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Red Hat Software Businesses

redhat.com Redone 83

Posted by justin++ from the redeux-part-two dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "Red Hat has re-layed-out the site yet again. Looks like an attempt at a portal, but only internal resources. IWNSM (it would not surprise me) if future versions of Red Hat had netscape and lynx's default home pages set to redhat.com :) " It looks quite a bit like Yahoo. The GeekToys section is a bit timely, too, if not a bit heavy on Nerf.
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redhat.com Redone More

redhat.com Redone

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  • The last version made it fairly difficult for me to find information/stuff. i am quite impressed with the current layout. everything is obviously defined, and orginized. yay! good job redhat.

  • All the world's a Mac (Score:3)

    by Tom Christiansen ( 54829 ) <tchrist@perl.com> on Friday November 26, 1999 @10:18PM (#1501827) Homepage
    Fetch the raw document with wget or lynx -source, or from netscape do a "view source" on that page. Now, look at the javascript gunkola at the top. They assume that if you're not running Linux, and you're not running Windows, then you must obviously be running a Mac! That's hilarious.
  • I must say that it looks very solid, but I can't say that the page has a nice, goodlooking lay-out. I can understand that they don't want to use flash or something like that, but this can be done better.
  • This is pretty nice. Definitely better than a couple months ago, when the text was a pain to read. Those tiny fonts had to go. Personally, though, this stuff does not matter to me unless it is really poorly laid out. Are there any books on website interface design in the same vein as "About Face"? Maybe that question should go to Redhat's webmaster...
  • someone actually stole Circuit City's old interface...and I mean oooooollllldddd.....as in way back when.

    it was ugly then, worse now.

    Dan

  • RH 6.1 - NS Home Page IS Set To Redhat.com! (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 26, 1999 @10:42PM (#1501831)
    It was done in the /usr/bin/netscape script as a forced command line parameter when the browser is opened without any other parameters. Even setting the NS home page internally had no effect, since NS won't display the homepage when one is passes as a parameter. I didn't appreciate having to track this down and fix it myself.
  • I like the new look. It's clean, nicely organized and makes good use of color.

    Besides the email addy and the e-newsletter are there any other benefits to signing up on the site? Any type of customization?


    That's what I love about them high-school girls. I get older, they stay the same age... yes they do.
    --Wooderson 1976
  • Correction- the email was an ad for employment.. oops.

    But, the Channel GPS Navigator link in Geek Toys is busted.


    That's what I love about them high-school girls. I get older, they stay the same age... yes they do.
    --Wooderson 1976
  • Well, it wasn't -that- bad, but I think they could have made it a little more Lynx-friendly. The list of links look particularly horrible.
  • So why've you got javascript running?
    Surely you jest! I don't run with javascript, use a spamvert and brainfuzz filtering proxy, and don't even have images autoload. But I was interested in whether they'd cleaned up their HTML, so I looked at it manually (er, ocularly?). One can do that, you know. :-)
  • You can get the CD for a couple of bucks (literally, $2 or a little more) at CheapBytes (www.cheapbytes.com [cheapbytes.com]). But remember, the box set also includes a thick manual and good support. And Red Hat needs a little money, too, don't they?

    --

  • Quite my opinion. One can say that the page is a quick and dirty attempt at a would-be portal.

    Let us hope that they don't make the same big mistake Netscape made with the useless AOL NetCenter project.

    Tim

  • God, this is ugly. Is the template of the future? It looks like zdnet and shopper, yahoo, etc. Is there something about America where interesting design loses out to load time again and again? I love Euro sites for their interesting graphics and layout. If this is the is the result of Redhat's IPO and their desire to make the site into more of a viable e-commerce look, then "hooray for capitalism!" as Austin Powers once said. Of course the flipside is "Down with good design!". Alexis de Tocqueville's critique of the homogenizing effect of our nation in his book "Democracy in America" is borne out yet again. I work in e-commerce and though I understand the concept of sucking the life out of graphics and simple layout to improve load time, it is not an excuse for poor design. I'm glad that I split my Linux twixt SuSe and PPC. I'd rather have 'business simple' or 'amateur look' over e-commerce genericism any day. Letch
  • Yeah yeah everyone is launching their goddamn portal. I for one detest portals, but whatever. No more link to /. on the front page now :(
    --
    "Some people say that I proved if you get a C average, you can end up being successful in life."
  • Never quite put my finger on it before, but you've definitely got a point - there are fundamental differences between Euro sites and US ones...

