Suggestion: Better Promote Add-Ons on the Add-Ons Site

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Mainly I want second generation add-on website look more professional and have similar layout and functionality as AMO so it can be actually alternative to AMO.

http://dev.addons.palemoon.org/jetpack/ currently this website is more professional looking than actual add-on website.

I've put a lot of hours into replicating and extending the look and feel of the Pale Moon site design and aesthetic. The style of the site is not unprofessional by any means.. It is simply different than what Mozilla has done and is not subject to the cookie cutter, thin huge font, whitespace. metro, flat, soulless magazine madness that has gripped the bulk of the internet nor is it a 1:1 replica with Mozilla.

It presents a consistency between all Pale Moon sites that I think is important to maintain. No.. Whatever software and tools and advancements that happen will be under the hood.. I will not copypasta Mozilla styling and break UX commonality and unification. The text is clearly readable and elements are designed well. It may be simplistic but has depth and serves the function for which it was designed for.

That isn't to say that things won't change and get better but I don't think diverging from established Pale Moon design and copying Mozilla is the answer.. Evolving our own aesthetic and design when it comes to the Pale Moon sites is essential and I fully support that..

[Tharn]

I rather like how it looks. It's, for lack of a better word, cute and understated. It doesn't try to be a pseudo-social platform. Looking at the future and the inevitability of quite a number of forks, it's probably going to have to be altered a bit. Making it into a classic list view would be ideal for me but that won't win any beauty contests either.

[win7-7]

I understand that you want to it look unique but it has to look nice and unique. Current add-on website is not what I want it to look. Too simple, boring and text based. If second generation add-on site will still be this simple then I will just continue use AMO as primary add-on website forever. Just like I use Windows 7 because I like it and there is no similar OS. Linux is horrible (don't even get me started... Linux is not even remotely similar in its GUI operations or in its theme to Windows 7). I like Pale Moon itself because while it has it own direction it look similar to pre-Australis Firefox. Add-on website is not similar to AMO layout and look too simple. AMO doesn't have flat UI. Maybe there could be bit more color in lower part of AMO but generally UI is not flat. New Github UI style is example of flat UI (4.9.2015). It is horribly white and eye sore causing(I use userstyle to override Github to old style).

[New Tobin Paradigm]

I understand that you want to it look unique but it has to look nice and unique. Current add-on website is not what I want it to look. Too simple, boring and text based. If second generation add-on site will still be this simple then I will just continue use AMO forever. Just like I use Windows 7 because I like it and there is no similar OS. Linux is horrible (don't even get me started... Linux is not even remotely similar in its GUI operations or in its theme to Windows 7). I like Pale Moon itself because while it has it own direction it look similar to pre-Australis Firefox. Add-on website is not similar to AMO layout and look too simple. AMO doesn't have that flat UI. Maybe there could be bit more color in lower part of AMO but generally UI is not flat. New Github UI style is flat (4.9.2015 they changed look) (horribly white and eye sore causing(I use userstyle to override Github to old style)).

I fear you will be out of luck then.. Because I doubt Mozilla will continue to host Mozilla-style extensions forever.. Not once they are fully deprecated and removed from working in Firefox.. Replaced by Chrome-style "webextensions".

I am sorry you do not personally care for the design of the Add-ons Site or the hard work I have done.. The site serves the one perpose.. Which is to list and allow downloading of add-ons.. Which I feel it does do rather well.. I will admit the front page and maybe other areas need some work and refinement to allow more entry points to add-ons but the over all design is very sound and if it changes it will evolve naturally along the lines established by Moonchild. Which it has been.. Namely the Complete Themes category, the All Extensions category, and how the individual and specific add-on pages have evolved since the opening of the site.

I will say this again for clarification.. Our add-ons site will not be a carbon copy clone of AMO.. It will evolve over time to satisfy the bulk of our userbase.. It also does not have the intent of being a pseudo-social arena or a telemetry collecting complex of data gathering..

Our overall goals are stated on the Project roadmap page.

[jumba]

Mainly I want second generation add-on website look more professional and have similar layout and functionality as AMO so it can be actually alternative to AMO.

http://dev.addons.palemoon.org/jetpack/ currently this website is more professional looking than actual add-on website.

I think the task here is to create an addons site for Pale Moon not an alternative for AMO.

