My observation was more of a clash between the magenta and the fire colors. Magenta is often a bit intense, but maybe that just means it shouldn’t be in big, broad patches covering large sections of screen? I’ll leave that for the experts!
Tom
Hello Tom,
On 7 Jan 2024, at 01:47, Tom Rymes tom@rymes.net wrote:
On Jan 6, 2024, at 9:03 AM, Michael Tremer michael.tremer@ipfire.org wrote:
Hello Tom,
Thank you for your feedback!
On 4 Jan 2024, at 23:44, Tom Rymes tom@rymes.net wrote:
I really like it at first glance, though the red used in the banner on this page (and I think it’s all over the place, I just didn’t confirm) is too close to magenta to my eyes. It’s bright, but more tropical flower than fire, IMHO (it clashes a bit with the fire video on the homepage).
Is it a bad thing to be close to magenta?
Not at all, it’s the juxtaposition of the video and the color that clashed, in my opinion.
The two aren’t near each other on the homepage, but if you load the homepage and then click on another page, the magenta is right where the video was, so they’re adjacent while on different pages, in a way.
Ah yes, that makes sense, depending on what page you are clicking next.
What I did get as negative feedback before was that the red is quite bright (as in: burns your eyes). I use Apple devices which have generally good colour representation and this feedback came from people that didn’t have calibrated screens (brightness and contrast up all the way)
This is a bit of an issue, I suppose, but less so. My observation was more of a clash between the magenta and the fire colors. Magenta is often a bit intense, but maybe that just means it shouldn’t be in big, broad patches covering large sections of screen? I’ll leave that for the experts!
On my screen it looks fine without burning my eyes.
The login page (https://www.michael.dev.ipfire.org/login) and the error pages use the colour for the entire screen and feels alright to me. Definitely a statement, but that is kind of what I was going for.
-Michael
Tom
Hello Michael, all
Overall I like the new layout and contents of the new site. The front page is attractive, compact and I think informs one just enough to push them to click on that Learn more button. The latest release notice on top of the page is also nice. And I really like the new logo with the red "_". It does hurt a bit somewhere deep to see the nostalgic tux go, but I admit that it does look a bit too 90s. :-)
The new about page also looks nice and is not too verbose at first, but I do like the full feature list at the bottom of the page. This is information that may not be too important for a manager, but a nice feature for anyone with a more technical background that is scouting for a new/replacement firewall product and doesn't want to spend time diving into documentation to find out what IPFire is technically capable off. Here it is now nicely summarized.
I do have to note that in the upper part I have a few problems with the wording in: "We securely connect your employees to their desks at home, your global business partners and the infrastructure in your data centre, giving you maximum flexibility so that you can focus on what really matters." I had to re-read the sentence a few times and I'm still not sure what you exactly mean? Are we connecting employees working at home to their office desk? or employees working at the office to their home desk (which I don't think is a big pro for many bosses, at least not the ones I worked for) And are we connecting your global business partners to the infractructure in your data centre, or are we connecting employees to global business partners, and to the infrastructure ? (I know that all is possible with IPFire, but the current wording strikes me as too vague or unclear as it can be interpreted in many ways (at least to me :-))) And at last, I miss any mention of "the home user"; only "the employee" is addressed explicitly giving the impression that it is an enterprise only product or at least focused especially to enterprises. Which is not the case, I think? So, I think, if the employee is addressed, the home user should be mentioned also or neither should be.
Also on the Easy to use part, as a technical user I would like to also read that access to the Linux shell (or "CLI" is maybe more attractive to more Microsoft-minded users) for the "power user" is only a click away. (Referencing to the "enable SSH" setting in the WUI, but adding a SSH console in the WUI is maybe also an idea worth exploring sometime :-))
The latest Release notes on the download page is also a really nice addition. Maybe a link "Older release notes..." which redirects to the blog would also be nice as I wouldn't intuitively go for the blog link in the main menu when looking for an overview of older release notes. But I think the current blog does mostly cover for an older release notes overview page?
The blog page also looks nice and clean. An idea maybe, if easily implemented, is to add tags to blog posts "release", "stable", "testing", "feature", "general", ... and the ability to filter on those tags. This way you could set a filter on "stable" and "release" tags when clicked on the above proposed "Older release notes" link on the download page :-).
See below for my findings about to red color usage...
Michael Tremer schreef op zo 07-01-2024 om 14:29 [+0000]:
Hello Tom,
On 7 Jan 2024, at 01:47, Tom Rymes tom@rymes.net wrote:
On Jan 6, 2024, at 9:03 AM, Michael Tremer michael.tremer@ipfire.org wrote:
Hello Tom,
Thank you for your feedback!
