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freshmeat II launched

FIRST POST! FIRST POST!
FIRST POST! :)

Cool ...
The new design looks pretty cool even on
Konqueror .. but where are the ./ News etc ??
Hope to find the whole set of news back soon ...
Keep on doing such nice work ...

Second Comment =)
or maby third, gawd damn i had to register first
and that took time =)

New design is really nice, lets just see if
its useable aswell ,)

What's happened ?
Hi,

sorry, scoop, but the new design is (like germans to say:) "unter aller sau" (in english: the design sucks ;))

please please please, downgrade to our good looking old design....

kind regards,

sh

Shocked!
Sorry scoop as well it's a good work, but there are to much chnages.

I was really shocked after loading [fm] finally,
new design, new structure ...
well, it's nice to have an "user page" but, statistics sucks
and where are the boxes moved?

The looking is not really good, it's now not more
so easy to realize where the contribution is starting and
where it is ending. Well, after testing [fm] with the
Internet Exploiter 5.5, I feeling more depressed it looks
better with the IE ...

I am fealing really sad about this change.

c-ya (2 "internet is changing" B)

Re: What's happened ?
where is emmy's "THIS SUCKS!" comment ???

is this new philosophy to censor postings ?

Freshmeat New Design
The new visual is really cool but I think the left
column should have a fixed width instead of a
proportional one. On 1152x864 it becomes very
large. Tested on Mozilla 0.7 and Netscape 4.76. In
despite of this minor issue it is a great job.
Keep doing.

Whoaoaoa....
Being confused and completely desoriented at first sight, the design kinda looks cool to me after finishing 3 more bowls of coffee. But the fact the frontpage now needs downloading 60k before showing anything more than commercials certainly is not. And *PLEASE* get rid off those fixed "font-size: 12pt;" tags.

The release of freshmeat II

Hi there!

I've /always/ been a big fan of freshmeat, due to it's moderation and no-bull interface, but this new interface, I'm sorry, but it does suck!

There wasn't any problem I could see with the old interface, it was clean, looked good, loaded relatively fast in the browser, and you could navigate it like lightning.

This new one just does it. I used to use w3m to view freshmeat from the console, 1.5 years ago, one tab was all I needed to get to the search box, yesterday, I needed a few tab hits, now, the box appears half way down the page and I'll be forced to use netscape to grab software with.

Bah! I'm sure I'll get used to it, sure as hell ain't anything I can do about it but complain!

Freshmeat II
It's here, it's new, it's fantastically broken...

I guessed the URL to this "Add comment" page, I hope it is the right one. The link provided on the page didn't lead anywhere.

Half the project pages (or more?) seem to be missing. Licence information for the remaining projects seems to be missing. The text in the right pane is unreadable. Any hope that this will be brought to a useable state in the near future? ;-)

Ulric

Re: What's happened ?

> where is emmy's "THIS SUCKS!" comment
> ???
>
> is this new philosophy to censor
> postings ?

seems that way... too bad...

I remember
The last time you switched to a new design...
Just as much bitching as today :)
Ain't it funny, everytime there's a change people
go comletely bananas!

I've only been here for 5 minutes now, but I like
the new design.

Please keep up the good work!

Re: FIRST POST! FIRST POST!

> FIRST POST! :)

Puta mierda de mensaje

BAAD!
Ok, this sucks, you had to break the nice and clean look....

Re: The release of freshmeat II
URL: http://freshmeat.net/redir/amavis/223/

Warning: Cannot add header information - headers already sent by (output started at /fm/code/include/config.h:113) in /fm/code/htdocs/redir.php
on line 45

God damn great. It doesn't even work. Well done scoop, you've managed to annoy 99% of your userbase and create a load of Microsoft-style {bug,bloat}ware. Did it really need to be rushed out so quickly?

Sorry, but freshmeat just can't be my homepage anymore :[

Well...
Hi!
With the new page desgin it's difficult to see were a sumissions starts and were it ends.
Additionally, where do I find information on a software's license? The information should be added again soon. (Or I'm I just too stupid to find it?;-)

Greetinx,

Gunter Ohrner

New site design
What is with the fixed fonts? I can barely read anything on the page, including the main text.

You've done a real DISSERVICE by adopting some really skewed principles of web design -- nothing wrong with the overall page layout and I could care less about the look. However, controlling the user's fonts is downright inexcusable. Hey...read Jacob Nielsen.

never change a running system
Why at all did that have to happen?
Where did the lynx-usability go?
Where did the license-information go?
Freshmeat I was great. I'm shocked about Freshmeat II
Freshmeat isn't something that needs colorful hip design-flips.
Freshmeat is a great ressource to work with. don't forget that.

IIIIIK... wellcome to Funeral...
/me wears black... New design terrible! TERRIBLE TERRIBLE! Font too small, nomore useful links at frontpage! No I have to play pingpong to check more than one software, or just open new browser window and retye http://freshmeat.net/ . Get back to good old design or at least change that menu back to small icons which can be just clicked. Do we have to make web more terrible than it used to be? I wonder if these has been designed with frontpage or some other M$ tool. *SIGH* .

Fixed fonts - why
Why are we stuck to a fixed font size? It seems to me that I will have to fetch my glasses from downstairs to my computer room just to be able to read Freshmeat II!!!

ugh
you killed freshmeat.. you bastards!
seriously though, the fonts are wayy too small at 1280x1024, the left margin needs to be fixed and not proportional, it wastes tons of space,
doesn't look too nice in lynx.

I don't like the way the announcements are done either.. take up too much space, maybe 2 columns would be better..

Apart from that, I guess I'm pretty indifferent to it. The only thing that looks pretty nifty is the logo.. still.. the old one was pretty cool..

two critiques and a thumbs up
I like the overall design. It's streamlined and seems
to load faster. Other than the two comments I think
I prefer the new fm.

1) Use links instead of the GO buttons
After a search, I used to bring up the project's homepage
in a new browser window. Can't do that with a submit
button, it replaces FM!

2) Submitting Article Comments Broken
I couldn't submit this comment when using the link in
the lefthand navbar. I had to use the "add comment"
link under the article.

Usability
I like the new outfit. But I have some useability points:

Could you change the Choosbox (Homepage,Tar/gz/Changelog) in Icons
like before.

Now I have to click, only to see, if there is a
changelog.

When I want to choose it, i have to click 3 times
(first to open the Choosbox, than to select the entry, than to press "go").

And (perhabs) you can spend a litle more space for searching in the Search box

Re: IIIIIK... wellcome to Funeral...

> /me wears black... New design terrible!
> TERRIBLE TERRIBLE! Font too small,
> nomore useful links at frontpage! No I
> have to play pingpong to check more than
> one software, or just open new browser
> window and retye http://freshmeat.net/
> . Get back to good old design or at
> least change that menu back to small
> icons which can be just clicked. Do we
> have to make web more terrible than it
> used to be? I wonder if these has been
> designed with frontpage or some other M$
> tool. *SIGH* .

What do ya expect when marketing idiots and designers takin over the leadership over a technical based system as freshmeat?!

Another example: Is there any way to decrease the size of the search-textfield? Would be great to see only the first char... some kind of the famous memory-game.... ;)
and yet another point!
this site became terribly SLOW. it takes years to get one page.

Also its a MUST-FEATURE to show the license information under EVERY file we wanna see whos offering commercial trial products and whos not.

Sincerly

Simon Lange

Re: What's happened ?
yep i totally agree with you, i disike the new
outfit too. the first impression i got was to
puke. theres an old food sentence that is valid
it says, never touch an running system...

Cool
I like what has been done to freshmeat! The new software catagories has been long needed. The layout is... well, new... You may need to get used to it.

People that have problems viewing freshmeat in netscape-4 on Unix should set up their browser to use 100 dpi fonts, instead of the default 75 dpi, by placing these lines in ~/.Xdefaults or ~/.Xresources:

*documentFonts.xResolution*iso-8859-1: 100

*documentFonts.yResolution*iso-8859-1: 100

This will make the fonts larges, as well as make many other pages much more readable.

Re: Whoaoaoa....

> And *PLEASE* get rid off those fixed "font-size: 12pt;" tags.
>

I agree on this point !!! I use Netscape Solaris and it is unredable

Horrible!
I was really shocked to see the new and "improved" layout today! :-(
I realize a lot of work must have been put into this, but I found the old layout *much* easier to use, and it was certainly much easier on the eyes.
So, umm, can we please please pretty please have the old layout back? Please???

Ellen

Humble opinion
lay out is an absolute mess...
Maybe you can reintroduce the box-shapes from your former version. It makes the site more readable.

Rest is just ok, nothing more, nothing less.

Vincent

Re: Usability
Agreed, not only is it slower, it also takes up
more vertical space. Please revert to the old icons.

Ch-ch-Changes
Looks good. I REALLY miss the license type filed however. This set up makes it too difficult to distinguish between an advertisement for a commercial product and an announcement for an open source project.

screen estate / broken links
More comments:
The new design requires a lot more space per
entry. That leads to less information on the
screen and more scrolling required. I think the
old design was better in that respect.

The URLs for the database ("browse" in the new
menu) are now numerical. I think yahoo-style
cleartext urls are more human friendly. Changing
them also leads to broken links all over the place.

Downgrade version
Help !! I'm sorry but I can't stand this "new look".
Please go back to your old web site version, which was more clear and pretty.
What has happened to "hits" numbers?
Thanks for all.

Eric

uppercase subject
Why are all subjects converted to uppercase? I
consider this a bug - we're not screaming at each
other, are we (not all of us anyway :-)
OTOH, in the menu left side, my name is suddenly
all lower caps.
Weird
Oh, and please allow <em> as a valid tag.

Re: FIRST POST! FIRST POST!
Translation: "fucking shit of meesage"
Just a few notes:
- This is a public place, and "minors" come in, so take care of your vocabulary.
- If you like telling such things, make sure that the recipient understantds what you say, coward.
- And that kind of jokes are not wlcome, I think.

PD: (Freshmeat II) Really nice, but I loved the old frontpage!! ;o((((

Spanish: Ha hacer bromitas vete con el aznar wapo. (To make jokes go with Aznar, guy. (Aznar is country's president.....))

>
> % FIRST POST! :)
>
>
> Puta mierda de mensaje
>

Re: FIRST POST! FIRST POST!
Translation: "fucking shit of meesage"
Just a few notes:
- This is a public place, and "minors" come in, so take care of your vocabulary.
- If you like telling such things, make sure that the recipient understantds what you say, coward.
- And that kind of jokes are not wlcome, I think.

PD: (Freshmeat II) Really nice, but I loved the old frontpage!! ;o((((

Spanish: Ha hacer bromitas vete con el aznar wapo. (To make jokes go with Aznar, guy. (Aznar is country's president.....))

>
> % FIRST POST! :)
>
>
> Puta mierda de mensaje
>

Re: Cool

> I like what has been done to freshmeat!
> The new software catagories has been
> long needed. The layout is... well,
> new... You may need to get used to it.
>
>
> People that have problems viewing
> freshmeat in netscape-4 on Unix should
> set up their browser to use 100 dpi
> fonts, instead of the default 75 dpi, by
> placing these lines in ~/.Xdefaults or
> ~/.Xresources:
>
> *documentFonts.xResolution*iso-8859-1:
> 100
> *documentFonts.yResolution*iso-8859-1:
> 100
>
> This will make the fonts larges, as
> well as make many other pages much more
> readable.
>

Why should I have to reconfigure my browser to view a site? Since it is possible to make an accessible site, why not do it?

New look....
After a few MySQL errors yesterday, and a timeout today, I eventually got to the new Freshmeat II, which at first site was really cool, and my first impression was that I really liked it. After an hour or so I did a refresh to see any new posts, and DAMN, the font has changed to this HUGE font, which wasn't how it was in the beginning. I'm using IE 5 btw. I now have had to move my chair a couple meters back from my desk, and I'm now stretching my arms as far as they go so that I can reach the keyboard and still keep my eye site, 'scuse the pun, intact. PLEASE, make the HUGE fonts smaller so that a normal person can sit at a normal monitor and enjoy the new improved site.

Cheers
DaleP

New Look
Seems like I'm in the minority, but I think the new look is just fine.

please change comment-body color!
oki writing the subject makes sence. gray
background and black pen, but writting in the body
can't be serious eh? white-gray background with
white pen? and it's not adjustable here in my
GALEON webbrowser.. maybe an unseen or improved
INTERNET EXPLODER feature? nice work for an
unix/linux deticated stuff provider ;)

Gimme back my boxes [was Re: Whoaoaoa....]

>
> I agree on this point !!! I use
> Netscape Solaris and it is unredable
>

And gimme back my boxes... and black titles... make it backward-compatible. I lost my compass just trying to *READ* an annoucement :) :)

Re: Usability
Hi there,

I know you guys have put a lot of effort on the new look & feel, and I do believe things have improved underneath. However, I have to agree with Sven: IMHO there are some usability issues that should (could) be reworked. I think the old black background behind the app name was more eye-catching. Also, another disadvantage of the dropdown for the choosebox is that we're now unable to open a product homepage on a new window -- this one I do miss a lot.

Well, just my $0.02. I'm sure all that has been done has been driven by the best intentions, and I'm grateful for that. Some layout issues are, at the end, a matter of taste, it's just a matter of getting used to that.

Best,

Andre

Almost there
Looks fine for the most part, but I agree with a
couple of other people that the left column tends
to get take too much horizontal space. Keep up
the good work.

new layout
I use freshmeat because of it's ease of use.
Freshmeat I was clear, easy to use, and
had great markup. I liked the overview on the
right with updates projects of today and yesterday.

I liked the layout of FmI. Dislike the layout of FmII. Like the added functionality though.

This isn't a "this sucks" post
Hey there :)

It'll take some getting used to, but I think I
will get used to it eventually.

However, there *is* one useability issue which I
think should be addressed. Because you're using
drop boxes/buttons to navigate to projects'
homepages and such, we can't drag 'n drop links.
We can't copy 'n paste links. We can't use the
middle mouse button to open a link in a new window.

This may not be considered "high priority", but
this sort of thing makes or breaks a site's usability.

I'll contact the authors privately.

Thanks for the good work :)

License? Links?
I like the new layout - it renders fine in Mozilla
0.7, the fonts are readable even though I use
1280x1024 on my 17" screen.

Two things should still be changed, though:

- The license must be visible again! I don't want
to waste my time looking at commercial demo-ware.

- Have separate links to Download, Homepage etc
again. I can't send the Form-Buttons to a new window!

accessing speed decreased rapidely!
what happened to the speed? clicking freshmeat
needs aprox over 30 seconds before action has
taken place. pressing some links behave the same.
did you guys changed the servers too or why is
accessing time that dumb slow? clicking on old
freshmeat took aprox 2 seconds.

:(
I found the FM1 layout better. This one is just like many other sites. The FM1 layout was something special. Imho FM1 was nicer.

Suggestion, Themeable Freshmeat like themes.org
Suggestion
Make the site themeable as the folks
at themes.org and you could choose

what theme you want.

where's the old logo?
I liked the old logo very much (FreshMeat). Now I feel that the new one (FM) is too little, and covers only a corner... :(
happy hours!

