Would like to make the homepage of my me-too FOSS project (a command-line static site generator (IT'S DIFFERENT FROM ALL THE OTHERS, I SWEAR)) as sexy as possible. Even more than that I want it to be functional and clear. Would you mind linking to super-good home pages of CLI projects? For example, I think Jekyll's is pretty darn good but Hugo, which product I much prefer, has an oddly subpar home page.
That starship one is nothing special. Sure, it got me to instantly download and install Starship and its recommended NerdFont without having heard of either one or knowing what they do, but I'm sure the page design had nothing to do with it. /s
Starship uses Vuepress, which is amazing. I used it for a side project and not only is the result great, but the setup is also extremely quick and painless. I find it a lot better than Docusaurus (the React equivalent).
I hate it when text doesn't flow to the size I've set my window. Makes it a waste of space when the window is expanded past whatever the designer felt was a good one-size-fits-all fixed limit. At least let me choose how wide my wall of text should be.
Actually, I think that it is a good idea, although it should need to mention what info (e.g. download link, source code, documentation, etc; this will likely span several paragraphs), and you should probably include the <title> as well. Other than that, I think that is good.
Very, very nice. Sexy, minimal, and honest about what it does. You feel really good when you've finished that homepage because they've sold you, but not tried to deceive you. SWEET.
Word. You wonder how many of those 50,000 stars are just because they sell it so well. Brilliantly done and sexy as all get out. Bonus points for zooming in so the, ah, temporally disadvantaged among us can view parts of it easily too. The clear Try it and Docs buttons, then a big illustration and bullet list next to it, a brief getting started section, and examples... and testimonials! For a free product! That brings things to a whole new level.
No, it's so close to being perfect: I can open the dropdown at the top with the mouse, but I have to SPEND ENERGY moving my shoulder, arm and wrist system over to the Enter key for the page to refresh. Unacceptable.
If I may toot my own horn: The thing that grinds my gears the most about software project websites is when they don't clearly say what the thing does, and who this is for. That's why the website for my configuration management tool (https://holocm.org) has two sections, "This is for you if..." and even more importantly "This is NOT for you if..."
Strong yesses to both points. The vast majority of these sites do in fact avoid the first trap, and you will notice that I politely chose not to compliment them. A good-looking site is important to me, but well-organized, well-written content always trumps looks to me.
I'm just loving this AskHN. Most of the comments make me laugh. I've seen some great pages and programs, even installed one already. Ask more questions on HN please!
Thank you, Citizen! You're very kind. Former comic, but the vast majority of my humor falls flat here. I was not expecting so many of our HN friends to play along. Was just hoping for a couple of links before being downvoted to Shitpost Purgatory. In other news my current docs are going to be so much better after I have stolen ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H some of the incredible ideas here.
And, seriously, I get that some people find the joke distasteful. That's largely why I put it in the title--so they could at least not be surprised by it when they started to read more in depth.
But of course a Fabrice Bellard creation would end up here. Of course. Slightly perturbed I didn't know about this, so double-thanks. And so I think I need to add redbean while we're at it, no? https://justine.lol/redbean/index.html
That line is what got me to try it. I didn't like it so much at that time. Then I tried it again a few years later. And I switched back, again. Recently, I've tried it again, and I'm still using it.
Fish is my default. I'm normally pretty minimalist with my shell configurations, but the Fish defaults just feel so right to me. It's minimal nudges in the spots that help are fantastic, and it's tab-completion is best in class. Unless you have a very specific powerline setup that you absolutely need, I think Fish is better than zsh for everyday use.
Are you out of your mind? It's the sexiest yet! Animated illustration, short description right at the top, news section, clearly delineated sections, update for current users... this is a model of clarity. Thank you for being a role model.
Pretty good. That About button does tell you exactly what's what. I sort of feel the home page isn't a home run because it's all inside baseball. I say not sexy, though YouTube-dl is definitely sexy.
It's a good page because it contains comparisons too all other emacs package managers[0], and carefully describes the pros and cons of each package manager. I wish more open source projects would do this.