On 4 Jan 2024, at 23:44, Tom Rymes tom@rymes.net wrote:
I really like it at first glance, though the red used in the banner on this page (and I think it’s all over the place, I just didn’t confirm) is too close to magenta to my eyes. It’s bright, but more tropical flower than fire, IMHO (it clashes a bit with the fire video on the homepage).
Is it a bad thing to be close to magenta?
Not at all, it’s the juxtaposition of the video and the color that clashed, in my opinion.
The two aren’t near each other on the homepage, but if you load the homepage and then click on another page, the magenta is right where the video was, so they’re adjacent while on different pages, in a way.
Ah yes, that makes sense, depending on what page you are clicking next.
What I did get as negative feedback before was that the red is quite bright (as in: burns your eyes). I use Apple devices which have generally good colour representation and this feedback came from people that didn’t have calibrated screens (brightness and contrast up all the way)
This is a bit of an issue, I suppose, but less so. My observation was more of a clash between the magenta and the fire colors. Magenta is often a bit intense, but maybe that just means it shouldn’t be in big, broad patches covering large sections of screen? I’ll leave that for the experts!
On my screen it looks fine without burning my eyes.
I do have to concur that the current red is too bright for my eyes. It is acceptable on the buttons and as text highlight color and such. But the big banners do hurt my eyes.
The login page (https://www.michael.dev.ipfire.org/login) and the error pages use the colour for the entire screen and feels alright to me. Definitely a statement, but that is kind of what I was going for.
This is too much. I really can't even watch this page without keeping my eyes half closed.
I do have to note that it is currently night-time, it is dark, the light is dim and my desktop theme has switched to dark mode. So the contrast with the bright red may be too much. But my monitor brightness adjusts automatically to environmental light and is also quite dim at this moment and also has auto 'intelligent' color correction (I checked if it made much difference to the red with that setting off, but it didn't). I also checked with "nighttime colors" (very warm colors, white is almost yellow.) But the red login page stays too bright for me to look at. Maybe I can look at it with my eyes fully open at daytime. But I'm not sure we want a website that is only comfortable to visit during daytime.
Generally I do like darker colors, like the previous maroon, and I may be a bit too sensitive for brightness/color intensity (had my eyes lasered in the past, which can be a factor to that). But I assume there are people that are more sensitive to these things than me. So I'm far from convinced that this color is a good choice.
On my mobile phone the color on the banners is not as disturbing as on my desktop. It would not be my favorite, but I could live with it. But also here the login page is too much; I don't have to squeeze my eyes yet, but it is still very intense for me to look at.
Robin
-Michael
Tom
Small update now that I took a look at the login page during daytime. It is now doable, but I do have the impression that I have to focus harder than normal to actually read the text and it still not comfortable to look at, for me.
Regards Robin
Robin Roevens schreef op ma 08-01-2024 om 00:19 [+0100]:
Hello Michael, all
Overall I like the new layout and contents of the new site. The front page is attractive, compact and I think informs one just enough to push them to click on that Learn more button. The latest release notice on top of the page is also nice. And I really like the new logo with the red "_". It does hurt a bit somewhere deep to see the nostalgic tux go, but I admit that it does look a bit too 90s. :-)
The new about page also looks nice and is not too verbose at first, but I do like the full feature list at the bottom of the page. This is information that may not be too important for a manager, but a nice feature for anyone with a more technical background that is scouting for a new/replacement firewall product and doesn't want to spend time diving into documentation to find out what IPFire is technically capable off. Here it is now nicely summarized.
I do have to note that in the upper part I have a few problems with the wording in: "We securely connect your employees to their desks at home, your global business partners and the infrastructure in your data centre, giving you maximum flexibility so that you can focus on what really matters." I had to re-read the sentence a few times and I'm still not sure what you exactly mean? Are we connecting employees working at home to their office desk? or employees working at the office to their home desk (which I don't think is a big pro for many bosses, at least not the ones I worked for) And are we connecting your global business partners to the infractructure in your data centre, or are we connecting employees to global business partners, and to the infrastructure ? (I know that all is possible with IPFire, but the current wording strikes me as too vague or unclear as it can be interpreted in many ways (at least to me :-))) And at last, I miss any mention of "the home user"; only "the employee" is addressed explicitly giving the impression that it is an enterprise only product or at least focused especially to enterprises. Which is not the case, I think? So, I think, if the employee is addressed, the home user should be mentioned also or neither should be.