    Sort of the same as the automobile industry - US designs cheesy godawful cars and EU designs cars that yuppies all over the US are cashing in their stock options to buy on a yearly basis.

    Interesting. I'm going to continue to observe this effect as I browse the web, looking for cultural barriers like this. Lifes simple ironies (cultural/design ethos on an International medium) are interesting, at times...

  • remember a couple months back, RedHat wanted their site to be an internet portal for linux... this must be the result. Hence, the reason why it looks like Yahoo, Excite and every other web search / portal out there.

    I do think this sort of design is getting rather boring... whats happened to originality? in another 2 years, are every commericial site going to look like this? Look at Sun, Borland, Microsoft... there are quite similar in some ways.

    This could be a good thing, since there are not many graphics, not many stupid java applets to halt your computer for 2/3 minutes.. the result: a site that doesn't take an age to load.. simplicity is best, IMO.

    boring it may be... efficient it is, easy to find things you want instead of having to spend 20 minutes searching the site for what you want...

  • I haven't played with it much, but this layout looks really solid. News is readily retrievable, the search box is decent sized so you can see what you type, and I can scan the page in a second or two instead of reacding it. Bravo RedHat.

    All in all, I can't complain. The issue with Lynx is a little sad at this point. Lynx under AIX was my first browser (over a 14.4 modem to an ISP), but it is NOT standards compliant. A page that is useless without graphics is inexcusable because users with limited bandwith may load without graphics and the visually impared need ALT definitions. However, demanding that a page look good for people without graphical support... that is kinda pushing it.

    The fact that Lynx is free does NOT mean that it much be supported by Redhat. Redhat embraces opensource, but with free (like beer) browsers, supporting based upon open source is kinda silly, especially when far better open source browsers exist than Lynx and Netscape has source available, albeit not for the production browsers.

    Alex
  • Four Nerf guns is too many? Fourty might be pushing it I suppose, but four is nowhere near enough...
  • Which RH version might that be? My last full installation was 5.0 and since then I only upgraded different parts of the system. However; Netscape is something which I tend to upgrade every now and then and up untill the 4.7 my Netscape 'bootup' allways pointed to /usr/doc/HTML/index.html. If your netscape script points to the RH homepage I'd suggest using rpm -Vf /usr/bin/netscape because I think your script could very well be tampered with.
  • You'll never have to wait for images to load, scripts to be parsed, and java applets to start, if you turn off Java, Javascript, and automatic image loading. ;-)

    It saves much time.
  • > It was done in the /usr/bin/netscape script as a forced command line parameter when the browser is opened without any other
    parameters

    Well, SuSE also does this, but only if you didn't set up a homepage (that is, the wrapper checks for preferences.js and act accordingly).

    But then, who really cares?
  • So what exactly does Redhat have against BeOS and the commercial Unixes?

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I keep Lynx in a terminal window for those times when reading is important, pretty pictures that send my *slow* disk drive into fits drive me off site. Media sites are the biggest offenders, and it will get worse.

    The RH site in my Lynx colors is readable. Needs work. Where is the ALT? My guess is the ALT was postponed for speed. Maybe RH will stick a jr. on cleaning up the page for us readers. And no hieroglyphic stuff that needs text to explain it, duh! -d

  • It's not the first time I find errors in the HTML-syntax of RedHats HomePage. I don't dare looking at the other pages!

    • BASE, META and TITLE tags outside of the HEAD section
    • HEAD tag closed twice
    • FORM not closed in TR (tags may be nested but not crossed)
    • NOBR not closed in STRONG (same as above)
    • COLOR attribute for IMG tag does not exist
    • BORDERD attribute for IMG tag also does not exist
    • ...
    Do they code HTML using vi? If so, don't they check what they've typed? Is Redhat's webmaster unaware of HTML-validators?

    Learn RedHat, learn!