Not only an HCI failure... Here's what the experts say
"Sorry, this document does not validate as HTML 4.0 Transitional. " -- validator.w3.org

"You have no background-color with your color." ... "Parse Error" -- jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

"This page does not yet meet the requirements for Bobby Approved status." -- www.cast.org/bobby/

Good, but fontsize and links
I think you should better set no fixed font size, and use procentual values:
h1 { font-size: 130% }
Or make use of the "em" unit, which is on X and Win nearly the same.
The second think, i liked the small buttons in the frontpage and the projectview, because with the new "form-style" it's not possible, open with the middle mousebutton the homepage of the project. That's specialy usefull, if you search for a special tool, to get an overview.

Constructive Suggestions.
The project tracking changes sound like the
best thing since sliced bread. But....

I also heavily used the "open in new window" and
drag-and-drop the homepage icon methods of browsing. The new design favors graphical browsers, but slows down graphical browsing with more than one window. But....

The combo box Go button is a better interface from an informational standpoint, as you can see the options spelled out. Icons are more cryptic,
even with tooltips. Could you offer to spawn
the link in a new window? Perhaps as a preference
toggle (Then I *would* actually log in).

[ Musing: Perhaps you will be dynamically adding options to the combo box in the future, and this made it look like a good idea.... ]

------------

Other changes I would vote for ::
You simply must make the search inpout field wider. I did not notice the 12pt problems others
mention, it looks good on my screen, but I only
see 5 characters in the Search field, which itself is narrower than the ".. SEARCH .." title above it.

The left and right panels together take up alot
of screen room.

You might want to move the left panel "on top"
of the right panel. But even better would be..

You might want to give me back the left side of
my window and move the whole blue panel to the
bottom of the window. A shortcut in the
HOME...SCOOP toolbar could jump the bottom panel.

Look at bugzilla: They put the search & personal links (the *same* job as your left panel) at the bottom of the window.

Nice,, but not perfect ..
Where did the boxes with slashdot.org, securityfocus.com and others go, or did ya hide them somewhere i just can't se now. and GOD DAMN HUGE fonts. and please bring back the links for download and homepage i can't get a button into a new window.
Other from that it looks pretty nice.

New look
Freshmeat used to have clear design. Visual
navigations was quite easy and fast. Now I am
*LOST*. I was visiting freshmeat every day.
Changes in look may decrease the frequency of my
visits. Sorry.

nobody likes progress
I was ok, with the old Freshmeat too, but things need to change, I think the new look is nice and a change every now and then is good. This change should be welcomed because it provides new scenery, a new atmosphere and the oportunity to improve on an already great site.

-SurfNayked
Keep up the good work

Access like a tortoise
I have a nice sexy 2Mbit link to the web at work .

However, FM2 behaves as though it is going through a 9600 baud modem-it takes forever to load a new page.

FM1 made me wait at most 3 seconds for a new page, which is great, but FM2 can take over a minute via a 2Mbit link. This suggests to me something is seriously wrong with the servers/database etc.

Still, I will continue to use it-just don't expect me to be here quite as often until the speed gets back to scratch.

Wishing you all the best.

Re: New look
Please get back boxes with buttons ! Search field
should be more wider. Thanks

> Freshmeat used to have clear design.
> Visual
> navigations was quite easy and fast.
> Now I am
> *LOST*. I was visiting freshmeat every
> day.
> Changes in look may decrease the
> frequency of my
> visits. Sorry.

Open Source?
Is this itteration of the FM backend going to be open source??

Re: Whoaoaoa....
I agree the font it's surely too big, at least on my system. And anyway I don't like the new design ! the old boxes were surely more nice and clear !

Nice, except..
To be honest, i liked the old design a little more. Not that this one is bad - perhaps it'll just require some getting used to.

I suppose the only thing that honestly bothers me is the blue menu bar along the left side of the screen. It's much more massive than it needs to be. It could very easily be half the size it is right now.

how much did M$ pay to you ?
well i must agree what many others have written
here i used to like the old FM but this new one
SUXX also many ppl i meet on irc (e.g. efnet)
dislike this gayness. i will for sure visit FM for
new stuff but my visits will DECREASE
DRAMATICALLY. i used to scan here all 30 mins now
maybe once a day. i will come back after you
installed the old FM again. i am quite sure you
have probably set the wrong link to the main
index.html. such mistakes may happen sometimes.

What the ...?
What the ..?

Win2k, IE5.5, 800x600, default settings

Oh my god this is ugly, font is much to large. It doesn't even fit the screen.

The select boxes suck indeed.

Same but with font-size setting "smaller"

Much better, still don't like the design but at least it fits the window. Don't like tahoma for reading though.

Netscape 4.74 (win2k)

Ugly big fonts, like in msie. But it fits the screen :) The borders are gone, but I can live with that.

Lynx, links, w3m

Looks great!
In Links, scrolling through the items on the right is very annoying. Can be fixed on the server side.

Opera 5.0

Same as MSIE. Need to set size to 90% or less to destroy the horizontal scrollbar

Mozilla M18

Don't want to look at this any longer, my eyes hurt and it gives me a headache.

Text is way too big.

Speed

Where did the speed go? Damn this sucks.

Want the old Freshmeat back!

It seems most people do :)

Greetings!Juerd

Change is good, but when not hurt my eyes!
It's good for things to evolve, but what actually
is the reason. It's usually for better, isn't it?
I don't know what kind of feedback the freshmeat
team gets, but here is my:
please, make the site gentler to the eyes!
With such high contrast, big, bold and monotonous
text it just hurts my eyes!
Please, do changes but for better.

Please reinstall FM1 design!!!
The new look of FM2 ist absolutely horrible.
Sorry guys, but FM1 was much more convinient to
read.
This is a typical example of how something
perfect useable can be destroyed just because of
the force to change it....

Carsten

FM1 was raelly good. hard to do it better.

Re: FIRST POST! FIRST POST!
I like the way you first translate his swearing
into english so that more people can understand
(get offended by) it, and then repeat it twice
just incase someone missed it the first 2 times.

Copyright problems ?
hope you don't get problems with your small yellow (II)-Buttons. They look exactly like the logo of a german TV-Station.
btw.
the add-comment link on my left navigation-bar does not work (links to article //).

Improvements
I rather like the new design, with a few minor exceptions - the blue bar is way too wide - I think that at most, it should be about 90-100 pixels. And give an option to turn it off in the user preferences. Possibly a way to position it. i'd like to have the blue bar functions at the bottom of the page - they can even be in a blue section down there.

Whatever these people are complaining about the font, that's the one thing that looks very nice to me at the moment. Netscape 4.x for unix always had font problems, and this new design allows my font size adjustment buttons in Konqueror 2.0.1 to work just fine.

I miss a couple of other features, but nothing I can complain about, as I'm sure they're in this new version somewhere as well.

Keep up the good work!

Can I get the old look'n'feel?
The new look and feel is scrap. Not only that the font is to big, even the accessibility of the URL Links (homepage, comments and so on) is much worse. Can't I get the old look'n'feel??!!! - PLEASE -

Awfull Awfull Awfull Awfull.
Appwatch (http://www.appwatch.com) Here i come... Can look, just too awfull.

Links
Lots of good changes. I agree that drop downs are a poor choice. However, I think a bigger problem is the use of bold for links.

From a useability perspective, stick with underlines! We've had a long time to get used to that convention on the web and you throw it away to try to make your pages prettier. At least use a different font colour to distinguish between links and real bold text. It's like trying to find the Pope in the pizza. Useability should be your #1 design goal and you really missed the boat here!

Links
This new page looks much better in Links, allthough I'd like to get rid of that annoying Choosbox.

--
Peter Kantomaa

hey ever heard of privacy ?
how can i avoid getting listed in that gay STATS
shit. ever heard of privacy? it's getting like the
old STASI in germany, all my steps can be followed
by others too. i don't want that. REMOVE it or i
am going to complain to some certified
organisations about the things going on here. i am
quite sure someone interests in that. my name
stands in big letters either in the STATS and in
the USERS ONLINE. who knows where else.

The new design looks OK to me.
I have no problem with the new design, with the
exception of a few details:

The yellow round "II" icons beside every software
item and article are nonsensical. They should be
replaced by a item-contextual icon; software
category item for a piece of software, news
article icon for articles, and so on...

It's good that the License info has been added,
and I too would prefer homepage/download/changelog
icons instead of the selectbox.

Ever since the move from the black-background
layout I've had a problem with the logotype, and I
am glad it has been toned down.

Being forced to use cookies will mean that I'll
rarely use my account, but I guess that's maybe
just me.
The new account system (is there a new account
system?) is very picky about the mail host having
a "MX record" (I don't know what this is...), so i
can't use my own e-mail (have to use an alias),
which is very unfortunate. Hopefully this paranoia
will be fixed -- how likely is it that spammers
and such will be a large problem at freshmeat.net?

Layout issues and other minor details aside, I
like [fmII].

Cheers

The new design looks OK to me (2 -- evil Mozilla!)
I have no problem with the new design, with the
exception of a few details:

The yellow round "II" icons beside every software
item and article are nonsensical. They should be
replaced by a item-contextual icon; software
category item for a piece of software, news
article icon for articles, and so on...

It's good that the License info has been added,
and I too would prefer homepage/download/changelog
icons instead of the selectbox.

Ever since the move from the black-background
layout I've had a problem with the logotype, and I
am glad it has been toned down.

Being forced to use cookies will mean that I'll
rarely use my account, but I guess that's maybe
just me.

The new account system (is there a new account
system?) is very picky about the mail host having
a "MX record" (I don't know what this is...), so i
can't use my own e-mail (have to use an alias),
which is very unfortunate. Hopefully this paranoia
will be fixed -- how likely is it that spammers
and such will be a large problem at
freshmeat.net?

Layout issues and other minor details aside, I
like [fmII].

Cheers

What happened to the lounge button?
One of the features that I used DAILY was the "show new submissions since last reset". I can't see how to get to that now, and I really don't like the verbose listing on the main page.

Please please PLEASE put the lounge back in! :-)

Why so much hazzle?
Sigh, why are you all complain about the design?
Design is a matter of taste, nothing to argue
about. I think most just dislike the idea of
being confronted with something new...
What's really important is usability and I agree
to most things mentioned in the comments above,
but that's just a matter of fine-tuning. Did
anyone ever see a perfect 'first release'???
For me the new project structure alone is
justifing those inconveniences.
But I admit that I'm disappointed a bit about
the policy to setup the new interface without
warning. Some discussion about "what's missing
and what should not change" before creating the
new interface could have avoided most riot.
After all: well done, scoop!

Good Stuff
New site layout is good. Looks clean. Plenty
readable on Mozilla. Usual small-ass fonts in
Netscape, but hey ... Netscape ...
And I might also take the time to type:
All those donkeys crying about not being able to
view freshmeat from within Lynx ... this is not
the time or place to be using Lynx. Nor is it the
time or place for doing 3D rendering on an abacus.
If you wanna read html pages in an emergency (to
work out how to get X going again), then fine.
I've done it myself (bloody, bloody nVidia
drivers). But don't surf the net with it. That's
not cool...
In summary ... Good stuff.
Oh, BTW - what's the go with the 'add comments'
link being broken. I had to guess the link:
http://freshmeat.net/add-comment/articles/100/
'cause there was no /100/ at the end - just a //
But anyway ... Good stuff.

Unbelieavably Suck Ass
If stuff starts loading any slower Im gona goto lunch. I was originaly going to post that other than the fonts I thought the site was ok, but then I had to register, wich was the worst experiance I've had in quite some time. Im sitting on 3 T1's and didnt expect a news site to take a week to load! Oh well guess someone will start another site like FM that doesnt suck now, hope it's soon.

Re: Freshmeat New Design

> The new visual is really cool but I
> think the left
> column should have a fixed width
> instead of a
> proportional one. On 1152x864 it
> becomes very
> large. Tested on Mozilla 0.7 and
> Netscape 4.76. In
> despite of this minor issue it is a
> great job.
> Keep doing.

I totally agree (it does take too much of the right side of the page even on 1024x768).

The new design is really really cool. I like it very much. I'll start diggin' deeper to see how the new filtering mechanism has been implemented, but from what scoop wrote in its article, it should also make a difference now.

PS: One comment: what do you mean by "Raw text, HTML is escaped"? It doesn't recognize newline characters.

Please, can you restore the lounge ?
I was using the lounge daily and there does not seem to have a similar facility on the current implementation.
Please restore the lounge service.

Re: Links
I couldn't agree more! (http://useit.com/)

I mean my God
The site looks great in Konqueror, but a thing I liked about freshmeat was that it wasn't loosely organized. I liked the borders around each software release. The new logo kicks butt, but how about a little structure? :)

Re: BAAD!

> Ok, this sucks, you had to break the
> nice and clean look....
>

Bah, people said the same thing when the site changed in January 1999. Get over it.

Less usable -- Here's why.
With the old version, I could open the project(s) homepage(s) in another window of my browser, and so I could always keep Freshmeat page (in a separate (the "original") window of the browser.)
This was possible because the link to the project homepage was just an ordinary HTML link, and so I could open it in another window of my browser (via "right click/Open in new window" or whatever else your browser requests to do.)

Now instead I am compelled to browse such a link in the same window -- thus losing Freshmeat page -- because the link is implemented via the select box plus the "go" button, and so there is no way to open it in a separate window (with a single click at least).

Solution:

please, replace the select box plus the "go" button with ordinary links
OR (worse)

provide a checkbox (or a set of radio buttons) to decide whether or not open the link in a new browser window.

Bye.

Re: I remember

> The last time you switched to a new
> design...
> Just as much bitching as today :)
> Ain't it funny, everytime there's a
> change people
> go comletely bananas!
%
> I've only been here for 5 minutes now,
> but I like
> the new design.
%
> Please keep up the good work!

No joke. I didn't understand it then, I don't
understand it now. I find nothing wrong with the
new layout. Well, maybe it could do with some
separator lines between the items, but other than
that I see no reason to scream. At least it looks
better than Sourceforge ;-)

Dividing entries.
I think that various entries in home page
(programs, articles,notes,etc.) should be divided
by something more than plain . It is less
searchable now (visually). Old design had those
nice boxes....

Re: two critiques and a thumbs up

> 1) Use links instead of the GO
> buttons
> After a search, I used to bring up the
> project's homepage
> in a new browser window. Can't do
> that with a submit
> button, it replaces FM!

YES, I totally agree with this one. I used to
browse freshmeat every morning and open up a whole
bunch of extra browser windows with the pages of
various interesting projects which I would
eventually take a look at during the day. I can't
do that any more.

A Reasonable Critique of the New Design
Other than being momentarily confused by the new design, I don't have the strong objection to it that other folks have voiced here.

However, there are a few areas that could use improvement.

As other folks have pointed out, the new layout makes it somewhat more difficult to differentiate between entries on the main page -- the thin dividing line gets lost in all the white space. Boxes as of old may not be the best solution, but something a little more visible would help.

My only other complaint concerns the blue strip down the left side of the screen. In my browser (netscape 4.7mumble under Linux), that renders as a 3-inch wide strip of "bluespace" down the right of my screen. It's almost entirely empty, except for a small navigation menu, which looks awfully lonely surrounded by that sea of blue.

invisible links
In NS4 at least, the links look like regular text (same colour, same style, same font). This is seriously disorienting, especially considering the new layout.