Also on the Easy to use part, as a technical user I would like to also read that access to the Linux shell (or "CLI" is maybe more attractive to more Microsoft-minded users) for the "power user" is only a click away. (Referencing to the "enable SSH" setting in the WUI, but adding a SSH console in the WUI is maybe also an idea worth exploring sometime :-)) The latest Release notes on the download page is also a really nice addition. Maybe a link "Older release notes..." which redirects to the blog would also be nice as I wouldn't intuitively go for the blog link in the main menu when looking for an overview of older release notes. But I think the current blog does mostly cover for an older release notes overview page?
The blog page also looks nice and clean. An idea maybe, if easily implemented, is to add tags to blog posts "release", "stable", "testing", "feature", "general", ... and the ability to filter on those tags. This way you could set a filter on "stable" and "release" tags when clicked on the above proposed "Older release notes" link on the download page :-).
See below for my findings about to red color usage...
Michael Tremer schreef op zo 07-01-2024 om 14:29 [+0000]:
Hello Tom,
On 7 Jan 2024, at 01:47, Tom Rymes tom@rymes.net wrote:
On Jan 6, 2024, at 9:03 AM, Michael Tremer michael.tremer@ipfire.org wrote:
Hello Tom,
Thank you for your feedback!
On 4 Jan 2024, at 23:44, Tom Rymes tom@rymes.net wrote:
I really like it at first glance, though the red used in the banner on this page (and I think it’s all over the place, I just didn’t confirm) is too close to magenta to my eyes. It’s bright, but more tropical flower than fire, IMHO (it clashes a bit with the fire video on the homepage).
Is it a bad thing to be close to magenta?
Not at all, it’s the juxtaposition of the video and the color that clashed, in my opinion.
The two aren’t near each other on the homepage, but if you load the homepage and then click on another page, the magenta is right where the video was, so they’re adjacent while on different pages, in a way.
Ah yes, that makes sense, depending on what page you are clicking next.
What I did get as negative feedback before was that the red is quite bright (as in: burns your eyes). I use Apple devices which have generally good colour representation and this feedback came from people that didn’t have calibrated screens (brightness and contrast up all the way)
This is a bit of an issue, I suppose, but less so. My observation was more of a clash between the magenta and the fire colors. Magenta is often a bit intense, but maybe that just means it shouldn’t be in big, broad patches covering large sections of screen? I’ll leave that for the experts!
On my screen it looks fine without burning my eyes.
I do have to concur that the current red is too bright for my eyes. It is acceptable on the buttons and as text highlight color and such. But the big banners do hurt my eyes.
The login page (https://www.michael.dev.ipfire.org/login) and the error pages use the colour for the entire screen and feels alright to me. Definitely a statement, but that is kind of what I was going for.
This is too much. I really can't even watch this page without keeping my eyes half closed.
I do have to note that it is currently night-time, it is dark, the light is dim and my desktop theme has switched to dark mode. So the contrast with the bright red may be too much. But my monitor brightness adjusts automatically to environmental light and is also quite dim at this moment and also has auto 'intelligent' color correction (I checked if it made much difference to the red with that setting off, but it didn't). I also checked with "nighttime colors" (very warm colors, white is almost yellow.) But the red login page stays too bright for me to look at. Maybe I can look at it with my eyes fully open at daytime. But I'm not sure we want a website that is only comfortable to visit during daytime.
Generally I do like darker colors, like the previous maroon, and I may be a bit too sensitive for brightness/color intensity (had my eyes lasered in the past, which can be a factor to that). But I assume there are people that are more sensitive to these things than me. So I'm far from convinced that this color is a good choice.
On my mobile phone the color on the banners is not as disturbing as on my desktop. It would not be my favorite, but I could live with it. But also here the login page is too much; I don't have to squeeze my eyes yet, but it is still very intense for me to look at.
Robin
-Michael
Tom
Hello Robin,
On 7 Jan 2024, at 23:19, Robin Roevens robin.roevens@disroot.org wrote:
Hello Michael, all
Overall I like the new layout and contents of the new site. The front page is attractive, compact and I think informs one just enough to push them to click on that Learn more button.
I find it almost too empty...
The latest release notice on top of the page is also nice. And I really like the new logo with the red "_". It does hurt a bit somewhere deep to see the nostalgic tux go, but I admit that it does look a bit too 90s. :-)
Indeed. A little bit bittersweet :)
The new about page also looks nice and is not too verbose at first, but I do like the full feature list at the bottom of the page. This is information that may not be too important for a manager, but a nice feature for anyone with a more technical background that is scouting for a new/replacement firewall product and doesn't want to spend time diving into documentation to find out what IPFire is technically capable off. Here it is now nicely summarized.
Very good! This is what we wanted.