    :-)
    ms

  • The new site has actually been up for about 3 weeks now I think. I remember going there and saying to myself wow I can actually read the page. When they had the one that was basically made for a low resolution I couldn't read a darn thing without having to really squint. I must agree that it does look a little like Yahoo though. Why shouldn't Redhat have Netscape and Lynx default to their page. Linux Mandrake already does that, or at least mine does.
  • Although it may look bad in Lynx. w3m is able to render it fairly well. The left column scrolls down a long way compared to the rest but its certainly usable.

    I'm amazed at how many table/framed sites w3m is able to render as a text mode browser.

    You can find it at http://ei5nazha.yz.yamagata-u.ac .jp/~aito/w3m/eng/ [yamagata-u.ac.jp]
  • > I like the new look. It's clean, nicely
    > organized and makes good use of color.

    Yeah, but who uses red and orange together like
    that? Honestly.... blech!

  • I guess the idea here is you start from MacOs or Windows and install Linux. If your using BeOs or something other than Mac Or Windows your probably not intrested in Linux and your not going to be intrested in RedHat.
    At least that seems to be the idea here.
    Unfortunatly thats not a realistic view as users of many alternitive operating systems may dual boot Linux.. Also the Sun Sparc with Solaris preinstalled may also run RedHat Linux. Wops!!!

    Oh well...

  • Still no Mailing Lists archives on Redhat.com! (Score:4)

    by savaget ( 26702 ) on Saturday November 27, 1999 @04:51AM (#1501867)
    My biggest complaint about the RedHat site is that it does not have an archive of their numerous mailing lists.

    As you know an archive of mailing lists are a great resource and time saver if you can search through them.

    I had to look elsewhere to get them. Moongroup.com [moongroup.com] has a great Red Hat mailing lists archive.


  • When are these people going to learn. Can anyone actually find any useful info on redhat's site? I haven't seen the errata in years... When I go to a website looking for info on a particular product, I don't want links to everywhere on the net! I want well organized, easy to find information. Is that so hard? I think that's the main reason I use google to search, because it's not all cluttered up with news and crap. I want to search, if I wanted news I'd go somewhere else.
  • IMO, They'd better have a word with CmdrTaco about web-design
  • Well, that's not a bug, it's a feature! :)

    Seriously, I too ran into this "feature", but it only took me a few minutes to locate the offending shortcut and modify it accordingly. I'm used to it - nobody sells a distribution "ready to be customized"... they sell it as "this is the standard, and you'd better like it!" Foo. I'm switching to debian soon.


    --
  • I liked the geek toys section - most of it was good, but I gotta wonder how an NFL console game got on the list. :)

    You know what would make me happy? Being able to play dvds on my linux box.. which was what decss and livid were for. If I were more of a programmer, that would be my project right now - the RIAA can kiss my curvy behind - I want DVD for linux!


    --

  • If you want a bare bones, powerful search... (Score:3)

    by coreman ( 8656 ) on Saturday November 27, 1999 @05:35AM (#1501872) Homepage
    http://av.com/?text=y

    All the power of Altavista with none of the chrome. Great for Lynx users.

    I agree. I want to be able to find the latest info on their products in 2 clicks or less.

  • Something tells me that free email and stock quotes aren't far behind. :-)

    Prediction: within the next couple of months expect to see free email @redhat.(com|net). Although I myself admit that this is very silly, there is definitely some amount of geek appeal to having @redhat E-mail address. It'll certainly impress the PHB who reads your resume (if he doesn't know any better).
    --

  • ...designing Nerf toys [amazon.com] that are not for export. Looks like those dern furriners aren't allowed our latest tech...

    *chuckle*
  • I built the targetpc.com [targetpc.com] site, and it is about a month old. The site specializes in news and reviews.

    The both sites have very similar header and footer designs. I noticed right away.

    Do you think they copied off us? Hmmm....

    (For those that can't take satire, I am not serious about what I am saying.)

    Eric Murphy
    eric@targetpc.com
  • I await the Red Hat patent on a computer which automatically redesigns web sites on a regular basis.
  • Amen. If they want to be "the definitive destination for the Linux community" they should spend less time picking colors, and more time providing meaningful information. Especially things like archives of lists THEY host. I like Red Hat, but this kinda ticks me off....
    ----
  • The old site, like many today (cnn, msnbc, abcnews) only used 800x600. So on my 1024x768 screen I had a big white space on the right site of the browser (while running browser at full screen).