Re: Good Stuff
you ever tried administering remotly a boxen. lynx
is live safer in situtation like these. and some
pages look actually better in it :)

new freshmeat is very usable in lynx. even pull
down boxes work, though i personally dislike them

michal szczotka

______________________________________

no!, no! seven minutes abs, you can't even get
your heart rate up in six minutes. step in to my
office cause you are goddamn fired

BOLD x LINKS
In new design I especialy don't like one thing which don't meet with cognitive pass through yor application. There is no difference between common bold text and links. It it really crazy to search each link by moving mouse here and there.

Re: IIIIIK... wellcome to Funeral...

> one software, or just open new browser
> window and retye http://freshmeat.net/

Thats the most annoying thing. It was annoying
when freshmeat changed to ``keep statistics'' on
downloads ( protecting the appindex from other
people stealing it ).

Now, there's no way to drag the new urls between
browser windows or open them in a new window.
Opening them in a new window with a target
attribute would annoy as well. The new windows
and targets are something the user should be in
control of.

new website layout
My first impression is that I liked the old layout
better. It was better to read!

Re: hey ever heard of privacy ?

Grow up, GALAXY.

Jason.

unfamiliarity - first obstacle
I am so familiar with the old layout that at first sight I thought freshmeat.net has been compromised. Anyway, the new layout looks good, I guess it would be sometime before I become familiar.

Manjunath

Re: Cool

>
> % I like what has been done to
> freshmeat!
> % The new software catagories has
> been
> % long needed. The layout is...
> well,
> % new... You may need to get used to
> it.
> %
> %
> % People that have problems viewing
> % freshmeat in netscape-4 on Unix
> should
> % set up their browser to use 100
> dpi
> % fonts, instead of the default 75
> dpi, by
> % placing these lines in ~/.Xdefaults
> or
> % ~/.Xresources:
> %
> %
> *documentFonts.xResolution*iso-8859-1:
> % 100
> %
> *documentFonts.yResolution*iso-8859-1:
> % 100
> %
> % This will make the fonts larges,
> as
> % well as make many other pages much
> more
> % readable.
> %
>
>
> Why should I have to reconfigure my
> browser to view a site? Since it is
> possible to make an accessible site, why
> not do it?

I think you might find that it is not reconfiguring your browser for this site, but moreso doing what you suggest would be configuring this site to your browser.

Eventually we have to move to standards, and lose this "suit the site to the browser i use" attitude. This site is not suited to IE, or any particular browser, it's just that the browser your using at the moment doesnt support the new technology, maybe you should upgrade?

Into the labyrinth.
Seriously guys, the old layout was very much easier to use. With the current one there's a very poor distinction with what is and isn't clickable (it took me a while to find the [add comment] tag, especially with this enourmous font in such a narrow central column).

The javascript reliance is a bit of a shame, since many of us have JS disabled almost all the time - due to hated popups, window resizes, etc.

This one's just too confusing to the eyes, with the old FM you could pretty much skimread the columns without any effort at all - this one requires staring and concentration. Not good. The boxes around items are particularly conspicuous in their absence.

Filters
The filters only allow one to filter away when something
matches your choice :/. I find that unusable.
I'd like to be able to see releases based on filters like
the following:

1) If AT LEAST the Trove Category 'Cplusplus' is selected.
2) If the major version number was bumped.
3) If the last release that I saw was at least 2 weeks ago.
4) If it is a certain packages that I especially interested in.

Etc. *none* of these useful filters are possible :/

PS Why can't I type the character 'plus' in this comment?

most of this poeple suck
i am shocked, too ! but its not the design or the functionality of [fm], its those annoying people, that call themselves the userbase. ok, the design looks different and the black boxes were really helpful. there might be bugs and incompleteness, but hey folks... its about open source and free software, so why are you expecting that everything is perfect? and i bet the ones shouting loudest have never moved a finger to help open source, so just shut up! if you have critics, write them down, but dont offend the fine people, who do the work!

freshmeat II
Hi,
I like freshmeat very much and I used to browse it daily. The way is that I read the news and if anything interests me, I open it in a _new_window_ and later have a look at it. With freshmeat II I can't do this (to open a project's homepage in a new window). Could anybody help this?

Bence

Not easily skimmable
I don't like the new look. The old FM was easy for me to scroll down and find any thing that would interest me. This was be cause of the nice structure of the tables and highliting that was done. This new look has none of that nice structure or seperation between articals, and frankly is hard to read.

If you could put in a theme configuration that would be great (and have a Old FM theme).

Hummmm... that font
The new features feels good, but I don´t like the new look...
That font is hard to read... Too many few space between letters...
If u change that font or put skins on the page, it´ll be better
Greets!

Hmmmm.
I think I will get used to the new freshmeat outfit, but to be honest: I liked that old outfit a lot. Especially the LOGO! The old one was really cool. The new one with that shadowed dolby like brace thing in background just doesn't convince me. Was ist necessary to change it that way?

Re: FIRST POST! FIRST POST!

> Translation: "fucking shit of meesage"
> Just a few notes:
> - This is a public place, and
> "minors" come in, so take care of your
> vocabulary.
> - If you like telling such things,
> make sure that the recipient
> understantds what you say, coward.
> - And that kind of jokes are not
> wlcome, I think.
>
> PD: (Freshmeat II) Really nice, but I
> loved the old frontpage!! ;o((((
>
> Spanish: Ha hacer bromitas vete con el
> aznar wapo. (To make jokes go with
> Aznar, guy. (Aznar is country's
> president.....))
>
You better not be Spanish, what a huge mistake you made there s/Ha/A/g

> %
> % % FIRST POST! :)
> %
> %
> % Puta mierda de mensaje
> %
>
>

New freshmeat
I find that, from Netscape 4.76, the selections to go to homepage or find code don't
work at all. I can sort of work around this with a second browser and manually
pasting URLs, but this is far worse than the old version.

Hopefully this will get fixed sometime. Sooner the better.

Missing features
I am missing important features as urgency (low, medium or high)
Sincerily... The old one was better...

The New Design is shit
I hate the new design. And i don't know why you even changed it. I don't think its better than sourceforge, and i don't know which page i will visit now to get my "freshmeat" every day.... this page don't give me correct feeling.. its ugly... the microsoft page is better than this

I like it
A lot of people are complaining. Of all the designs freshmeat has ever had (even before freshmeat.net existed), this one is good, maybe the best. It looks perfectly good in IE 5.5.

People are bitching about the design, HTML, etc. as usual. Well, text-only purists can probably use the nntp service so you can use emacs or whatever.

Keep up the good work I say.

It doesn't display quite right in Galeon

The paragraphs don't wrap correctly, so I have
to increase my browser width or continually scroll
left and right to see the text.

I can't say I like the new design, but I'm
willing to give it a shot. I definitely thought
the old layout gave a better idea of which items
belonged to which project with the bounding box.

Re: Why so much hazzle?
Dammit... quotes don't seem to work

| Design is a matter of taste, nothing

Wrong. Design includes style and useability. Style is a matter of taste, useability isn't. (Well sometimes it is, but that's mostly when style and design come together)

| but that's just a matter of

| fine-tuning. Did

| anyone ever see a perfect 'first

| release'???

This is not a first release. It's freshmeat II.

It's a pity to see how they managed to throw away many good things, and replace them with useless styling features.

Infrastructure good - style bad
The site mechanics overhaul is good news I'm sure.

But fmII is totally dull. fm's style was very distinctive, and thus refreshing. The black frames, etc, were graphically pleasing. fmII is about as generic a look as I can imagine, and feels like a big bleary page rather than crispy windows into the projects.

The large font sizes, what a bummer. There is a lot to scan in a days list of announcements, and the new font makes it a chore. Etc. At least the icons are replacing the select boxes.

Again, dull, dull, dull. Yes I am trying to hit you where it hurts .

Totally disappointing.

FAQ page contains dead link for project submit
The FAQ entry for adding a project to Freshmeat (http://freshmeat.net/faq/view/6/) contains a dead link. Instead of http://freshmeat.net/submit/ it should be http://freshmeat.net/add-project/

Another bug to fix :)

Re: Good Stuff
Lynx, links and w3m make great browsers. Not only for emergencies, but also for casual browsing.

Most Freshmeat visitors use Linux or a Unix-ish system, and those visitors often tend to use and like textbrowsers.

Freshmeat II is very usable in the 3 textbrowsers I mentioned before. I'd rather use Freshmeat II with Links than with a graphical browser, cause the new design/style sucks.

Re: What happened to the lounge button?

> One of the features that I used DAILY was the "show
> new submissions since last reset". [snip]
> Please please PLEASE put the lounge back in! :-)

I second that request! I, too, used that more frequently than any other feature here. That was something I loved about this website that others lacked. Seriously.

Other than that, I don't mind the new layout. I just want my daily dose of what I haven't seen without hassle!

On a side note, I noticed I can't break up a quote. I take it that the startquote/endquote can only appear once in a body of a comment? Or is there some other trick to it that I just haven't mastered yet?

Re: What happened to the lounge button?

> Please please PLEASE put the lounge
> back in! :-)

Indeed... there was something really useful about being able to check for new software at my leisure, be it measured in hours or weeks. I never missed a new software release this way and it always exposed me to other people's software without needing to search for it. The Lounge _was_ the reason I came here.

Freshmeat II
I'm sorry but the new layout is absolutely dreadful. There is too much wasted space, the left hand frame being the main problem. The only thing in it are a few small entry boxes, a couple of buttons and a small amount of text but yet it takes up one quarter of my browser window. The right hand frame also takes up a quarter of my browser window, leaving only the middle half for the actual page content. It would be better if both the left and right frames were combined allowing more space for the content. Alot like the old layout I know but hey, it worked well!

Add comments link is broken.
The add comments link in the left bar is broken. The article number is missing.

The link in question:
http://freshmeat.net/add-comment/articles//

It worked when I added the article number.

Re: The New Design is shit

> I hate the new design. And i don't know
> why you even changed it. I don't think
> its better than sourceforge, and i don't
> know which page i will visit now to get
> my "freshmeat" every day.... this page
> don't give me correct feeling.. its
> ugly... the microsoft page is better
> than this

It's not that bad...

Verdi == green
Isn't 'Verdi' Italian for 'green'? That's an odd named for the new "baby blue" site. =)

WOW what a change! Small error..
At first I thought: Damn typo I got the wrong page. Then I missed the old page. Didn't liked the new one. But after few moments I liked it after I saw all changes. It's just a matter of time!

I've seen a small error tho.
For example, when I go to http://www.freshmeat.net/projects/zzplayer I see there 'tar/gz' but actually it's a 'tar.bz2' I'm gonna download I suggest it should be changed to 'download' which sounds more general..

Anyways, good luck, FM stays my #1 software site :D
Grtz & D. out

Re: Awfull Awfull Awfull Awfull.

> Appwatch Here i come... Can look, just
> too awfull.

Thanks for the link -- I'll probably switch, too...

Ellen

ports collection doesn't work with fm][
I liked it. I did. It didn't resolve dependencies, nor did it work with anything but .tgz files, and even then only did a ./configure make. but i use slack! it's the best package system i've got! :-)

please develop a new one, or at least bring back the old appindex.txt.bz2!

--prefect

New design looks just fine in Netscape 6.0
Must say, I like the new layout! It works 100% in
Netscape 6.0 (on a Linux box loaded with SuSE 6.4,
German Engineering where you need it most?).
DOn't get me wrong, I'm not even from Europe.

Ok, just one suggestion - when one does a search
for a specific piece of software,
the resulting pages have links on the titles to
the relevant FM page. This allows one to open a
number of browser windows when comparing
software/releases. Why not have the same on the
default (home page)?

Otherwise, keep up the good work. People are
normally against change, but once you've sorted
out the minor bugs, the site will be as popular as
ever.

Come on people - get yourselves a decent browser
and get on with it! The web (and IT in general)
is all about progress.

Greetings from Africa!

The New Look - where's my retroscope?
I'll be blunt - I think the new look sucks rocks.

The boxes rocked, as I could tell the separate projects apart. Now I miss the Real Programming stuff in between Homey's Random Perl Lamosity bracketing it on either end. And where the HELL is my security, 32bits and other interesting stuff? It's good to make progress, but as they say in another, almost as important job field, what the hell happened to DOING NO HARM?

This 'new' interface, apparently bloated with graphics as it is and missing half of the things that made FM as cool as it was, is just plain unusable in comparison. Please, oh please, make that one concession to those of us who actually USE FM instead of just browsing and FirstPosting; give us an efficient, Classic interface so we can get back to serious use.

I'm gonna go now, before I get any more sick of this than I am now. If you want me, I'll be reading FM via the LinuxToday interface.

Be nice people
Ok the site may have some good new features, I haven't found them yet, but please change the font size go at least 2pts smaller. I am using 1280x1024 and font is way to big. Would be great if you could put alternate cell bg color for right side Items. That would make it so much easier to see the different items without haveing to mouse over them. Maybe a super light blue and white would look great. Also I can't open home page in new window anymore with the drop down list. The list would work if you create a separate button next to go for new window. I like to navigate to other sites in a new windows and close the new windows to return to freshmeat to continue reading. I'm sure others do the same.

With just a few easy changes you site would rock again. Keep up the good work.

OHHH MY GOD!!!
Come on people! What kind of persons are you? This new design is done with alot of hard work and all you can do is whine? Show some respect and give some constructive criticism instead of just saying "it sucks".

Change Frightens Us
Change is bad. Change confuses and frightens us.

While I appreciate the need to adapt to new methods and technologies, a sudden "rug pull" can cause severe mental trauma.

Personally, I preferred the old format. Having each article in it's own box with a contrasting title made it easy to skim through and see if anything new was added.

I appreciate the work done on the site, though.

Mixed feelings on the new layout..
Maybe this is just because I'm using Netscape 4 (downloading Mozilla now), but I'm not sure what to feel about this change.

These comments are all me, and other people might work totally differently.

Visually, it's hard to group information together. The last two layouts had related information clearly packaged together, whereas this one doesn't define boundaries as easily. It's more open and free, but there's something uncomfortable about it.

My general feeling is that there are also a lot of rough edges. The iconography is decent, but it's hard to just glance at a page and understand everything. There are many different conventions being used to seperate or denote a piece of information, and that leads to a lot of visual noise.

Maybe I'm just not used to it, but those are my initial comments.

BTW..

I totally 100% appreciate the work that's put into freshmeat.net. These criticisms have constructive intent!

what about the rdf file
Well I´m using freshmeat frequently and I think th look is cooler now and the site loads faster now in my netscape. Well that ugly buttons will be removed - I think they hurt the eye too.

...but what happened to the rdf file? I want to use my newsticker, but I can´t find that rdf file anymore!

If this is back I think the site has improved.

Greetings Rantanplan

In a word? Fugly!
Dude!

I like the system, sort of... But the look is most heinous. There's no clear distinction between listings and when you scroll down w/Linux Netscape, you get visual artifacts (may not happen with all graphics cards).

Nice try... REBOOT!

Re: Verdi == green

> Isn't 'Verdi' Italian for 'green'?
> That's an odd named for the new "baby
> blue" site. =)

Yes, but (Giuseppe) Verdi is also the name of a famous italian opera composer died exactly 100 years ago: 27 January 1901. I wonder if the code name of this new version has something to to with this date :o)

Re: Verdi == green

> Isn't 'Verdi' Italian for 'green'?
> That's an odd named for the new "baby
> blue" site. =)

Perhaps the name was meant in honour of the great italian composer Giuseppe Verdi ('green' is 'verde' in italian).