I do have to note that in the upper part I have a few problems with the wording in: "We securely connect your employees to their desks at home, your global business partners and the infrastructure in your data centre, giving you maximum flexibility so that you can focus on what really matters." I had to re-read the sentence a few times and I'm still not sure what you exactly mean?
Maybe I should have used ChatGPT for this :)
The intention is to explain that people can connect to their office from wherever they are in the world so that they can work as if they were sat at their desks. And on top comes that this works for businesses of all sizes.
Are we connecting employees working at home to their office desk? or employees working at the office to their home desk (which I don't think is a big pro for many bosses, at least not the ones I worked for) And are we connecting your global business partners to the infractructure in your data centre, or are we connecting employees to global business partners, and to the infrastructure ?
All of the above?! :)
(I know that all is possible with IPFire, but the current wording strikes me as too vague or unclear as it can be interpreted in many ways (at least to me :-)))
Sometimes I spent a long time getting these things right. After many versions, it happens that the result is simply crap. Sorry.
Let’s put this on the list for some rewording, but if there is no time before the launch, this isn’t severe enough to stop the launch. It is at least better than what we had before.
And at last, I miss any mention of "the home user"; only "the employee" is addressed explicitly giving the impression that it is an enterprise only product or at least focused especially to enterprises. Which is not the case, I think? So, I think, if the employee is addressed, the home user should be mentioned also or neither should be.
No, we don’t focus only on one group, but I generally avoid talking about “home users” when possible. The reason simply is that people misunderstand this and I get emails that say “Is it already possible to use IPFire in a business? Is it stable enough?”.
The media also likes to write articles like “IPFire on Raspberry Pi X” and so people tend to think this is a toy project only.
Emphasising more on enterprise is my way to compensate for it.
Also on the Easy to use part, as a technical user I would like to also read that access to the Linux shell (or "CLI" is maybe more attractive to more Microsoft-minded users) for the "power user" is only a click away. (Referencing to the "enable SSH" setting in the WUI, but adding a SSH console in the WUI is maybe also an idea worth exploring sometime :-))
Is that not on the long feature list?
The latest Release notes on the download page is also a really nice addition. Maybe a link "Older release notes..." which redirects to the blog would also be nice as I wouldn't intuitively go for the blog link in the main menu when looking for an overview of older release notes. But I think the current blog does mostly cover for an older release notes overview page?
I thought about this: A button to go to a previous release. But then I threw this away, because people tend to install old versions, because “that is the one that we tested and we now use it for all our customers”. And I don’t have to say how stupid that is.
Sometimes people send me emails asking for an older download link.
The blog page also looks nice and clean.
I find it too clean. Maybe even too empty?! There is a lot of white.
An idea maybe, if easily implemented, is to add tags to blog posts "release", "stable", "testing", "feature", "general", ... and the ability to filter on those tags.
The blog has this functionality and I threw it away. We didn’t use it and we don’t have that many posts that its too easy to lose track.
This way you could set a filter on "stable" and "release" tags when clicked on the above proposed "Older release notes" link on the download page :-).
See below for my findings about to red color usage...
Michael Tremer schreef op zo 07-01-2024 om 14:29 [+0000]:
Hello Tom,
On 7 Jan 2024, at 01:47, Tom Rymes tom@rymes.net wrote:
On Jan 6, 2024, at 9:03 AM, Michael Tremer michael.tremer@ipfire.org wrote:
Hello Tom,
Thank you for your feedback!
On 4 Jan 2024, at 23:44, Tom Rymes tom@rymes.net wrote:
I really like it at first glance, though the red used in the banner on this page (and I think it’s all over the place, I just didn’t confirm) is too close to magenta to my eyes. It’s bright, but more tropical flower than fire, IMHO (it clashes a bit with the fire video on the homepage).
Is it a bad thing to be close to magenta?
Not at all, it’s the juxtaposition of the video and the color that clashed, in my opinion.
The two aren’t near each other on the homepage, but if you load the homepage and then click on another page, the magenta is right where the video was, so they’re adjacent while on different pages, in a way.
Ah yes, that makes sense, depending on what page you are clicking next.
What I did get as negative feedback before was that the red is quite bright (as in: burns your eyes). I use Apple devices which have generally good colour representation and this feedback came from people that didn’t have calibrated screens (brightness and contrast up all the way)
This is a bit of an issue, I suppose, but less so. My observation was more of a clash between the magenta and the fire colors. Magenta is often a bit intense, but maybe that just means it shouldn’t be in big, broad patches covering large sections of screen? I’ll leave that for the experts!
On my screen it looks fine without burning my eyes.
I do have to concur that the current red is too bright for my eyes. It is acceptable on the buttons and as text highlight color and such. But the big banners do hurt my eyes.