    Good to see that the new redhat.com uses this space properly. Now if only we could get the other sites to figure it out.

    Noticed that other sections of the site, like the errata, etc., haven't been redone yet.
  • I think there is already a linux DVD player out there somewhere??

    Anyways, it's not that easy -- DVD has some stupid proprietary encryption scheme to prevent copying. I heard about someone cracking that somewhere... Forgive me, I didn't bookmark that website and it was a while ago so I forgot the specifics. I remember first hearing about it on slashdot, so you could probably check the archives...
  • When I loaded up the site, I was gretted by a Sun advertisement up top. I guess they must be moving towards portal-dom if they accept advertising. from a competitor in the OS business. :)

    Organisationally, I think the site is an improvement over their old one. It has a simpler layout, and I find it easier to browse. I think they could make it more attractive while keeping the fairly uncluttered layout, though...

    --Lenny
  • A webpage that lacks support for Lynx sort of violates the core ideas of HTML.

    They shouldn't be supporting Lynx because it's open source -- that's just silly.

    They should be supporting it because it will cost them vast amounts of prestige when snooty Lynx users (hint: I'm composing this in an 80x25 window) mock and deride it because, well, it's poorly designed.

    Isn't this one of the rubrics of web design, seperating macromedia-extravaganza.com from the rest of the clued?

    If it can't be read in Lynx, a large chunk of their target audience isn't gonna read it. Period.

    Besides, thems fighting words -- browsers better than Lynx, indeed. I don't have to kill *LYNX* because it's eating ninety megs of RAM at a 3.6 loadavg...
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • This has been annoying me too. The quote on archive.redhat.com [redhat.com] (which is now a link back to the main redhat site) is:

    Wondering what happened to the mailing list archive search function?

    Now that the quiet period is over, it will be returning soon! Thanks for your patience.

    which is a bit out of date. :) (Or redhat has a different definition of "soon" than I do)

    The Moongroup one above is only the redhat-list, not the others, and doesn't appear to be arranged in any logical way. (Archive[1-5], of vastly varying sizes). The "how do we do this" page is the same as the original page as well.

    Maybe someone should subscribe mail-archive.com to the lists...
  • Oh great. More bullshit moderation. What the bloody screaming hell is the matter with you, whoever you are? Haven't you read the moderator guidelines? What is so fucking overrated about that posting? It wasn't flaming. It was curious and interesting and relevant to this community. It deserved a funny, not an overrated. Why should I have to post anonymously to avoid this kind of irresponsible crap? Go read the guidelines.
  • Lynx? Bah. w3m? bah. Links is the best textmode web browser.
    It does everything lynx and w3m do, and them some.

    It's available at: http://artax.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~miku las/links/ [mff.cuni.cz]
  • I hear you, man.

    I shouldn't complain because it probably couldn't be any better, but moderation often sucks on /. People who don't know what they're talking about get moderated up all the time, and good stuff gets forgotten because it's not catchy enough.

    People need to stop using moderation to take out their sexual frustrations.
  • looks like they've struck up a contract with each other. great...amazon is well on it's way to becoming the microsoft of e-commerce.
  • ...and stop making cheap personal shots...but that's the way it is with some folks: they can't see another person's point of view no matter how little they try.
  • Maybe the moderator mistook the misspelling for a bit o' racial abuse?
  • Hey Darth Maul.
    Who uses those colours? Why...er...you do [phrozen.org]...
  • uhuh, and because they'll run into this problem on site after site, they'll switch off their image autoloading and the rest of us lucky folks with T1 connections will continue to enjoy uncompromised good design (on non-US sites, of course :),
  • Obviously it's because the fucking fuckers fuck with the fucking fuckers fucking, fucking don't fucking they? (The fucks.)
    I'm sure we all feel better now.
  • Yes, and this looks fine on 800x600, or on 1,024x768, or on 1,600x1,200 (okay I wouldn't actuall use full screen for my browser at theat resolution but the page fills the viewing area properl if you do want to). That's the point,it shouldn't assume that you have more than 800x600 or that you have 800x600,it should at least try to work with any plausible user settings. And this does, that's good.

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