Two minor gripes with Freshmeat II:

- no software categories present in announcements;

- the blue vertical stripe on the left is 90% empty, to avoid wasting space SEARCH and LOGIN should go horizontal above the news;

- separation line between announcements is too thin;

- where have all the nifty boxes with news and links gone?

(OK, I lied :)

looks great
love it

mozilla renders it uber-cool

I miss my baby!
Man I modeled all of my list/news type pages off of your older nested table design. I loved it! Now it's gone... :-( Oh well. I do have one suggestion though, besides the select boxes. Could you make the righthand column with the list of items a little wider? The wrapping of long lines makes it hard to read. Other than that, it looks cool!

removal of selection boxes
Hi!

I think it's great that these selection boxes will be replaced by icons soon. Now just re-add the license info and make a clearer separation between the submission entries and everything will be fine. BTW, I really like the new project index and the way you can categorize your software now. :-)

Re: removal of selection boxes

> icons soon. Now just re-add the license

Okay, sorry, I just saw the license info has already been added again! Great! :-)

Re: What happened to the lounge button?

> One of the features that I used DAILY
> was the "show new submissions since last
> reset". I can't see how to get to that
> now, and I really don't like the verbose
> listing on the main page.
>
> Please please PLEASE put the lounge
> back in! :-)

I agree. The lounge page was what made freshmeat nice/easy to use. Without it, it is not much better than any other software listing anymore. Please put in a replacement for the lounge.

dynamic styles
If people don't like the fonts, why not add a dynamic style sheet that pulls out the fonts and font sizes from their user preferences? Should be pretty simple to do.

Nice layout
And ofcourse, in addition to the shock of a familiar website changing a lot, congratulations!

There will always be possible improvements, and a moment of change is a popular time to voice 'ideas', but it looks great!

Freshmeat II
I'm sorry, the new design renders dear beloved Freshmeat as totally unusable and unfunctioning! I registered ONLY to post this one comment... Instead of being a place to quickly see what has been released in the past few hours, check updated headlines and continue, we are now forced to wade through page after page of NOTHING IMPORTANT! The new apps listing tells me nothing about the app. Only a name... at the very least... to make the site function for those who have been around since Jan of 99, give us the option to use the old interface. It was perfect...

Old hardware
win2k, msie5.5, 640x480

Hey! Poor boy with old 640x480 monitor here!

I hate horizontal scroll bars.

No lounge???
Like the look, but without the "Lounge" functionality, the rebuild of FreshMeat is of _zero_ use to me.

With the lounge I could at least come by and say "show me the new stuff since last time" and get a complete listing of new apps. Went away for vacation, didn't matter, it was all there on one page.

Without the Lounge, there isn't a reason for me to come to FreshMeat any more; I'm left to dig and hunt to find out what was "new" since my last visit. A big pain in the ass.

Re: What happened to the lounge button?

> One of the features that I used DAILY
> was the "show new submissions since last
> reset". I can't see how to get to that
> now, and I really don't like the verbose
> listing on the main page.
>
> Please please PLEASE put the lounge
> back in! :-)

Hope this help to get back the "lounge" feature...

I don't mind the look of the site, I'm interested only in contents and usability, and really the lounge feature allowed me to fast update my open-souce awareness (:-)) even if I had been off-line for, say, 1 month. I don't think it's difficult to readd that feature as long as you keep information of the time I last logged in and hit the "Reset" button...

Without it, being a registered user is not so useful anymore, even if you add all those cool features like messaging...

Please, use 2 hours of you PHP thinking to help us save our time.

Luigi Gangitano

easy on the JavaScript, please (and some missing data)
Although I often use a browser (Netscape) which supports JavaScript, I normally have scripting turned off because Netscape's implementation of it has a history of security problems. Many of them are enumerated on Georgi Guninski's page (www.guninski.com/netscape.html).
If important parts of Freshmeat start to require it, that will make the site less usable for me.

Also, I noticed that hit counts and old messages have disappeared. Perhaps Freshmeat is running out of disk space, and this was intentional.

Oh, and while trying to check the link in this comment, I got a message saying "You have to provide both, a subject and a comment body."

please
please don't change. pleaseeeeeeeeee. I don't like it :( is slow to select several homepages, download, etc. :(

Wherefore art thou side boxes?
I know it's not really a main part of freshmeat but I found the links to the top stories from securityfocus, linuxtoday, bebits & 32bitsonline extremely useful. I could come to one site and get caught up on everything I needed to w/o having to wander to 4 or 5 different sites.

There's plenty of room on the left side now. Would it be possible to reinstate these?

---
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.

2 columns better than 3 columns
I don't mind most of the changes I've noticed so
far. Some are improvements, some aren't. But one
BIG change (to me, anyway) is using 3 columns
instead of 2 on the main page. The left-hand
column on a page of any length remains mostly
empty. And the other columns could really use that
space.

Perhaps the left-hand column contents could be
placed at the top of the right hand column?

Anyway, thanks for all the effort in maintaining
freshmeat. It is appreciated.

Re: dynamic styles
Dynamic style sheets, as proposed would be a great addition to this site... I have a problem with my eyes and black text on white backgrounds... and if it was possible to ... well for me, just reverse the colors, that would help me a ton, especially now since even the Project names are black on white, where before they were easier to pick out, and scanning was much faster.. Over all I do happen to think the changes seem to be good. Will be much better when drop boxes are gone... hehe:}

Left column sucks
You should remove the left column. It disturbs the reading process and takes too much room.

Open-in-new-window workaround & comments
First things first ... to everone who's missing our beloved "open-project-homepage-in-new-window" as much as I do: as a workaround, you can middle-click the project's name on the announcement list (for example, (][) Normalize 0.4 (http://freshmeat.net/projects/normalize/)), which opens the project's page on [fm] in a new window. From there, you can visit the project's homepage as usual. Still not the real thing, but definitely better than the "Go" button.

On the new design itself: my biggest gripes with it are pretty much the same as everybody else's. I can't wait for the good old icons to replace the list box & "Go" button combo, there is no clear visual separation between two entries, and the blue bar on the left takes up *way* too much screen real estate even on my 21" screen.

Other than that, I think I actually like it. *ducks* :-)

JS & CSS don't bother me, as they are always turned off anyway - bingo, no problems with font sizes, etc. (I'm using Navigator 4.76, and I've already enabled the 100 dpi font hack before). I even turned on JS & CSS temporarily to see what I'm missing, and IMHO [fm]II looks better *without*.

The 60KB of ads that were mentioned somewhere else don't bother me either, thanks to trusty old JunkBuster (http://waldherr.org/junkbuster/). Even the loading/rendering speed hasn't changed for me, and that's on an old P166/80MB using plain vanilla Netscape's, erm, "well-known" rendering engine.

Scoop, keep up the good work - please fix the remaining few glitches, and we'll love [fm]II just as much as we loved the old one. Promised. ;-)

Bring back the News Section please ...
I think its a cool new design but, i want the Slashdot and the
other news back on the HOME Screen ...
Maybee they could be linked into the Personal toolbar .. or
somewere else .. also keep on doing ...

Freshmeat fan ..

good infrastructure improvements, questionable interface changes
I don't care too much about the "look" one way or
the other, but as for usuability, well, to repeat
what others have said:

Shrink the left column (better yet, get rid of
it and put the contents on the top.

Make the right column wider (the most important
thing for me) so that most of the listings don't
wrap (I scan these to see the new releases).

The center column needs better separation between
entries.

I look forward to seeing the benefits of the
changes as people get the project data entered
in the new format.

Not bad!
It's a little disorienting at first, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. It even looks pretty good in the links browser(which I am using as I write). The only problem with that is the redirects from the select pull-down for each entry ends up doing a post to the URL, which gets rejected. I don't know if this is fmII or the browser.
Even though you are using java, I thank you for also having submit buttons. I HATE using a select with no way to submit it!

Thanks for the new layout. Some suggestions
Hi! I checked the page as I do everyday and voila! I was pleasantly surprised by the new look.

I do have some suggestions to the layout, however.

* On the project pages instead of having each item title and item link on a separate line I think it would be much more readable if you put them on the same line.

eg:

Author: ME

Visually it's easier to process this information.

* I'm not sure why the Javascript ListBox is at the bottom right. There are links for exactly those items in the project description. Looks like you just recycled the front page stuff to this section as well. Or are these for each release? I think I would still prefer shorthand links like: [C] [D] [H] for Changelog Download and Homepage.

* As far as the front page I think I prefer the old way of having a box around each entry... but I may get used to it in time. Not sure, it's a bit difficult for your eyes to switch between each project entry when there is so much text noise without smooth geometric separators. The HR dividers help a bit but they are too short. Your eyes aren't looking there, they're looking left. The icon isn't bad but I don't think it's enough.

* Also I thought the project name was much larger in the previous version. Right now they are bold but the same size as the author info below. It would be easier to skim the entries if the project names were made a size or two larger.

* I think the right hand side lists need to have a more impactful separator. Again a bordered box would do. There's not enough contrast between days and sections right now.

I think I could go ahead and draw up a mock page of what I'm thinking of. I'll post a link later when if I do so.

*** I like the overall feel of the site immensley. Very bright, light, and friendly.

Thank you for your work!

-Ken

-----------------------------------------------
btw: I get this error when trying to update my prefs

Parse error: parse error in /fm/code/include/session.h on line 135

Fatal error: Call to undefined function: session_init() in /fm/code/include/sys.h on line 71

The left side...
What happened?

I liked the boxes... I liked the boxes... I really did...

And why is the left side taking most of my view?

Could that be changed? Please?

I'm getting depressed

Error on page
Parse error: parse error in /fm/code/include/session.h on line 135

Somebody fix that :)

What the HELL???
12 POINT FONT???? Are you all running your shit at 1600x1200 or something? Jesus. At least make that configurable. And make sure and read partial display rules on w3c website and tune your tables so that I see LINUX NEWS first, and not advertisements. Now this definitely needs a "lite" mode without all the crap.

Stats page numbers reset?!
It looks like all the hard-earned numbers and hit
counts from the old stats/about page have been
reset! I think that really, REALLY sucks. It
will take forever for some of the more popular
apps, like gnapster which was commandingly #1
before, to get back there! THAT SUCKS.

Re: Freshmeat New Design

Yes, way way to big. I fact, the left 'control bar' should not be on the left, as it will always extend to the bottom, and have blank space. It should be horizontal somewhere, so that the rest of the page can extend and better utilize the space.

Plus, the font is too big(as others have said).

Re: Thanks for the new layout. Some suggestions
Hi! I checked the page as I do everyday and voila! I was pleasantly surprised by the new look.

I do have some suggestions to the layout, however.

* On the project pages instead of having each item title and item link on a separate line I think it would be much more readable if you put them on the same line.

eg: Author: ME me at wherever.org

Visually it's easier to process this information.

* I'm not sure why the Javascript ListBox is at the bottom right. There are links for exactly those items in the project description. Looks like you just recycled the front page stuff to this section as well. Or are these for each release? I think I would still prefer shorthand links like: [C] [D] [H] for Changelog Download and Homepage.

* As far as the front page I think I prefer the old way of having a box around each entry... but I may get used to it in time. Not sure, it's a bit difficult for your eyes to switch between each project entry when there is so much text noise without smooth geometric separators. The HR dividers help a bit but they are too short. Your eyes aren't looking there, they're looking left. The icon isn't bad but I don't think it's enough.

* Also I thought the project name was much larger in the previous version. Right now they are bold but the same size as the author info below. It would be easier to skim the entries if the project names were made a size or two larger.

* I think the right hand side lists need to have a more impactful separator. Again a bordered box would do. There's not enough contrast between days and sections right now.

I think I could go ahead and draw up a mock page of what I'm thinking of. I'll post a link later when if I do so.

*** I like the overall feel of the site immensley. Very bright, light, and friendly.

Thank you for your work!

-Ken
-----------------------------------------------

btw: I get this error when trying to update my prefs

Parse error: parse error in /fm/code/include/session.h on line 135 Fatal

error: Call to undefined function: session_init() in /fm/code/include/sys.h on line 71

Re: Thanks for the new layout. Some suggestions
I have to add that apart from me beign and idiot and clicking the second submit button before checking output... Raw text mode should get run through nl2br(). That's the way it works on most every site I've been to before (Kuro5hin, slashdot, etc).

Image upload
Why can the image upload only take JPEG images?
JPEG images are only good for "real" life images not screenshots, use GIF or even better, PNG.

Re: Ch-ch-Changes

This has been stated here as well as other replys. I totally agree. As a Debian Developer, the license field is very highly used when we are looking for new software.

Editting comments after preview by hitting a back button is not a good UI design
Lots of people are browser-unaware. They do not know about back/forward buttons. They only know how to click on urls. Please make the comment preview screen have an 'approve' submit button, as well as the edittable form box.

Re: Wherefore art thou side boxes?

> I know it's not really a main part of
> freshmeat but I found the links to the
> top stories from securityfocus,
> linuxtoday, bebits & 32bitsonline
> extremely useful. I could come to one
> site and get caught up on everything I
> needed to w/o having to wander to 4 or 5
> different sites.
>
> There's plenty of room on the left
> side now. Would it be possible to
> reinstate these?

I like the new, uncluttered look. I suggest you use a dedicated site for "headline news", such as geekboys.org (http://www.geekboys.org). There you can configure a page with a news from a hundred sites if you want.

well done
just reduce the size of the font and you may add one to your fan-counter

Patrick, you ignorant slut!!! :-)
I can see you wanting to fix the database structure, but you broke the user interface mightily and, frankly, project tracking is sombody elses baliwick.

I come to Freshmeat as an agragation point of information. Now you don't do that.

New Layout
So far, it looks pretty good, but one of the things that I miss is having the "full page for today" and "Yesterday" tags up top, instead of all the way at the bottom.

Alternatively, a URL shortcut would be great:
http://freshmeat.net/today
would always take you to the full page for today.
For some reason, i've historically liked the full page over the toned-down entrance page.

Re: New Layout

[corrupt signature deleted]

It also appears that if we have a signature defined in our preferences, the layout of that signature isn't maintained.

Also, we would be better served to have signatures optionalized: either a checkbox to enable, or disable the tagging of a signature.

FM1
i'm going to have to agree w/the majority here... i like some of the new features but i would much rather pass on them to get the old fm back... it was easier, faster, and more usable...

just my $0.02...

oh, and lets get rid of this italic font...

shouldn't the forum do that somehow???

The blue bar is in the wrong place!
It takes too much horizontal space. It should be at least optional, or positioned in a 100% wide horizontal bar.

Re: FIRST POST! FIRST POST!

>
> % FIRST POST! :)
>
>
> Puta mierda de mensaje
>

JAjajajaj Si la neta no me late el nuevo freshmeat apesta QUIERO LOS ICONOS DE REGRESO!

Lounge? / Boxen / Stats

How does one replicate the lounge? Things are much easier using it, so I know whats new since
I last looked....

A box around each entry does make reading easier.

And please eliminate the top 20 users part of the stats. Privacy is too important to waste.

P.S. HTML mode allows <i> but not <em>???