Not sure if this counts, but I'll throw my own project (semi-CLI-driven testing framework) into the ring, not as a perfect example overall, but as an example of what I wish more projects did, which was let me experiment a bit with their interfaces before I downloaded them.
This isn't something that's doable for every utility, but especially with the advent of WASM and easier cross-compiling from C, I wish more CLI/API documentation would allow me to play around with examples or try out a command on their docs page or in a sandbox; particularly if they're selling themselves as having a composable interface.
That's not only helpful for figuring out whether or not I want to use the project, it's also helpful when I look at a piece of documentation and am not sure which flag or option is actually important.
It sure does count, Dan. Love how you pare it down to the absolute minimum so anyone visiting all of the site just pick up the essentials and learn more or just dip without wasting any time. And I agree, the playground concept is always welcome. Definitely sexy.
I kind of like the "one page with screenshots readme" type design. Not to toot my own horn, and this one is not super great, but here's one of mine: https://github.com/tducasse/go-instabot
https://github.com/chadwickbureau/chadwick Totally qualifies as sexy. It gets right to the point, has the right install instructions, lays out the programming language requirements. I love it. Thank you.
I have to say that WP-CLI is how I do everything now for a few personal sites I manage, and I have zero complaints. So much better, actually, than doing anything in the WP GUI.
It's very clear about what it does, gets both beginners and existing users into the mix ASAP, gratifies sponsors.. pretty sexy. Thank you for that contribution.
It’s for more than just a single CLI tool, but I’m a big fan of Charm’s site (https://charm.sh/). It’s hard to understand what it all is at first, but I still had a pleasant experience just looking at it!
It's basically a binary format that has a 1:1 compatible text format. The idea is that everything stays in binary format (which is faster to process, more efficient, and smaller), and then convert the document to text only if/when a human needs to see it or edit the document.
It could still be further compressed using a general purpose compressor like gzip, but the main purpose of the data format is to be easy for a machine to process compared to JSON/XML/etc, and tight in specification so that you don't end up with exploitable security holes due to implementation differences like you do with JSON/XML: https://labs.bishopfox.com/tech-blog/an-exploration-of-json-...
I am not feeling comfortable when someone is using word "sexy" in a professional setting. What does it mean? Should I be aroused when looking at it? That's inappropriate
A little inappropro. Just having fun, but I really do sympathize with you and I sincerely apologize for making you feel uncomfortable. Most people who know me would regard me as very, very "conservative". I use that word on purpose because of course the subject is not at all sexy.
Ibraheem, I hang my head in shame after seeing all these sexy home pages. With your permission I will let you know at the email address in your profile after I revise mine because I have been massively humbled by some of these masterpieces.
Why make a sexy homepage? To convince people to use it? Don't you want to make it work real well first, and then make the sexy homepage, when it's, you know... good software?
Back in the day, you would release your software on Freshmeat.net (https://web.archive.org/web/20010528211603/http://freshmeat....). You would get excited if people clicked on your project (https://web.archive.org/web/20100627062409/http://freshmeat....), but you'd get more excited if people downloaded your software, because it meant people were actually trying it out. (I can't find the graphs anymore, but it used to show you if anyone had clicked on the .tar.gz of your source code. It also used to have comments, but in later versions seems like comments were removed)
Anyone else remember back when the web was useful?
Well I’m having fun with this post, your objections are completely warranted.
If you’d like to email me the address in my profile I will post a serious response in my blog. Long story short, I think an attractive, credible looking webpage helps enormously in user acceptance.
I get that a nice looking project can make people want to use it more, but what I'm really asking is your motivation. Why is it important that people other than yourself use it?
Making it work well first is my first priority by a country mile. Making it maintainable is my next priority. Documenting it well, third. Following those are:
1. Professional vanity. 2. Personal vanity. 3. Public service. 4. Backup business idea.
Oh, and Starship prompt [2] too.
[1] https://python-poetry.org/
[2] https://starship.rs/