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Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 21:36:44 +0200 (CEST)
From: Klaus Grue <grue AT diku DOT dk>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Cygwin visual brand
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It sounds nice that there is a movement to brush up the graphic design of 
the Cygwin web pages.

I have used Cygwin for a couple of years, but on this list I am just a 
newcomer. I hope it is ok to leave a few comments which you *might* 
consider.

I liked the proposal of David Eisner (http://cygwin.codecamel.com/). At 
least it solves some of the problems with the current main page 
(http://www.cygwin.com/) I have experienced:

First, the current main page contains three occurences of the Cygwin icon. 
Two of them has text
   Install Cygwin now
and one has text
   Install and update now!
So since the text is different, I would expect different things to happen 
when clicking "Install Cygwin now" and "Install and update now". That is 
solved in David Eisners proposal by having only one occurrence of the 
icon. And thanks for omitting the exclamation mark.

Second, I have found myself searching for a 'Download' link. And I got 
very ashamed when I found out it was all over the site and was even 
highligted using the Cygwin icon. I think David Eisners proposal solves 
that by having one big Cygwin icon rather than three small ones.

Third, I have had problems with the description of the download link. It 
says "Install Cygwin now" or "Install and update now". But it should say
   Install Cygwin and/or install packages and/or uninstall
   packages and/or upgrade packages and/or downgrade packages
   and/or keep the whole system up to date
except that the wording could be different and hopefully more terse.

In the proposal of David Eisner it says "Install/Update Cygwin 1.7.1-1". 
So where should I click if I have Cygwin 1.6.something? Or if I need a new 
package?

Fourth, the most important program in the Cygwin system is named 
"setup.exe". I suppose that name has a historical justification. But it 
would be nice if it was called something Cygwin related.

In conclusion, I suggest a new term is invented such as the
   Cygwin Package Manager (CPM)
or something like that. Then one could simply write
   Cygwin Package Manager 
under the Cygwin icon and then explain in the text that:
   The Cygwin Package Manager (cpm.exe) can install Cygwin and manage
   Cygwin packages. Among other, it can install, uninstall, upgrade, and
   downgrade individual packages. It can also install and upgrade the
   entire Cygwin system and keep the system up to date.
By the way, it would by nice if CPM could also uninstall Cygwin. It sends 
the message that you are confident in your system if you make it easy 
for users to uninstall it. And it smells suspicious to provide software 
without an uninstaller.

Fifth, I associate Cygwin with the green color of the Cygwin icon, but the 
dominating color of the page is the RedHat-red banner at the top. To me it 
would be more logical to have a green banner to tell that this *is* Cygwin 
and to have a RedHat-red red hat e.g. next to the banner or in some other 
highly visible place to tell that this is *related* to RedHat.

Sixth (and last, I promise) I have noted that GNU+Cygnus+Windows=cygwin
is written in a very big font at the top of the page as if that equation
was the most important message of the page. The equation makes a good 
point, but I think it would be more logical to have Cygwin in a big font 
and GNU+Cygnus+Windows in an anekdote font size after the Cygwin name.

Cheers,
Klaus

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