UHhHhHhH!!¿!¿!¿!?!?!!?
WTF!?
What happened to freshmeat .....
i dont like this dramatic changes in my start page...
hehehe BTW
slashdot will also follow this suckass changes¿??

Don't QUITE like it
Hmm, I'm mixed about the new design of freshmeat. For one, it looks nicer, I think. But that's the only positive aspect I can find though :_((

The *REAL* problem I have with the new design is, that the font is *WAY* too small! That's really bad, considering that this is a almost Linux only page! On Microsoft related sites I somehow expect it, and although I don't like it, it's understandable - but here?? No, this is a *HUGE* mistake!

And also the blue bar on the left is too big - it should be a lot smaller/more narrow. There's no need that there is that much space to the left and right of the tiny text that's on there!

I fear, I would be happy if the new design could be abandoned :-(

So, please return the old design! It was a lot more usable!

One request...

Regarding the new design... As long as it
still loads in my browser I am happy, so I am.
But I've seen others complain, so maybe you
should listen to them?

Anyway, I've got one request:

I like to view the homepage of interesting
projects I find on freshmeat. And the fastest
way (since the web is so slow) is to open up a
new window, and keep reading freshmeat untill
the new page is finished loading.

Now, what is this stupid
drop-down-list/button combination? It would be
much better to have the good old garden-variety
link used instead, so users would be able
to choose for themselves whether they want to
open the page in the same window, or a new
window. The other advantage with links is that
you could view the URL in the status bar, and
then decide whether you wanted to click on it.

More gripes
That page where you re-categorize your projects...

You need to maximize your browser to even see it all (scrolling sucks). If you don't then it goes on past your browser window and if you scroll to where you can read stuff and click "add" then it's all reset again. I also think all those categories are just "too much." A mix of what was and what is, would be better.

Instant messaging? One word. WHY?

I for one run my screens at 1600x1280, yes - so small point sizes are ill advised. I can't see as it is anymore from all this computer work. Don't make me blind!

I don't know, dude. As a long time user of Freshmeat and avid fan... I hate to say it, but the new style sucks and the old format was very cool.

As others have said, it was clear, concise - and easy to read. Project name, description and all the links in a neat box that didn't take up the entire browser window per project.

I gotta say, THUMBS DOWN.

Re: I remember
I also remember the bitching at the previous reworking (actually, doesn't that make this FMIII?). Anyway, yes, good work. A few things to be changed (Tigert's old icons brought back, some font stuff, etc.) but nothing major.

This is the first time people have had a chance to test the new page, so it's reasonable to expect some revisions. Good work again scoop, and thanks for the effort.

My small suggestion is that one should be able to minimise the left hand column , which seems to take up a lot of space.

Best regards,
Paul Dorman.

Re: Thanks for the new layout. Some suggestions
I need to add that I think you need to use color bars to differentiate one comment from the next. Like the news page it's too hard to differentiate and visually mark where one entry ends and another begins.

User 's Opinion?
Maybe you should've asked FM users if they wanted the layout to change. The new layout sucs big time.

Freshmeat I was bad enough... But this?

Freshmeat I was bad enough... But this?
20 minutes earlier I pulled up freshmeat.net to be totally shocked by the new
uber-ugly look. 20 minutes later, I am still rubbing my eyes after reading
80% of the comments below the "Freshmeat II launched" post. I am going to
connect again and save some HTML this time and see what the hell makes it so
damn ugly. The fonts are HUGE. That damn Tahoma at 14pt looks like shit, and
it's boldish etc. Annoying to the limit. I had to resize my usual 800x600ish
netscape 4.75 window to almost 1024x768 before the article would stop
scrolling from left to right. And what's with that totally fucking useless
blue bar on the left? There are 5 things in it to deal with logging in, and
the rest of the space is just wasted doing nothing? That's bogus. Did I
mention the new look is nasty? I even got a screenshot of it, that is my
standard netscape size (800x600)....
Take a look, http://www.ne.jp/asahi/linux/timecop/fm.png - that's completely
damn unusable. As someone pointed out Microsoft's website IS more pleasing
to the eye to look at.

Suggestions:

* Lite mode.
NO ads
NO gay news
NO "31337 users logged in"
FULL page for one day's worth of news. This is a linux news site. Not
a "make money with click-through-ads-for-osdn" site.
while (app--) {
[App title]
[app description]
[app description]
[download][homepage][etc]
[hr (or some sort of space)]
}
* get rid of fixed size fonts and get rid of bold shit
* A:hover is only supported by IE4/5/5.5. While Mozilla attempts to support
it, it doesn't work in m18. Funny how you have that "we have lost the
browser war" article and at the same time your site is unreadable if you
are not using that "other" browser. I don't have a Windows machine nearby
to see how "great" this looks in IE, but somehow I really don't want to,
because why would I want to visit a LINUX site from IE? Especially if I
am actually going to download anything, what good is a .tar.gz on Windows?

I stopped reading freshmeat daily about 3 months ago when it began getting
flooded with clueless KDE apps, and now I only check it once a week or so,
just to see absolutely nothing useful on the front page, and don't come back
to it again... With this new look, I am not sure if I even WANT to see it even
once a week - pretty much pointless now. And what's this shit about project
ownership? Does this mean now I gotta go through all my projects and make
sure *I* own them and not some shithead who was quick to a first post? Maybe
I should just pull all my apps off freshmeat, and keep them on my homepage,
because seems like freshmeat just becomes more and more gay every year. I've
been reading freshmeat since LONG time ago, I am talking black background
layout which was, undeniably, the best one... I bitched about the "blue"
layout on Jan 1999 and I am SCREAMING about the new layout today. Please,
stop getting it in the ass from OSDN, and make some USABLE changes. Thank god
you didn't change the ad server name from ads.freshmeat.net otherwise I would
have to edit my /etc/hosts again and make sure that points to 127.0.0.1. And
move that stupid OSDN bar to the bottom, I never EVER clicked anything on it
and I will never click anything on it, so there is no fucking point in me
seeing that shit FIRST, then some (thankfully blocked) ADS later, and finally
wait 2 minutes for a weak attempt at open source news inside ugly nested tables
with huge unreadable arial, helvetica, verdana 14pt font...

Geneva, Verdana, Arial OSDN

There is a entity for the (C) sign called © and you should use it instead
of whatever (C) happens to be in your Windows notepad.

Scoop, I feel sorry for you. I dunno if OSDN pays you a lot or what, but if
I was in your position I'd fucking dump those morons and work with someone
a bit less idiotic. I really liked the original freshmeat without banner
news, stupid "sponsored sites", and useless shit. While it's been changing
towards "worse" over these years, this final change is more than enough to
not make me look at freshmeat ever again. The focus has been shifting from
"linux software news" towards "lets make this a community portal site" and
it makes no sense at all. Sorry. If this new "software ownership" scheme
will require me to go through all my projects on freshmeat and enter a huge
amounts of bogus information, I would rather contact you again and tell you
to simply delete all my software from freshmeat. I will look into this and
if it needs to be done, I will contact you personally. Remember, freshmeat
is not the best or most-visited linux news site these days, and it's very
difficult to keep your customers. So try not to piss off your regular users
in favor of new ie-using-kde-software-developing-college-graduates.

tc

!&!E!D(,(,(,(,(,(,(,(,(,(,(,(,(,(,(,(,(,(,(,(,(,(,(,(,(,(,(,(,(,(,!D!E!&
timecop at japan.co.jp | #O#ADL?.%5!

Re: User 's Opinion?
Remember, FM is not here for the users, it's here
for the ADVERTISERS.

cmon..
People do not come to freshmeat to exchange messages. Stop thinking people use your site more than they do. Get rid of the inbox.

Nick Thieves Here Already
I come here several times a day, and I try and signup as soon as I saw the username/password feature. However some bastard has already stolen my username forcing me to append a number ;-[

Wasted Space
I know you put a lot of work into this and I hope you'll take this as constructive criticism instead of distressed flamage. My big complaint with the new main page setup is the wasted space, mostly vertical. It was easy to quickly scroll through the old setup with about four new submissions a page and look for interesting new stuff. The hard coded font sizes, the almost completely wasted new bar on the left side, the large amounts of vertical white space, the new link format, and the lack of real vertical separation (the teeny thin bar really doesn't do the job) all contribute to making that tougher. Is it usable? Yes. Selfishly, is it as suited at doing what I primarily use Freshmeat for, looking daily for new releases? In my opinion, no.

Turning off style sheets and overriding a few things makes it better, but that seems a bit of brutal overkill. I imagine a lot of this is just different browser weirdness and it looks fine on what you're using. But, while I don't want to overangst (end of the net predicted!), the efficient layout of lots of information for fast access is a tougher thing than it seems like it would be, and people who are upset about the fact that their new freshmeat doesn't look as nice to them won't even get to the point of checking out the neat new underlying functionality.

I hauled Netscape out of cold storage and noticed that the new look renders much faster for people who're still stuck with that, which is a good thing.

Suggestions for the main page:
* Kill the fixed fonts sizes. 12 pt?
* Kill all the vertical whitespace at the bottom, such as between the Changes and License and URL lines.
* Full width separator lines
* Move the left bar elsewhere
* Kill the URL selector for hard links, but I see you've already been convinced to do that.

I know it's a pain, I go through this whenever I release something new and public, and I bitch and whine and moan about users never being happy, but I find that if enough people are complaining about something specific that maybe I really do need to revisit that. Good luck.

Bring back the real FM
Somehow I was under the illusion that only manufacturers had a policy of improving things until they were totally worthless, but FreshMeat has proved that to be wrong.

Freshmeat used to be easy to read and easy to find software and updates. Now it is extremely hard on the eyes and very confusing to try and figure out what you're reading.

I don't know whose brilliant idea this new look was, they they obviously are more interested in glorifying themselves by creating a "new desighn" than they are in creating a useable resource.

Whoops - guess that's a little hard to read.
Guess I should have looked a little more closely at forcing breaks in my posting. I'm not quite /that/ gung-ho for whitespace compression.

Open in new window
I really like the new features. However I regularly take interest in several projects at once so it would be nice to be able to open project homepages in a new window. With the old design it was a simple middle-button click. Could that be a preference?

Re: cmon..

> People do not come to freshmeat to exchange messages. Stop thinking people use your site more than they do. Get rid of the inbox.

Did you try your old username and password (from [fm]'s previous format)? Mine (the one I had forgotten about) works perfectly, and I simply poped in to the preferences to add the new information.

From a usability standpoint
Concise and to the point:
1) fonts too big
2) while loading, proportional tables are pulsing and moving all over the place
4) drop-down selector == 3 clicks, icon links == 1 click

Re: Good Stuff

> All those donkeys crying about not
> being able to
> view freshmeat from within Lynx ...
> this is not
> the time or place to be using Lynx.
> Nor is it the
> time or place for doing 3D rendering
> on an abacus.
> If you wanna read html pages in an
> emergency (to
> work out how to get X going again),
> then fine.
> I've done it myself (bloody, bloody
> nVidia
> drivers). But don't surf the net with
> it. That's
> not cool...

First: I didn't see anybody crying about not being
able to view the site with lynx. As a matter of
fact, the first thing I did when I saw the new FM
was look at it with lynx, and I was very pleased.
It is perfectly usable with lynx. The "go"
button next to the pull-down boxes looks like it
was added specifically for lynx and similar
browsers. The pull-down boxes slow me down
equally on lynx and mozilla, so it is not really a
lynx problem either.

Second: I think lynx is great browser,
especially
for things like FM. If I quickly want to see what
new applications were released, and download some
of them, there is nothing like lynx combined with
wget. I can be downloading 20 files at the same
time without really noticing anything. Each
download starts with one keypres, no stupid dialog
boxes etc. I use mozilla or galeon if I want to
see graphics, java, cool look, but for quick
update and download, lynx rules.

It's Ugly
It's really, really ugly... the boxy format from before whas much less confusing and much more aesthetically pleasing...

Re: What's happened ?
And in french : "Putain, qu'est ce que c'est moche" - "it's fucking ugly"

"Never change a working system"...
Well, thanks for your work, but the older design was better. The other people already told what was wrong with the select. I also miss the boxes, and don't like this big lightblue column there : takes _way_ to much space for nothing.

Please create an http://fm1.freshmeat.net! :)
Or add customisable templates.

The only thing I find better yet are the comments system, but that could have been added without throwing everything away..

The New look is nasty! Bring back the old freshmeat.net
This new look is aweful! Im running at 1024x768 and i have to scroll right to read the whole article! Who had their head up their butt when they were writing this! Over all its just not as clean. I like the new logo, but the new layout is not cool. Especially for new users! Reminds me of trying to navigate through the Micro$oft webpages. Its horrible!

New Layout
I like it!

Here's some constructive criticism to go along with that.. (I tested it in IE5 and Konqueror/KDE 2.1beta/Mandrake)

- The blue bar on the left is WAY too wide.
- The bar on the right isn't wide enough (at least in IE5 with default settings, small fonts), there's a lot of word wrapping in the previous day's software releases, which makes the list seem longer than it really is.
- The drop-down menus really are kinda annoying, I liked the old icon system.

I'm sure I'll come up with more as I play with it. Thanks for a great site. =)

Re: What happened to the lounge button?
Please put back the lounge section, so FM will
stay my favourite site...

yea...sorry but,
i hate to jump on the "change-is-bad-bandwagon" but, its really confusing. i mean it's not just the fact that its a change. it REALLY is seriously confusing and unreadable. :(

Re: Stats page numbers reset?!

> It looks like all the hard-earned numbers and hit
> counts from the old stats/about page have been
> reset! I think that really, REALLY sucks.

I totally agree. As a FM submitter, I realized there was a direct correlation between the number of hits I got, and regular releases of my software. It would be a good idea to add these old numbers into the database.

users/not-available
All my projects are attributed to the "N/A" user?

Now I have to get all of them back? This is annoying.

Furthermore, what's with the "Tar/gz" assumption? What if the download is just a single file, like a script? I prefer the Download tag from before.

how about some constructive criticism
i realize that probably under 200 comments amounting to "this sucks", its
unlikely you'll ever see this post.

i'm glad there are new features, i hope they work as nicely as they found,
but i'm totally turned off by the new design, and here is why:

1. the whole page is a table (minus the ad of course) this is very very
noticeable slow, and unpleasant.

2. the blue bar on the left runs down the entire page, significantly
impacting the amount of space to display content. and yet it adds VERY
little to the page, just a few links, and a search box near the very top
of the page. this is very poor use of space.

3. the gray bar on the right is hard to read, not hard to read if i sit
there and look at it, but hard to read if i'm trying to skim a list of 100
newly added applications in 30 seconds, which is, in truth, what people
do.

4. information is not clearly divided. its hard to visually breakup the
new entries in the center column the yellow circle is supposed to help i
assume (as it doesn't add any other functionality and is repeated over and
over and over) and yet it also fails to convey any info. (its a
meaningless icon)

5. similar problems in the right hand bar, no clear separation of days,
if i'm scrolling down the page, Monday blurs into Sunday blurs into
Saturday.

