[R] www.r-project.org

[Barry Rowlingson]

roger bos wrote:
> While there is nothing about the r-project site that I would consider fancy,
> it is pretty functional.  I would be interested to hear more about what you
> hope to accomplish by re-doing the web site.  Fancy graphics may just slow
> down the experience for those not on broadband.  After all, the r-help list
> doesn't even like HTML in email, so it may not like too many fancy stuff on
> their website either.
> 

  The frame-based nature of the CRAN pages is slightly problematic, 
since you click on a menu item and the URL doesn't change. Hence there's 
no way to send someone a URL that gives them the same view as you'd get 
if you go to the home page and then click on 'screenshots', for example.

Sure you can send them to:

http://www.r-project.org/screenshots/screenshots.html

but then they dont see the menu.

Frames make for simplification of page creation (the menu is in one HTML 
file and doesn't need to be included on every page) at the expense of 
usability. Template and content management systems solved this a while ago.

It probably wouldn't take long to bash out a serviceable replacement 
using something like HTML::Mason but then you'd have to find a hosting 
provider that supported it (or PHP or IYFTLH[1]). I dont think it 
warrants a full-on CMS given the size of www.r-project.org (not 
including CRAN stuff). I'd just hack up some m4 scripts and 'include' 
the menu into a flat file.

Perhaps someone could write a web site template system in R...

Another option would be to make it completely web 2.0, round the 
corners, write some ajax, add some blog links, tag soup section....[2]

Barry

[1] Insert Your Favourite Template Language Here

[2] Joke