The login page (https://www.michael.dev.ipfire.org/login) and the error pages use the colour for the entire screen and feels alright to me. Definitely a statement, but that is kind of what I was going for.
This is too much. I really can't even watch this page without keeping my eyes half closed.
I do have to note that it is currently night-time, it is dark, the light is dim and my desktop theme has switched to dark mode. So the contrast with the bright red may be too much. But my monitor brightness adjusts automatically to environmental light and is also quite dim at this moment and also has auto 'intelligent' color correction (I checked if it made much difference to the red with that setting off, but it didn't). I also checked with "nighttime colors" (very warm colors, white is almost yellow.) But the red login page stays too bright for me to look at. Maybe I can look at it with my eyes fully open at daytime. But I'm not sure we want a website that is only comfortable to visit during daytime.
Generally I do like darker colors, like the previous maroon, and I may be a bit too sensitive for brightness/color intensity (had my eyes lasered in the past, which can be a factor to that). But I assume there are people that are more sensitive to these things than me. So I'm far from convinced that this color is a good choice.
On my mobile phone the color on the banners is not as disturbing as on my desktop. It would not be my favorite, but I could live with it. But also here the login page is too much; I don't have to squeeze my eyes yet, but it is still very intense for me to look at.
Noted.
Robin
-Michael
Tom
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Hi Michael
Michael Tremer schreef op ma 08-01-2024 om 17:07 [+0000]:
Hello Robin,
On 7 Jan 2024, at 23:19, Robin Roevens robin.roevens@disroot.org wrote:
Hello Michael, all
Overall I like the new layout and contents of the new site. The front page is attractive, compact and I think informs one just enough to push them to click on that Learn more button.
I find it almost too empty...
The latest release notice on top of the page is also nice. And I really like the new logo with the red "_". It does hurt a bit somewhere deep to see the nostalgic tux go, but I admit that it does look a bit too 90s. :-)
Indeed. A little bit bittersweet :)
The new about page also looks nice and is not too verbose at first, but I do like the full feature list at the bottom of the page. This is information that may not be too important for a manager, but a nice feature for anyone with a more technical background that is scouting for a new/replacement firewall product and doesn't want to spend time diving into documentation to find out what IPFire is technically capable off. Here it is now nicely summarized.
Very good! This is what we wanted.
I do have to note that in the upper part I have a few problems with the wording in: "We securely connect your employees to their desks at home, your global business partners and the infrastructure in your data centre, giving you maximum flexibility so that you can focus on what really matters." I had to re-read the sentence a few times and I'm still not sure what you exactly mean?
Maybe I should have used ChatGPT for this :)
The intention is to explain that people can connect to their office from wherever they are in the world so that they can work as if they were sat at their desks. And on top comes that this works for businesses of all sizes.
Are we connecting employees working at home to their office desk? or employees working at the office to their home desk (which I don't think is a big pro for many bosses, at least not the ones I worked for) And are we connecting your global business partners to the infractructure in your data centre, or are we connecting employees to global business partners, and to the infrastructure ?
All of the above?! :)
(I know that all is possible with IPFire, but the current wording strikes me as too vague or unclear as it can be interpreted in many ways (at least to me :-)))
Sometimes I spent a long time getting these things right. After many versions, it happens that the result is simply crap. Sorry.
I have the same problem..:-)
Let’s put this on the list for some rewording, but if there is no time before the launch, this isn’t severe enough to stop the launch. It is at least better than what we had before.
I agree.
And at last, I miss any mention of "the home user"; only "the employee" is addressed explicitly giving the impression that it is an enterprise only product or at least focused especially to enterprises. Which is not the case, I think? So, I think, if the employee is addressed, the home user should be mentioned also or neither should be.
No, we don’t focus only on one group, but I generally avoid talking about “home users” when possible. The reason simply is that people misunderstand this and I get emails that say “Is it already possible to use IPFire in a business? Is it stable enough?”.
The media also likes to write articles like “IPFire on Raspberry Pi X” and so people tend to think this is a toy project only.
The nostalgic tux logo probably didn't help either. :-)
Emphasising more on enterprise is my way to compensate for it.
I understand. I was not aware of it being perceived as a toy project by some.
Also on the Easy to use part, as a technical user I would like to also read that access to the Linux shell (or "CLI" is maybe more attractive to more Microsoft-minded users) for the "power user" is only a click away. (Referencing to the "enable SSH" setting in the WUI, but adding a SSH console in the WUI is maybe also an idea worth exploring sometime :-))
Is that not on the long feature list?
The latest Release notes on the download page is also a really nice addition. Maybe a link "Older release notes..." which redirects to the blog would also be nice as I wouldn't intuitively go for the blog link in the main menu when looking for an overview of older release notes. But I think the current blog does mostly cover for an older release notes overview page?