[Supernova]

Since AMO won't host XUL addons in maybe 2 years ; the 2nd generation website will aim to replace it ; for Pale Moon addons and users obviously. It also doesn't mean it should copy how it looks like.
Though I'm among those which are not fan of the actual layout. Mainly, because using only half the horizontal space isn't pretty, and because the menu is too tiny/not outstanding enough in my taste. I'm not against keeping primarily text.

[noir_ecaille]

Then i would say the easist way is just to translate the addon site, without the addon description.
Even mozilla does that.

I guess a related approach could be to set up a multi-language wiki, allowing user to add translations and link to the downloads on the existing addon site.

... might look "easier" but any wikia needs a full team of :

• admins
• IT technicians (in order to make bots, decipher technical problems, maintain the site, etc)
• moderators

and its own share of resources of course. It's only "user-friendly" but not so "already-very-busy-computer-specialist-friendly" in my view point. OR we (users) might as well create wikias on our own "until" the PM team get more (stable?) remuneration and staff. No need to lazily demand the PM team to work on countless users whims which are not even as critical as keeping the software working and insure the core maintenance/servicing.

Mainly I want second generation add-on website look more professional and have similar layout and functionality as AMO so it can be actually alternative to AMO.

http://dev.addons.palemoon.org/jetpack/ currently this website is more professional looking than actual add-on website.

I think the task here is to create an addons site for Pale Moon not an alternative for AMO.

... is a perceptive bias. Because to me, AMO does not look professional -- rather "social" and playful in honesty.

Yet I've write lot of letters/documents and imagined/built some forms for people "around" me at work. The actual PM theme is effective rather than "beautiful". For now, I think it might gain even more efficiency through other changes than becoming a cloned AMO. Instead of shunning Moon Child and co, it would be of more help that some volunteer re-write the page source and submit his/her own propostion to Moon Child. It might as well calm down the pouring of the all-around endless whims...

Should I go with my two cents or not ?... I would just reword or rewrite some part of the addons "home-page", and add few links such as the forum add-ons section. Moreover, since it appears (at leat to me) a bit unclear, I would modify the add-ons forum :

Browser Add-ons
. ╠═ Plug-ins
. ║ . . . ╠═ Plug-ins compatibility
. ║ . . . ╚═ Plug-ins news and miscellanious
. ╠═ Extensions
. ║ . . . ╠═ AMO extensions
. ║ . . . ╠═ PM fork extensions
. ║ . . . ╠═ PM original/new extensions ("labs" ?)
. ║ . . . ╚═ Extensions news and miscellanious
. ╠═ Themes
. ╠═ PM add-ons page/website
. ╚═ The Developers' Cave/Boat

Might need some time to reclass the discussion threads, though one already can notice that some sub-sections show bitly random posting.

Of course, none of this would matter as a critical level. What's important in my eyes is above all for PM to keep functionning smoothly and for add-ons to remains more or "less" compatible

[joe04]

I'll offer my "fresh set of eyes" opinion on this topic. Not only am I a brand new PMer whose read much of the main & addon website pages the past few days, I honestly never even heard of PM until several days ago when I happened to read an Ars Tech article about FF41, and the comments mentioned PM. (There I also learned of last month's big FF announcement; I haven't paid much attention to FF dev in recent years since my core addons continued to work. Most importantly, I've now made the full switch to PM.)


So I first saw this website a few days ago, and my first impression was mildly negative because the site theme does look "homespun" (or "unprofessional" as someone else mentioned) like an old school homepage. But I quickly got over that because it's well-written content that clearly explained a number of important topics, and the menu bar is well organized. The fact that the addon pages are the same style makes perfect sense, so it's a seemless transition; doesn't feel like a separate section.
The reasons for the "homespun" comment are the quirky font, the horizontal narrowness of the body, and the pinkish border color. (I'm red-green colorblind so don't scold me on that

That said, I do like that the PM site looks unique and somewhat personal. If you (we?) do decide to change the look and feel, please don't use some sterile, cookie-cutter theme like our Jetpack SDK site. My inital reaction is "Ugh, another one of these." So perhaps there's some middle ground look-and-feel wise. But I definitely prefer keeping it homespun to some shitty SDK type theme.

Somebody mentioned using the AMO as a template for this site... Bad idea, simply because PM needs to maintain that it's not a FF clone... something MC has repeated roughly 38 times from what I've read thus far


The idea to list some addons on the main addon page is probably good - whether top 10, random, latest, whatever. (I don't have a preference on that because what I really like is the page listing ALL addons. Please preserve that, even as the number grows. I gladly take the time to look through it, as I now have several new addons I never had before.)