6. Some people have pointed out the similarity with k5. K5's interface
is overwhelming, but I was willing to deal w/ that, adjust, spend the time
learning it, because there is an amazing amount of interaction going on at
k5. this is not the case w/ freshmeat. I know its fun to work on
community features, but I really don't see how they improve freshmeat all
that much. (Especially if they come at the expense of the old feature set
was immensely popular)

7. doing another quick once other or the site, i can't emphasize enough
how hard that center column is to use. what was wrong w/ the old
boxes? they were cool and usable! ditto in the actual project detail, all
the information because a jumbled mess. (and that damn meaningless icon
shows up again)

8. don't do it. do we need another community site? if you want to work on a community site, work on the bender code, or scoop, or squishdot. instant messaging in scoop would be an awesome addition, especially if it could optionally get logged somewhere like your
diary. that way we could take a lot of the more vitriol debates
"offline".

9. i'm going to take a leap of faith and assume that when i click on the totally uninformative "Step 2" button, I'll be brought to a page where I can preview this comment?

thanks,
kellan

horizontal scroll bar
the bottom scroll bar is the most annoying thing ..

amateurish design
the problems:
- I have to maximize the browser (1280x1024) to
see anything (I use a laptop and pity anyone using
one with less definition)
- Even then, discussions don't necessarily wrap, so
I have to side scroll
- I used to be able to see 3 article per page, now
I see only two.
- The three icons (home-page, source, full
description) were nice and much more usable than
the current drop box...

Did you test this on more than one browser? Did
you think that maybe not everyone has a 21 inches
screen with 1600x1200 definition?

Can I go back to the old version? This is pretty bad.

Step backwards imho
I'm using IE5.5 and it's no-where near as readable. Column on left to wide, column on right to small, text almost unreadable, not as easy to see each section, miss the easy to spot priority of upgrade. All in all nowhere near as good as the old version. Don't suppose you can roll back can you?

Er sorry it's not more positive.

Phillip.

Re: how about some constructive criticism

I agree wholeheartedly with the above comments, and would also like to add something about all this startquote .. endquote and percentage sign rubbish! What is up with that?

The blue column on the left should be turned into a blue box on the right hand side. That would be much more better, easier on the eye, and make better use of the space on the webpage.

The column on the right isn't big enough either - projects take up multiple lines because the font is too big and the column too small. Days are hard to tell apart.

And the middle column. What a mess. Talk about hard to read mess with stupidly arranged options around each project. What happened to compactness?

Jan 99 or Jan 98
What is he talking about, my id was made jan 1998, user # 00015??????

Creation date: Friday, January 16th 1998 20:34

BUG: search is slightly broken
if you search for something that gives, for example, 50 results, and you go to result page 3 (offset=40), then enter another search query, the new results will also have offset=40, giving you an empty screen if there were less than 40 results, and being bogus anyway.

Re: horizontal scroll bar

> the bottom scroll bar is the most
> annoying thing ..

I agree. It's driving me nuts!
(on Mozilla 0.7 (nightly build), 1024x768)

Please recover old appindex contributed comments.
It appears the old appindex contributed comments have disapeared in the changeover. Please restore them! These comments have been contributed over the years and were critical to assessing the state, usage, and value of the software in the index. This was what made freshmeat the most useful place to search for software.

Re: User 's Opinion?

> Remember, FM is not here for the users,
> it's here
> for the ADVERTISERS.
>
>

uh, I see...
So fuck FM, users rule

First impressions...
Overall, I like the new features but I think the
visual design needs some work. The single most
apparent problem is the lack of anything
distinctive (other than the small yellow icon) to
seperate one entry from the next. The old design
had well-defined borders around each entry that
made it very easy to see what was part of the
entry you were looking at and what was not. With
the new borderless design, it's a bit harder to
see where one entry ends and another begins. Ones
simple solutions would be to put a light grey bar
at the bop or bottom of each entry - for example,
you could put those tiny link icons at the bottom
in a greay bar or maybe the yellow icon at the top.

The only other complaint I have is with the
layout. It's way too wide for people who don't run
their browsers maximized (which is most people, I
would think). If there was a way to make your
layout size itself to fit the browser rather than
requiring the user to resize their browser to fit
your particular site, that would be nice.
Actually, I think Freshmeat I was also a fixed
size but it was not nearly as wide. Even with my
browser maximized on a 1280x1024 screen, I still
can't see all of the page without scrolling left
and right. I'd recommend a width somewhere in the
600 - 800 range...

Other than those two complaints thought, the new
features look great!

how about...
How about two things:

1. don't fix the article width in pixels, as it seems to be... I'm on a 1024x768 monitor and I have to scroll left and right just to read this

2. let us specify the font size in our preferences

My Own Opinion
Hello Just wanted to voice my meager opinion.

I 99% agree with the post above entitled:

"how about some constructive criticism" - by kellan -

ps, the bottom scroll kinda sucks too.

Many thanks for continuing to offer this really great service!!

A few layout changes needed...
Other than a few layout changes, the new site is good... lot's of features...

A few recommendations:
1) The blue bar on the left is too big and too blue... it could be replaced by a box for the login form and the rest can be plain white space or a bit more neutral color (gray).

2) The center column used to have more distinctions between different entries... not there's just a small line which does not do enough to create any visual distinction... it all just blends together into one big page.

To please everyone (ok fine not everyone but many people), you could make the stylesheet dynamic and allow ways for people to change certain attributes such as font style, colors and such. Then if someone complains that they don't like the blue strip, you could simply say "go change it then!".. and if you already have some db entries for each registered user, adding a few more fields shouldn't be too much work.

/11oh8

Re: Thanks for the new layout. Some suggestions
% * Also I thought the project name was
> much larger in the previous version.
> Right now they are bold but the same
> size as the author info below. It would
> be easier to skim the entries if the
> project names were made a size or two
> larger.

This looks pretty good in IE5 actually... I guess NS4 in unix sucks more than I thought.

Re: Open Source?

> Is this itteration of the FM backend
> going to be open source??

For some reason I doubt we will ever see the source to the site. It kind of gives an un-easy feeling knowing that a pro-open source site won't open its own source.

Re: users/not-available
Read the note at the top of the page. We should have been notified via email. (but I guess this should probably have been expected from this type of service).

'My' Page
How about making the 'My Page' more configurable? The 'Recent (project|article) comments" sections are relatively useless. A way to track selected projects might be more useful.

Also, am I the only one who thinks that the "(][)" image is way overused? It seems to precede every bit of title text but serves abosolutely no purpose.

One more thing - not only are email addresses on project pages auto-obfuscated (is address-harvesting by spammers *that* likely?), but the link isn't a mailto:. I can't click to email someone and even after copying and pasting the address must be edited. (I wonder if putting a correctly formatted email address as the 'fake' address would at least allow quicker cutting and pasting?).

I don't mind change - when the new is *better* than the old, that is.

Jeebus...
The formatting is off on IE. Paragraphs are too wide, making that horizontal scroll bar pop into existence.

Post a static page with the old look and feel?
Is there any chance that the folks at fm would be willing to post a static page in the old fm style? I'm sure you're going to keep 95% of the new style intact, and that's cool with me, but some of us really really admired the old look and would love to have a page of it or even a gif to refer to. Maybe all of the freshmeat styles are ground breaking, maybe not, but at the very least it's an interesting evolution. And while I personally never saw the older editions of fm, after reading some of the posts about how nice those were, I'd love to see them also.

Too wide - why?
My first impressions:

- on my Libretto with IE5, the FM page seems at least 1280 wide, making the text unreadable (I need to scroll 1 screen left/right FOR EACH LINE OF TEXT. Highly annoying. I didn't have this problem with FM1).

- left bar; takes up a lot of space (and besides, the BGCOLOR is ugly ;))

- fixed font size != nice

I do appreciate the efforts though; please read this as constructive criticism...

Gxis!
Ed.

this interface needs help, its bloated!
What's with the *huge wasted space* on the right hand side? Get rid of that light blue column, useful text on the items can fit there.

The old interface had too many frilly boxes tables that took up space and made rendering slow. This one wastes the screen real estate with useless columns. The info in the columns best goes both at the top and bottom of the page or on the same column as the last-few-days view.

Useless features
"Top 20 Users by Logins" (on stats page) and "Sessions" page - does anybody know what purpose they serve? Not only is it an invasion of privacy (sort of), but totally useless on top of that.

This is a second 'paragraph', just for testing.

Re: Too wide - why?
... and why does the
paragraph formatting
which looked correct
in preview mode
suddenly disappear
after posting?

Gxis!
Ed.

Re: Useless features

"Top 20 Users by Logins" (on stats page)
and "Sessions" page - does anybody know
what purpose they serve? Not only is it
an invasion of privacy (sort of), but
totally useless on top of that.

This is a second 'paragraph', just for
testing.

[rant]Brilliant. Just brilliant. When submitting a comment in "raw text" mode, line breaks between paragraphs show up correctly in the preview, but in the final posted comment - no breaks!

Doesn't anybody test code before putting it live any more?[/rant]

Looks great
This just looks great. FM ][ -- like the Apple ][. Linux on an Apple ][ ? Hmmmmm.

New design...
OK, a new design.. my first though when opening the site for the first time? Awe. I love the new logo at the top.

My second though, as I go browsing through? How do I set my options to allow it to look like it did before the massive changeover.

I suppose I am of the lucky to be running a 20" monitor @ 1600x1200 - but damn, those fonts are *huge*. Then I go scrolling though.. my eyes are taking forever to adjust having to find objects now, instead of having everything in neat little boxes.

I explore some more... I can log in and do instant messaging now.. nifty.. why does it need to take up so much space on my screen to log in? Perhaps a button on the top to log in. Anyways, a nifty feature - that I will probably never use.. but at least it's there, in case I decide to use it.

To make a long story short, this redesign looks like it took a lot of hard work... and it's nice to see people still working on the site and doing updates.. but I think at the very least, there should be a 'themes' option to allow us faithful to view fm the way we're used to - the old way. New features are great, new layout is not.

benefits of new design
great thing about new look is that page has less
tables.

for one this makes source smaller. and second it
also renders much faster.

as you all know netscape had problem with
rendering many tables.
mozilla is little better but it need more
optimizations.

thanks for all the time you guys invested in that
project. it is all for our benefit!

Re: Freshmeat New Design
First of all, I really do like the new site! I know a lot more than just visual reconstruction went on.. so I understand it was not an easy task :)

> The new visual is really cool but I
> think the left
> column should have a fixed width
> instead of a
> proportional one. On 1152x864 it
> becomes very
> large. Tested on Mozilla 0.7 and
> Netscape 4.76. In
> despite of this minor issue it is a
> great job.
> Keep doing.

I have to agree, the bar on the left works well (it would be even better if it had more content in it).. but really should be restricted to a fixed width.

Keep up the good work!!!

Re: What happened to the lounge button?

> One of the features that I used DAILY
> was the "show new submissions since last
> reset". I can't see how to get to that
> now, and I really don't like the verbose
> listing on the main page.
>
> Please please PLEASE put the lounge
> back in! :-)

I just wanted to add another vote for the return of the lounge (I hope I dont't miss anything in its absence).

The new look is OK with me, But I live for functionality. It seems to be a bit more Portal like. Perhaps we'll be able to "subscribe" to category/entry watchlists in the future by adding them to our "portal" definition.

The pages seem to take a bit longer then they used to. If value has been added then a few seconds is tolerable.

I hope the lounge reopens soon. See everyone there.

Necessary Feature
I think it's really important that we have the ability to see what new additions there have been since last time we logged on. This was available in the old version and I don't think I can use freshmeat without it. Unfortunately, I can't find that option in the new interface. I fear that it might have been done away with.

Can we please have this again?

Thanks!

Lynx Mode
I'm happy to see that freshmeat is still usable in lynx. Sometimes I absolutely have to browse freshmeat using lynx.

However, it would be really nice if we could get a light mode such as slashdot has for when I have to view freshmeat view lynx, a PDA, or my cell phone. Yes, I know this is a crazy thing to do, but there's a lot of crazy people here and we need to do crazy things to be happy.

good job, but
too much wasted space. i honestly would rather use the old interface. i want to get it, read whats new, and leave.

if i wanted pretty i'd go to maximmag.com :)

thx
matt

Satisfying the urge...
I understand better than most the need to satisfy the urge, but don't...

The old FM was much easier to read than this one...

my browser and restatement of problems
mozilla cvs. page too wide. second gray horizontal
bar is hard to use. blue column too thick. weak
separation of comments. font shouldn't be bold.
you shouldn't have more than 66 characters on a
line. "step 2" = ? my friend can't view this page
with lynx (blank)

Yikes!
I'm usually one who is always for spiffy new designs. This isn't bad but has a few glaring problems.

Number 1: Size down those huge fonts! Yuck! The OSDN bar and the [HOME | BROWSE | etc. bar takes up heaps of spaceand dominates way too much. I run 1280x1024, but always with my browser windows taking up half a screen size. The fonts are extremely hard to read at that size, but somewhat bearable if I choose 'Smaller' Text scaling in IE5.5 .

Number 2. get rid of the horizontal scrolling - NOW! Firstly, it's a menace to read in anything other than 1280x1024 full screen. That is just *wrong*. Secondly, you know why newspapers have articles in smallish columns? It's because wide lines of text are very difficult to read and nasty on the eye. The current situation, with the huge fonts and the wide lines is a typographic nightmare!

Number 3. More distinction between days on the main page/right column. It's all a bit of a blur.

Number 4. If I didn't know better, I'd think that this place was called thinkgeek or something. The logo is tiny, and is dwarfed by the ad banner next to it. It really looks as if the ad banner is the title for the page! I liked the wide old banner very much.

Apart from that, the new features are nice, and pretty changes in style are always welcome. However, these usability problems need to be fixed.

Re: Yikes!
And I just found another bug. Line breaks in plain text mode show up fine in the preview, but get destroyed when it's actually posted.

wide load!
new format would be great if only articles would
actually fit on a 1024x768 monitor.
once thats fixed then we can talk about getting it
to fit into a window which is smaller thn 1024x768...

will be perfect once it can look good on both my
desktop and my dinky 800x600 laptop display.

Missing information on FM ][
After FreshMeat was switched to FM ][, the
old hit counters of the projects were missing!

More Fuel
My quick comments -- nothing new but maybe it'll
help sway the right people.

Want boxes back.
Text is too big.
Where are the quick links to securityfocus etc?
My eyes hurt after trying to read. This new
layout is not easy to follow.

uhhh
wtf i don't vist for one day and the who site turns to hell.

OSDN/Banner
Like many others, I found that the OSDN links and banner ad were taking up too much space on the page (even with squid and sleezeball to not show banner images, the space was still getting wasted), so I made up a little perl script to go between my web browser and proxy server that strips out any unwanted HTML. Right now, it only works if you have a proxy server and for some reason can't handle POST requests. If you're interested, grab it at http://include.detour.net/~amedico/modifyingproxy.pl (http://include.detour.net/~amedico/modifyingproxy.pl).

Re: What happened to the lounge button?

> One of the features that I used DAILY
> was the "show new submissions since last
> reset". I can't see how to get to that
> now, and I really don't like the verbose
> listing on the main page.
>
> Please please PLEASE put the lounge
> back in! :-)

I bazilionth that request. Not having a reset button makes reading FM a fulltime job. If the backend stuff were working right now this would probably motivate me enough to have write a hack to do it :) Aside from that the design works for me.

Re: FIRST POST! FIRST POST!

Please fix the word wrap... MS Internet Destroyer v5.x wraps offa screen, which is bound to piss people off.... besides that leetle point, it looks neat!