I thought about this: A button to go to a previous release. But then I threw this away, because people tend to install old versions, because “that is the one that we tested and we now use it for all our customers”. And I don’t have to say how stupid that is.
Sometimes people send me emails asking for an older download link.
I agree with not making it too obvious where to find older versions.
But not everyone keeps it's instance always up-to-date, even I have skipped a version or two due to circumstances; And then I obviously like to check the release notes of all versions I missed up until the last. So those previous release notes (and not the downloads themselves) should be easily found from the latest release notes, as I wouldn't intuitively go to the blog for that. (I don't associate blog automatically with release announcements. In the end I would most probably find them, but it wouldn't be my first idea to go search for them there.)
I think it might be better to separate the release notes and the download links to the related versions. Instead just provide a link to "the" download page which just or at least prominently offers you to download the latest version. And an "archive" page somewhere more "hidden", with a big fat warning on top, that it is insecure and totally not recommended to use an older version, and just a clean (unattractive) list of links to downloads of older versions. The links in the blog posts would hence always point to the download page offering the latest version prominently, and serve better as an archive of release notes than as an archive of older versions as it currently is. Or something like that...?
The blog page also looks nice and clean.
I find it too clean. Maybe even too empty?! There is a lot of white.
An idea maybe, if easily implemented, is to add tags to blog posts "release", "stable", "testing", "feature", "general", ... and the ability to filter on those tags.
The blog has this functionality and I threw it away. We didn’t use it and we don’t have that many posts that its too easy to lose track.
Agreed, it was just an idea to be able to easily implement an overview of older release notes for that "older release notes" links I suggested earlier :-)
Regards Robin
This way you could set a filter on "stable" and "release" tags when clicked on the above proposed "Older release notes" link on the download page :-).
See below for my findings about to red color usage...
Michael Tremer schreef op zo 07-01-2024 om 14:29 [+0000]:
Hello Tom,
On 7 Jan 2024, at 01:47, Tom Rymes tom@rymes.net wrote:
On Jan 6, 2024, at 9:03 AM, Michael Tremer michael.tremer@ipfire.org wrote:
Hello Tom,
Thank you for your feedback!
On 4 Jan 2024, at 23:44, Tom Rymes tom@rymes.net wrote:
I really like it at first glance, though the red used in the banner on this page (and I think it’s all over the place, I just didn’t confirm) is too close to magenta to my eyes. It’s bright, but more tropical flower than fire, IMHO (it clashes a bit with the fire video on the homepage).
Is it a bad thing to be close to magenta?
Not at all, it’s the juxtaposition of the video and the color that clashed, in my opinion.
The two aren’t near each other on the homepage, but if you load the homepage and then click on another page, the magenta is right where the video was, so they’re adjacent while on different pages, in a way.
Ah yes, that makes sense, depending on what page you are clicking next.
What I did get as negative feedback before was that the red is quite bright (as in: burns your eyes). I use Apple devices which have generally good colour representation and this feedback came from people that didn’t have calibrated screens (brightness and contrast up all the way)
This is a bit of an issue, I suppose, but less so. My observation was more of a clash between the magenta and the fire colors. Magenta is often a bit intense, but maybe that just means it shouldn’t be in big, broad patches covering large sections of screen? I’ll leave that for the experts!
On my screen it looks fine without burning my eyes.
I do have to concur that the current red is too bright for my eyes. It is acceptable on the buttons and as text highlight color and such. But the big banners do hurt my eyes.
The login page (https://www.michael.dev.ipfire.org/login) and the error pages use the colour for the entire screen and feels alright to me. Definitely a statement, but that is kind of what I was going for.
This is too much. I really can't even watch this page without keeping my eyes half closed.
I do have to note that it is currently night-time, it is dark, the light is dim and my desktop theme has switched to dark mode. So the contrast with the bright red may be too much. But my monitor brightness adjusts automatically to environmental light and is also quite dim at this moment and also has auto 'intelligent' color correction (I checked if it made much difference to the red with that setting off, but it didn't). I also checked with "nighttime colors" (very warm colors, white is almost yellow.) But the red login page stays too bright for me to look at. Maybe I can look at it with my eyes fully open at daytime. But I'm not sure we want a website that is only comfortable to visit during daytime.
Generally I do like darker colors, like the previous maroon, and I may be a bit too sensitive for brightness/color intensity (had my eyes lasered in the past, which can be a factor to that). But I assume there are people that are more sensitive to these things than me. So I'm far from convinced that this color is a good choice.
On my mobile phone the color on the banners is not as disturbing as on my desktop. It would not be my favorite, but I could live with it. But also here the login page is too much; I don't have to squeeze my eyes yet, but it is still very intense for me to look at.
Noted.
Robin
-Michael
Tom
-- Dit bericht is gescanned op virussen en andere gevaarlijke inhoud door MailScanner en lijkt schoon te zijn.
Hello Robin,
On 9 Jan 2024, at 15:43, Robin Roevens robin.roevens@disroot.org wrote:
Hi Michael
Michael Tremer schreef op ma 08-01-2024 om 17:07 [+0000]:
Hello Robin,
On 7 Jan 2024, at 23:19, Robin Roevens robin.roevens@disroot.org wrote:
Hello Michael, all
Overall I like the new layout and contents of the new site. The front page is attractive, compact and I think informs one just enough to push them to click on that Learn more button.
I find it almost too empty...
The latest release notice on top of the page is also nice. And I really like the new logo with the red "_". It does hurt a bit somewhere deep to see the nostalgic tux go, but I admit that it does look a bit too 90s. :-)
Indeed. A little bit bittersweet :)
The new about page also looks nice and is not too verbose at first, but I do like the full feature list at the bottom of the page. This is information that may not be too important for a manager, but a nice feature for anyone with a more technical background that is scouting for a new/replacement firewall product and doesn't want to spend time diving into documentation to find out what IPFire is technically capable off. Here it is now nicely summarized.
Very good! This is what we wanted.
I do have to note that in the upper part I have a few problems with the wording in: "We securely connect your employees to their desks at home, your global business partners and the infrastructure in your data centre, giving you maximum flexibility so that you can focus on what really matters." I had to re-read the sentence a few times and I'm still not sure what you exactly mean?
Maybe I should have used ChatGPT for this :)
The intention is to explain that people can connect to their office from wherever they are in the world so that they can work as if they were sat at their desks. And on top comes that this works for businesses of all sizes.
Are we connecting employees working at home to their office desk? or employees working at the office to their home desk (which I don't think is a big pro for many bosses, at least not the ones I worked for) And are we connecting your global business partners to the infractructure in your data centre, or are we connecting employees to global business partners, and to the infrastructure ?
All of the above?! :)
(I know that all is possible with IPFire, but the current wording strikes me as too vague or unclear as it can be interpreted in many ways (at least to me :-)))
Sometimes I spent a long time getting these things right. After many versions, it happens that the result is simply crap. Sorry.
I have the same problem..:-)
Let’s put this on the list for some rewording, but if there is no time before the launch, this isn’t severe enough to stop the launch. It is at least better than what we had before.
I agree.
And at last, I miss any mention of "the home user"; only "the employee" is addressed explicitly giving the impression that it is an enterprise only product or at least focused especially to enterprises. Which is not the case, I think? So, I think, if the employee is addressed, the home user should be mentioned also or neither should be.
No, we don’t focus only on one group, but I generally avoid talking about “home users” when possible. The reason simply is that people misunderstand this and I get emails that say “Is it already possible to use IPFire in a business? Is it stable enough?”.
The media also likes to write articles like “IPFire on Raspberry Pi X” and so people tend to think this is a toy project only.
The nostalgic tux logo probably didn't help either. :-)
Emphasising more on enterprise is my way to compensate for it.
I understand. I was not aware of it being perceived as a toy project by some.
Also on the Easy to use part, as a technical user I would like to also read that access to the Linux shell (or "CLI" is maybe more attractive to more Microsoft-minded users) for the "power user" is only a click away. (Referencing to the "enable SSH" setting in the WUI, but adding a SSH console in the WUI is maybe also an idea worth exploring sometime :-))
Is that not on the long feature list?
The latest Release notes on the download page is also a really nice addition. Maybe a link "Older release notes..." which redirects to the blog would also be nice as I wouldn't intuitively go for the blog link in the main menu when looking for an overview of older release notes. But I think the current blog does mostly cover for an older release notes overview page?
I thought about this: A button to go to a previous release. But then I threw this away, because people tend to install old versions, because “that is the one that we tested and we now use it for all our customers”. And I don’t have to say how stupid that is.
Sometimes people send me emails asking for an older download link.
I agree with not making it too obvious where to find older versions.
But not everyone keeps it's instance always up-to-date, even I have skipped a version or two due to circumstances; And then I obviously like to check the release notes of all versions I missed up until the last. So those previous release notes (and not the downloads themselves) should be easily found from the latest release notes, as I wouldn't intuitively go to the blog for that. (I don't associate blog automatically with release announcements. In the end I would most probably find them, but it wouldn't be my first idea to go search for them there.)