Sorry, but...
I didn't like most of the changes. I don't give a fuck to the new look since I'm a Lynx user, but I can say there's no difference with this browser. First off, where are "new items since your last reset"? And could you please thread the comments and make new appear first? Also, Top 20 sucks, but Top 20 users by login count is ridiculous. So, I shouldn't use cookies to be listed? I hope that now any user comments can be edited or removed by the given user, and that when he changes his name or e-mail his announcements and comments get the changes.

Horizontal scrollbar & quick navigation
Okay, two more comments:

1. Where does that annoying horizontal scrollbar come from suddenly? It wasn't there when I read this comment page yesterday evening ... I'm using 1024x768, which "should be enough for everybody" to avoid a horizontal scrollbar. I seriously hope that it won't ever show up on the main page as well.

2. What happened to the "previous day"/"next day" links at the top of the page? Do I have to enter the date in NS's "Location:" bar manually now when I want to check new entries day by day? I could use the grey bar on the right for "previous day", but what about "next day"?

Re: Awfull Awfull Awfull Awfull.

> Thanks for the link -- I'll probably
> switch, too...

As one of the authors of AppWatch, I wouldn't recommend you to switch. If Freshmeat isn't perfect, at least Patrick Lenz has a good reputation. Feel free to read The truth about AppWatch.COM if you're a true Free Software / Open Source supporter. Sorry, I couldn't resist. BTW scoop, take the time to format comments posted with Lynx. Freshmeat doesn't format them anymore. It's a nightmare to reply.

Do it better workshop !
Ok, a couple of fmII users are confused about the new fm layout/design/whatever.

In my point of view it's hard to create new page layout thats fits to everyones mind.

So why the hell you dont make an layout, post it in this comment area and make a little contest about redesigning freshmeat. (The fmI is not allowed)

I bet, no new layout/design will fit to everyone !
So, take the time to use the new fmII.

b.

Re: What happened to the lounge button?
I just want to add my name to the list of people wanting the lounge back.
I don't want to say it was the only reason to visit freshemat but it was the one to do it daily.

Re: Whoaoaoa....
IHMO we should be able to change our fontsize (and maybe type) in our preferences these days.
In Netscape/X it's too small and in IE/Win it's way too big (like for blinds)!

from left to right
As I am used to reading from left to right and top to bottom, this menu at left disturbs me alot. It feels unnatural to see the main text at the right side of the page.

Could this be made optional? I think I can get used to this new look in few weeks, but I really would like to see the menu at the side of my mousehand.

I miss the Lounge...
I miss being able to see only new stuff since my last reset. The new freshmeat looks spiffy, but please give me back my Lounge...

Privateness
The pages for logged-in users aren't marked as "private" at the HTTP level (for cache-control). This is an obvious issue for users behind a proxy.

Re: from left to right

> As I am used to reading from left to
> right and top to bottom, this menu at
> left disturbs me alot.
> Could this be made optional?

I don't like to have (and can't afford) 1024 pixel size browser windows. This blue bar is a big waste of screen space. Please make it optional. Please make it vertical!

MySQL Error: Server shutdown in progress
...hope that's for downgrading to FM 1.

Sooner or later
I think sooner or later, we are all getting tired of the yellow (][) bulletin.....

Please give white-on-black titles back!
Please make a way of getting good old white-on-black sw titles back! It was *much* easier just to quckily scroll through the page, capturing the titles and stopping only at those what interested. The new yellow ][ circles and hlines are much difficult to catch :-(

What about the users?
FreshMeat is here for the users. (i believe/hope).
You now have had many complaints about the new layout.
And, it IS hard to navigate, and easily get the titles that are interresting.
(and dont say 'you'll get used to it')

So are you going to listen to us, the users, and hopefully do something about this?

why redirs?
hi,

one problem I have with freshmeat (the old and the new one) are the redirections for the 'home page' / 'download' / 'changelog' buttons.
I really hate this. Before I click on a link, I want to know whereto this link takes me, I want to be able to copy a link into the clipboard and I want to be able to use the "save as" feature of my
browser with the 'download' link.
Why don't you let a link be a link? What are the advantages of redirections for the user?

And another problem: I had to type in this text twice. Going back from 'Step 2' for correcting a typo cleared the form fields???

Beside this: freshmeat is a great service. Thanks for your work!

Regards,
Corvin

PS: I liked the old layout more, but that's a matter of taste...

Re: wide load!

> new format would be great if only
> articles would
> actually fit on a 1024x768 monitor.
> once thats fixed then we can talk
> about getting it
> to fit into a window which is smaller
> thn 1024x768...

On IE 5.5, the only thing that causes the horizontal scrollbar is the OSDN bar at the top - the actual articles do wordwrap properly. Also, from a quick test - the OSDN bar fits OK on 800x600 (fullscreen).

Re: What happened to the lounge button?

> Please please PLEASE put the lounge
> back in! :-)

Yes! Pleeeeeaaaase!

Cord

PS: This comment-function suck, this is my third try too cast may opinion.

Re: What happened to the lounge button?

> PS: This comment-function suck, this
> is my third try too cast may opinion.
>

and i still didn'T make it right.

2nd try of this followup.

Much better!!!
Now, with arial/helvetica ... it looks way better than with the sucking tahoma.
I can actually read it now :)

It fits my 800x600 screen perfectly now.

Thanks for this improvement!

(Although Freshmeat is useable again, still liked the old one better)

The left blue column is too wide
It's better, faster, etc, but the left blue column is much too wide and it only contains a few items.

Project detail pages show submitters as N/A
Seems to happen for all projects, even though the submitter shows up correctly on the browse and home pages.

Re: No lounge???

> Like the look, but without the "Lounge"
> functionality, the rebuild of FreshMeat
> is of _zero_ use to me.
%
> With the lounge I could at least come
> by and say "show me the new stuff since
> last time" and get a complete listing of
> new apps. Went away for vacation,
> didn't matter, it was all there on one
> page.
%
> Without the Lounge, there isn't a
> reason for me to come to FreshMeat any
> more; I'm left to dig and hunt to find
> out what was "new" since my last visit.
> A big pain in the ass.
%

I second that. The lounge was the
_**ONLY**_ reason I used fm instead of any
other software announcement listing. Also the
'raw text' option of commenting is quite broken.
Numerous PHP errors pop up.

What if we could have choices between layouts
It could be a good idea to let choices for users. They may choose the new layout, or the old one.(i'm talking only for the news page).

A little bit like the sourceforge themes works.

bye.

Re: What if we could have choices between layouts
Oh yeah, that would be great. I miss the old fm
allready. I dont like the new one.

> It could be a good idea to let choices
> for users. They may choose the new
> layout, or the old one.(i'm talking only
> for the news page).
>
> A little bit like the sourceforge
> themes works.
>
> bye.

Re: What if we could have choices between layouts

> Oh yeah, that would be great. I miss the
> old fm
> allready. I dont like the new one.
>
>
> % It could be a good idea to let
> choices
> % for users. They may choose the new
> % layout, or the old one.(i'm talking
> only
> % for the news page).
> %
> % A little bit like the sourceforge
> % themes works.
> %
> % bye.
>
>
>

Well, i dont quite like any of the fmII so i would
wish i could have the old search, the old newslook
and so on

BROKEN LINKS
hmm... You need to fix something about the project details... when i do a search for x-chat, it comes up with an exact match (http://freshmeat.net/projects/x-chat/), but when i click the link i get "We encountered an error

The specified project doesn't exist.
"

Avantgo channel
hehe... just one small request...

A Freshmeat channel on Avantgo would be nice ;)

Re: BROKEN LINKS

> hmm... You need to fix something about
> the project details... when i do a
> search for x-chat, it comes up with an
> exact match

it tells us something about 5 matches, but shows only 2 (had, even worse: 1 match but not any shown

maybe beta-testing before releasing would have been a good idea...

Re: why redirs?
This one is easy. It is a simple way to have counters for link hits.

Re: Sooner or later
This is what really sucks about critiquing. The logo by itself doesn't look all that bad imo. But when you see it over and over next to the blue menu... well, it sticks out and doesn't feel very good.

So basically something that someone was very happy and proud of just doesn't fit with the rest of the site. Maybe if you greyscaled it it would look better.

Freshmeat looks horrible.
[ I should note that, until today, I've never felt a need ]
[ to log in, and don't plan to comment again soon... this ]
[ is certainly a very poor way to elicit my first remark. ]
I'm sorry to say this, but my first reaction to loading
freshmeat today was 'aiee... freshmeat changed'. The old
layout was, IMO, far better than the new one; it was much
less visually noisy. I use kfm to browse, so fortunately
I don't have to see your new font style, but that doesn't
help particularly much. Moving the login panel to the
other side of the screen just creates a distracting empty
space below, and after ten seconds on a laptop, that bright
blue bar becomes simply hideous. Since there's no font
color setting, my default font color (grey) is nearly
unreadable in the blue area, and the link color (blue)
creates further distraction. Against this layout, the
articles fade away into the background; the most prominent
feature is that ugly ubiquitous yellow icon. And even
though the ad banner (I assume that's what the blank
rectangle next to the logo is, thanks junkbuster) takes up
less space on the page, it's now more obnoxious than before
because it now splits the top of the page along the blue
bar, instead of forming a page-width header.
Additionally, the new project design seems it could use
re-evaluating; it's unsettling to think that every file is
now unattributed...
To summarize: I have nothing good I can say about the changes;
freshmeat now looks horrible.

Re: how about some constructive criticism
I feel I need to add that the BOLD colored links need to be toned down a bit. They are too dark and stick out too much on some browsers. So take it down a few percentage points and see what that looks like.

Also, any chance we'll have a download hit counter? Otherwise I'm just going to delete the download link for my project and make everyone funnel through the homepage link.

I second, third, and fourth the people saying the page is too hard to visually break down. Our eyes need more clues as to when a different entry begins and ends. I know you probably don't want to hear it again but the original way of using a box was excellent in this regard. The HR line doesn't cut it.

I think the yellow ][ icon has got to go or be changed (grayscaled?) It clashes too much with the blue. I can't rememebr what the older site used.

On a positive note: I really like the FM][ greyscale logo in the top left of the page. Really nice.

And I appreciate the internal architecture changes. Having written my own projects I know that must have taken a lot of time, thought, and effort. Hopefully everything will catch up. I've already started noticing some tweaks here and there.

Re: Freshmeat looks horrible.
It's interesting to note that 'step two' of the comment entry looks nothing like the end result...

Feature and other stuff
I would love to have the ability to be able to specify (in my preferences) the number of entries to show on the front page. You could have a default setting for users not loggged in and override that if the user is logged in.

I really like that you don't have to page down to see core info on the projects pages. And I see how the blue bar is not a distraction in these cases if you are the project owner and are logged in. But, as others have stated, it's pretty useless on the front page where probably 75% of your audience is spending the vast majority of their time.

Re: Project detail pages show submitters as N/A
This is address in the article at the top. It's a fairly simple procedure and painless, but it caused a lot of confusion. If scoop had sent out a mass mailing to the submitters (can he do that?) it would have saved some grief and confusion. At the minimum we should have been given advance notice that something was going to need our attention.

Re: Freshmeat looks horrible.
Yes it does! Please bring the old Freshmeat back!!!
Pleeeeeeease!!!

Suggestion for left bar, option

For the most part, my opinion on the new design is ``it's different; let's try it and see''. A few things become apparent after only a short time, however. A few `minor' elements of the design could be configurable to great positive effect. In particular:

*The left bar contains very little useful information for the space it occupies. An option to put all of its contents in the right bar would be a big help.

*The two text `tool bars' along the top are too long, causing some text-mode browsers to do terrible things (basically, the overly-wide top bar is forcing a `page width' wider than the terminal width, which results in horizontal scrolling and a complete lack of usability. links is especially painful in this sense, but most textmode browsers have to resort to ugly tricks.

*In my opinion, regardless of whether you use selection boxes or icons, they should be on the same line as the `License' and `Release Focus' entries.

Thanks

Re: Freshmeat looks horrible.
I agree... This is definetly not the freshmeat i grew to love over the years. It actually looks like a girlz site now? What's with those colors? I dunno. Im only 1 person and my opinion is usually discarded by most but let me tell you, you had something going on the original site. How about having both sites up? I have seen sites do that. Have a link on the front page so people can choose. I choose the old site. Looked great, worked great, it WAS freshmeat.

Freshmeat overhaul, part 2
Seems like most of the warts are gone now: the projects exist again, the link to this page works, the license info is back, the select boxes for links are gone. And it's readable.

Good work. Time to stop complaining and start updating application records.

Ulric

Go back to the old daily summary order
The old, newest first, ordering of the daily summary email was much better than the new alphabetical. With the old format, I could read until I hit what I had already seen on the web site if I visited that day. With the new format I am forced to read the whole list.

When will the newsserver work again
Hello,

The design of the freshmeat frontend does not affekt me so much, because I prefer getting my software news using the newsserver, but the gateway seems to be gone? Will it work again, and when yes, when will it be?

Cheers

Berthold

Re: Go back to the old daily summary order
Amen, brother. :-) Could we have it at least as a preference in the daily newsletter setup page? Something like

I want my daily newsletter

[x] sorted by reverse date

[ ] sorted alphabetically (yuck!)

Re: Go back to the old daily summary order
Uhm, so this option in my preferences to sort frontpage by Date(reverse) isn't wanted?

Re: Go back to the old daily summary order
Slap me around. I don't get the newslestter ;(

Re: why redirs?

> This one is easy. It is a simple way to
> have counters for link hits.

sure, but what's the advantage for the user? I don't want to know how many people are clicking on an icon, I want a usable system.

For user tracking and interest driven advertisements this would give the freshmeat operator a good data base, but from the user point of view... I don't like this development of being counted and looked at more and more.

Ehr... shocking
First of all I must apologize for my english, as
the Gods made me speak italian and my english is
quite rusty at the moment.
And now, the comment...
First of all, I really miss the category tag in
the software list boxes; it was the fastest way to
take a look at the homepage and understand if
there was something the kind of what you were
searching for. Now you have to go through each
description to realize what the item relly is, and
it in quite annoying.
Further on, I do agree with the other comments I
read about the fixed-size fonts (a relative
scaling would be long more fair) and the wasted
~200 pxls on the left.
Globally, anything was much more visible before
the modification, and the contents strucked as the
browser rendered the page; now it seems lacking in
personality... I don't have the words to put in
the right terms but I hope it can be understood.
Any other criticism that may be moved (where' is
the good old logo? and so on) are just a matter of
getting-used-to, and all of us will (I suppose
we'll have to), but the first points are strategical.
Anyway thanks for the efforts, the site and the
crew are a good of humanity :)
Daniele

Re: What happened to the lounge button?

> One of the features that I used DAILY
> was the "show new submissions since last
> reset". I can't see how to get to that
> now, and I really don't like the verbose
> listing on the main page.
%
> Please please PLEASE put the lounge
> back in! :-)

This is a really, really BIG setback.

I can live with the layout (although I don't like
the article spacing which
requires much more scrolling).

I can't live without a means of seeing only new
articles since my last
"reset".

I want my Slashdot & Other News
Freshmeat was my entryway to Slashdot and other news sources. At least make it a personal option for me to view these links. Even PHPNuke lets you do that.