I think it might be better to separate the release notes and the download links to the related versions. Instead just provide a link to "the" download page which just or at least prominently offers you to download the latest version. And an "archive" page somewhere more "hidden", with a big fat warning on top, that it is insecure and totally not recommended to use an older version, and just a clean (unattractive) list of links to downloads of older versions. The links in the blog posts would hence always point to the download page offering the latest version prominently, and serve better as an archive of release notes than as an archive of older versions as it currently is. Or something like that...?
The download button on the release announcements will always lead you to that release, and not the latest one.
I agree that the blog is not the first place to look, but people will find it I am sure.
We used to have a “news” section on the page before we merged that and the “planet” into a new blog. I suppose any version that we go with has its downsides.
The blog page also looks nice and clean.
I find it too clean. Maybe even too empty?! There is a lot of white.
An idea maybe, if easily implemented, is to add tags to blog posts "release", "stable", "testing", "feature", "general", ... and the ability to filter on those tags.
The blog has this functionality and I threw it away. We didn’t use it and we don’t have that many posts that its too easy to lose track.
Agreed, it was just an idea to be able to easily implement an overview of older release notes for that "older release notes" links I suggested earlier :-)
Regards Robin
This way you could set a filter on "stable" and "release" tags when clicked on the above proposed "Older release notes" link on the download page :-).
See below for my findings about to red color usage...
Michael Tremer schreef op zo 07-01-2024 om 14:29 [+0000]:
Hello Tom,
On 7 Jan 2024, at 01:47, Tom Rymes tom@rymes.net wrote:
On Jan 6, 2024, at 9:03 AM, Michael Tremer michael.tremer@ipfire.org wrote:
Hello Tom,
Thank you for your feedback!
> On 4 Jan 2024, at 23:44, Tom Rymes tom@rymes.net wrote: > > I really like it at first glance, though the red used in > the > banner on this page (and I think it’s all over the place, I > just didn’t confirm) is too close to magenta to my eyes. > It’s > bright, but more tropical flower than fire, IMHO (it > clashes a > bit with the fire video on the homepage).
Is it a bad thing to be close to magenta?
Not at all, it’s the juxtaposition of the video and the color that clashed, in my opinion.
The two aren’t near each other on the homepage, but if you load the homepage and then click on another page, the magenta is right where the video was, so they’re adjacent while on different pages, in a way.
Ah yes, that makes sense, depending on what page you are clicking next.
What I did get as negative feedback before was that the red is quite bright (as in: burns your eyes). I use Apple devices which have generally good colour representation and this feedback came from people that didn’t have calibrated screens (brightness and contrast up all the way)
This is a bit of an issue, I suppose, but less so. My observation was more of a clash between the magenta and the fire colors. Magenta is often a bit intense, but maybe that just means it shouldn’t be in big, broad patches covering large sections of screen? I’ll leave that for the experts!
On my screen it looks fine without burning my eyes.
I do have to concur that the current red is too bright for my eyes. It is acceptable on the buttons and as text highlight color and such. But the big banners do hurt my eyes.
The login page (https://www.michael.dev.ipfire.org/login) and the error pages use the colour for the entire screen and feels alright to me. Definitely a statement, but that is kind of what I was going for.
This is too much. I really can't even watch this page without keeping my eyes half closed.
I do have to note that it is currently night-time, it is dark, the light is dim and my desktop theme has switched to dark mode. So the contrast with the bright red may be too much. But my monitor brightness adjusts automatically to environmental light and is also quite dim at this moment and also has auto 'intelligent' color correction (I checked if it made much difference to the red with that setting off, but it didn't). I also checked with "nighttime colors" (very warm colors, white is almost yellow.) But the red login page stays too bright for me to look at. Maybe I can look at it with my eyes fully open at daytime. But I'm not sure we want a website that is only comfortable to visit during daytime.
Generally I do like darker colors, like the previous maroon, and I may be a bit too sensitive for brightness/color intensity (had my eyes lasered in the past, which can be a factor to that). But I assume there are people that are more sensitive to these things than me. So I'm far from convinced that this color is a good choice.
On my mobile phone the color on the banners is not as disturbing as on my desktop. It would not be my favorite, but I could live with it. But also here the login page is too much; I don't have to squeeze my eyes yet, but it is still very intense for me to look at.
Noted.
Robin
-Michael
Tom
-- Dit bericht is gescanned op virussen en andere gevaarlijke inhoud door MailScanner en lijkt schoon te zijn.
-- Dit bericht is gescanned op virussen en andere gevaarlijke inhoud door MailScanner en lijkt schoon te zijn.
-
Michael Tremer -
Robin Roevens -
Tom Rymes