I have been using Freshmeat since before the last design... back then people complained about that interface.... so I won't complain about the new one. I'm not sure if the interface needed to be changed though.... Freshmeat is like a Yahoo!...... and they should be commended for sticking to their interface all these years.

Re: What happened to the lounge button?
Please please please... Put the Lounge option back.

app index
i liked the old applaction index better... i find it strange how the 'main catagory' section is on the right, and the sub catagory is on the left...

also the blue thing on the left along with the grey thing on the right is kinda ugly, the content in the left should move to the left and join the other content in the blue thing...

i like the old site much better, but i am sure i will get over the changes, and get use to the new layout...

[i am amazed i still rember my login and user name i normally don't post any commets to freshmeat]

Funny Yellow Button?
Kill it. The funny yellow button is everywhere. It's like the Big Bullet From Hell or something.

Re: app index

%yes yes yes
> its sux now!
> where is da app category view?
> think before then do..

Re: Freshmeat looks horrible.

> I agree... This is definetly not the
> freshmeat i grew to love over the years.
> It actually looks like a girlz site now?
> What's with those colors? I dunno. Im
> only 1 person and my opinion is usually
> discarded by most but let me tell you,
> you had something going on the original
> site. How about having both sites up? I
> have seen sites do that. Have a link on
> the front page so people can choose. I
> choose the old site. Looked great,
> worked great, it WAS freshmeat.
>

I want the good old freshmeat, why cant they stick to something thats good.
Why not make a layout choice for the users so we dont have to complain and we can have our luvly freshmeat we all learned to love

Re: Funny Yellow Button?

> Kill it. The funny yellow button is
> everywhere. It's like the Big Bullet
> From Hell or something.

yips. it looks like the rtl2-sign (tv station in germany)

I'm sorry..
I know you must have worked hard with this new interface, and I know nothing about internal structure-changes..
But I must say that the previous design kicked ass compared to this one.. It's so... Lame. ;P
I mean.. Even adding black outlines/borders on the different fields would improve design..
But still.. The old design rocked.

Re: "Never change a working system"...
Ok, thanks for the last changes: it looks now *much* better. That is good custumer service :)

Re: Improvements
My opinions exactly. I miss the ability to get the
blue bar out of the way, but other than that the
new evolvement is great!

Re: What happened to the lounge button?
I noticed the lounge link was dead and only recently I noticed that my main means of keeping up was (much faster! =) news.freshmeat.net which also contains nothing now.
I used the lounge to read editorials occasionally since even the old lounge was too clumsy and slow to wade in even a little bigger mass of releases in case I didn't check it frequently. News otoh .. just great.

Also, the login screen is no more httpauth and requires a click. Very VERY bad (for me at least). Unless the news comes back, figures I have to drop freshmeat for anything but the software map =(

BTW I have no grudges with the look.. seems ok. Perhaps it's that I don't allow scaling in NS (and no, moz is not usable).

Re: What the HELL???

> 12 POINT FONT???? Are you all running
> your shit at 1600x1200 or something?

Um.. *point*size is not supposed to change when resolution changes =)

Re: Funny Yellow Button?

> yips. it looks like the rtl2-sign (tv
> station in germany)

so where are the naked chicks, the beer and the scandals we all come to love RTL2 for?

Nice
Nice redesign. I'm sure that when everybody gets used to it, nobody will ever complain. Don't let those "I hate this, bring the old FM back!" postings get you down :)
Rick Jansen, The Netherlands

P.S. This is quite annoying though, when you add a comment, go to the preview page, see something is wrong, and press "Back" to edit, the entire comment is gone.

Separators in email-announcements
HI,

The separator in the daily email needs to be more
visible. With the current design, it is way too
hard to browse through the email quickly to find
specific entries. A nice solid 72 character line
with the project title immediately below would be
nice.

René.

Re: Filters
The thing I find rather unusable is:

If I tell it to filter out KDE and Win32 apps, and
an app (say, FreeCiv) has front-ends for Gtk,
Athena, Amiga, Be, KDE, Win32, it will be filtered
out. This obviously is not what I intended.

The best
No matter how it looks, fm is alvays *the best * site out there.

Grr! Changes part 2. Errors
When adding a comment:
the instructions tell you to 'back button' to fix any problems with your post.
When you hit back-button, you lose all of your text. And of course, forward just takes you to a 'this page is out-of-date' error screen.

If you're going to 'pragma no-cache', at least but links to re-type on the proofing page that re-fill the text boxes. Having to retype comments all the time is bound to incurr some serious flameage.

Also, as noted previously, users signatures aren't being formatted correctly during inclusion.

Thirdly, bring back the [prev][next] day buttons at the top of the news page. it's quite inconvenient to scroll to the bottom, read upwards (forwards in time) and then have to scroll all the way back to the bottom just to go to the next day. (or previous)

Re: Grr! Changes part 2. Errors
sheesh! And now the body loses it's formatting!

What's going on here? I'm using raw text mode for all of my comments, but it's being treated as html-encoded??

Just a Suggestion
What I'd really like to see in the user prefs is a way of setting my timezone, so that on any page where a date/time is printed it comes up in my local time.

In fact every web site should do this and it should be part of ECMAScript or something.

Re: Suggestion for left bar, option

Replying to myself, the latest version seems to have adequately adressed all of my suggestions.

Thank you very much.

Re: The best

> No matter how it looks, fm is alvays
> *the best * site out there.

Agree. It is functional and useable, so... :)

Thanks for listening to criticism
Thanks for changing the ugliest bugs of the first
release of FM II. The link buttons are now useable
again for opening a new window, the license
information is back, there are seperator lines and
the blue area on the left is gone. Nice. Very nice.

I still dislike the yellow button at evey entry
(It's not exactly version II of every project
announced on FM II, right?), but that is probably
a matter of taste and apart from that I really
like the new appearance now.

A suggestion for your next layout change: PLEASE,
announce it one month before release and install
it on a different machine so people can test-drive
it, before it goes into production. I suppose
almost none of the ugly bugs would have made it
into the final design by doing so. Nobody would
have been shocked, and you would not have had such
a hard time going through all that hate-mail. ;-)

Re: What happened to the lounge button?
I agree, PLEASE PUT THE LOUNGE BACK !!!!!!!!

Back Button to edit articles?
Um, when I hit my back button to edit articles (the text area for which no longer shows up if my Comm476 has Style Sheets option on), I the fields are blank.

Had I the chance, I'd have sent a comment saying that things are really looking up with this new version, and that I had a few suggestions:

- Lose the login screen. I LIKE cookies. I've loved with them for many, many years. I want my FM to actually KNOW who I am, and not force me to log in every fricking time Netscape crashes, just so I can enable my no-perl filter on the new stuff (which seems to up the coding quality of submissions at the same time it halves the number of entries on the page). Look at Sourceforge, with their requirement you log in every time you go to their site. Do I log in? No; it's too much friggin hassle. Instead, I answer tech support questions anonymously and it's just as fast. If the goal is to make me see the beauty of these lovely features - messaging, filtering, all that - but I still have to friggin log in every time I re-run netscape, then you can keep your features, and I'll use about as much of them as I use the ones on sourceforge.
- Where's my BeBits, Telephony, Security and all that stuff? it was the first thing I read when I got here in the morning, and nothing goes with coffee like FM's version of the News.
- where's the NEW stuff part?

Other than that, it's shaping up to something I can almost use again. You know, almost like I can Work with it.

- bish

PLEASE BRING BACK THE NEWS SERVER !!
The new look is meaningless to me. I MUCH preferred using the news server and my favorite news server. PLEASE BRING BACK THE NEWS SERVER !!

Lauds and a couple frustrations
Hey, the new Trove classification scheme is extra-nifty. My not being able to log in under Mozilla isn't :(. I'd like to make one honest suggestion, though: the "][" icons *have* to go. I know where I am. Being reminded of that fact 1-70 times a page is a little too much. Thanks for the service, though...

Lounge?
Please, can you bring us back the lounge account? I'm
dead without it.Thanks.

New Design
Hi,
I hate new design when I saw it before couple of days. And it was ugly, really. But today it is different - much more nicer, with more space, and normal font sizes.So, thank you, great job! Keep it that way!

Filtering by license?
It would be nice if one could filter announcements by the license field. I'm usually not interested in seeing announcements for non-free software.

Re: What the HELL???

> 12 POINT FONT???? Are you all running
> your shit at 1600x1200 or something?
> Jesus. At least make that configurable.

It is configurable. Go to Edit::Preferences... in you browser. I always override font sizes in web pages, since most of the pages are optimised for 640x480 with ittybitty fonts.

I like the new layout, the page displays a lot faster in my Netscape and I hated the old boxes. It seems like many of the complaints have been dealt with already (e.g., the left column), though. The loss of the lounge is tragic, however.

Re: Stats page numbers reset?!

> I totally agree. As a FM submitter, I
> realized there was a direct correlation
> between the number of hits I got, and
> regular releases of my software. It
> would be a good idea to add these old
> numbers into the database.

It sounds like it would be a good idea to drop the stats altogether. I don't want to wade through tons of minor updates so that the authors can stroke their egos.

Re: Editting comments after preview by hitting a back button is not a good UI design

> Lots of people are browser-unaware.
> They do not know about back/forward
> buttons. They only know how to click on
> urls. Please make the comment preview
> screen have an 'approve' submit button,
> as well as the edittable form box.

Actually, when I tried to go back to edit, everything was reset. And I couldn't go forward either ("result of a POST operation"), so I had to retype it. An edit button is needed, it seems.
I'm using Netscape 4.75 with wwwoffle proxy.

Re: Filtering by license?

> It would be nice if one could filter
> announcements by the license field. I'm
> usually not interested in seeing
> announcements for non-free software.

It's easy, the trove categories include licenses, so you can use the trove filters to filter out licenses.

Getting WAY closer
Patrick;

Looking Much better. I can now continue to use Freshmeat as a working portal, for now I see the SecurityFocus and other external lists. Nice.

The thing that's missing most in what i think would be a perfectly usable Freshmeat is the Cookies. Gimme cookie auth. Heck, I'm not sure who else would even want such a thing - for the paranoid think that cookies are going to hack into their computer and turn on their blender - but I really like the idea of using cookies to store user preferences .. considering their initial raison d'etre, imho not a bad use.

What about it - gimme the ability to save user preferences like object filters, so that I can lose the perl modules, and I'm a 100 % happy Freshmeater!

(yeah, another one turned to the Dark Side of FM][ )

Scratch that - I'm still pissed - was Re: Getting WAY closer
Okay. This is going to look suck-ass to anyone readong, so I'll disclaim and explain my beef at the same time. I'm using COMM476, which can neither Edit articles via the back button, nor can it allow me to put in a carriage return adequately to save my own freakin life. So, I now have two requests: 1) fix the freakin editor page, and 2) gimme my cookies so I don't haev to log in every time NS crashes. Apologies for the horrid format of this message, and I may start trying to edit things for appearance once I have the ability and my apathy over the appearance becomes unfounded. - bish

> Patrick;
>
> Looking Much better. I can now
> continue to use Freshmeat as a working
> portal, for now I see the SecurityFocus
> and other external lists. Nice.
>
> The thing that's missing most in what
> i think would be a perfectly usable
> Freshmeat is the Cookies. Gimme cookie
> auth. Heck, I'm not sure who else would
> even want such a thing - for the
> paranoid think that cookies are going to
> hack into their computer and turn on
> their blender - but I really like the
> idea of using cookies to store user
> preferences .. considering their initial
> raison d'etre, imho not a bad use.
>
> What about it - gimme the ability to
> save user preferences like object
> filters, so that I can lose the perl
> modules, and I'm a 100 % happy
> Freshmeater!
>
> (yeah, another one turned to the Dark
> Side of FM][ )
>

Re: Lounge?

> Please, can you bring us back the lounge
> account? I'm
> dead without it.Thanks.
>

I strongly second this! I surf once a day, before i get started on work. I like to know okay, "these" are the news items/updates i haven't seen yet.

headlines are headlines are...
I did not like the look in the first days,
but that's always the case with changing a
site that was fine and felt good. So I did
wait a few days before make a comment, and
well I saw some changes in this time, so most
of what I would have noted is already done.
Good work.

The thing that still does not look nicely
is the headline - you know, the line with the
project name in it. It has still the size and
weight of the entry-keys like 'license'
or 'changes'. A headline is a headline - and
a headline is bigger and bolder than the
text that follows it, it's an old rule, a nd
about every newspaper / website I know goes
with it. They eye can easily seperate the
big-letter lines out - where the bullet does
in fact *not* help much. Can you do something
about it, pls?

Re: headlines are headlines are...
Actually the headlines are in bigger text. You just need a browser that supports CSS better. Unfortunately many of us stuck using Netscpae 4.x on unix workstations are SOL.

backend
I saw that ther backend files are temporarily offline..however I wanted to make sure that you plan on putting the recentnews.txt back..???
I have a tcl script that greps thats every hour and reports back to an irc channel for all to to see, so im *hoping, praying* you continue with it's use???

Re: What happened to the lounge button?

> One of the features that I used DAILY
> was the "show new submissions since last
> reset". I can't see how to get to that
> now, and I really don't like the verbose
> listing on the main page.
>
> Please please PLEASE put the lounge
> back in! :-)

Many people have replied to this, but
another post doesn't hurt...

The only think that made reading everything
possible, was the lounge (and reset)
function.
Without that, freshmeat is useless for
regular use. PLEASE put it back.

I came back a couple of times to search
for this, hopping that is still existed
but I couldn't find it...

Why?!
This new layout really sucks... especially the drop-down menu's at the top. Why did you bother re-doing the site when the old layout worked perfectly well?!

Put the old site back!

Thanks for your patience
I just wanted to drop in to thank everyone for the patience they've
shown while we've worked over the bumps in the road of the site
change. When the site launched, three of the staff members were at
Linuxworld Expo, and not able to work as much as we would have if we
were home. On top of that, we've been passing the flu back and forth
to one another and all came home to over a thousand support messages
to read and respond to in addition to a large backlog of new
submissions and changes to old project records. Thanks to everyone who
wrote with both positive feedback and constructive criticism, thanks
to scoop for endlessly revising the code, thanks to the staff for
whacking down the metric of pending foo, and thanks to CowBot for her
constant moo.

Re: What happened to the lounge button?

>
>
> % Please please PLEASE put the
> lounge
> % back in! :-)
>
> Yes! Pleeeeeaaaase!
>

I just want to thank You to give us the Lounge back... this makes Freshmeat usable again for me.

Thank You!

Just a few suggestions.

I prefer to have the list on one page, instead split on 20 each (especially with filters i earned pages with 4 releases)

I would also prefer to have one column, instead of the two now.

I would prefer to have the 1-line-desc directly below the Package-name.

I would like to have a button to show me the filtered packages, just to check if my filters were correct or not.

Re: Thanks for your patience
Hey.

I'm curious if it'll be possible to set an option
so that my user info is saved longer than a
browsing session?

> I just wanted to drop in to thank
> everyone for the patience they've
> shown while we've worked over the
> bumps in the road of the site
> change. When the site launched, three
> of the staff members were at
> Linuxworld Expo, and not able to work
> as much as we would have if we
> were home. On top of that, we've been
> passing the flu back and forth
> to one another and all came home to
> over a thousand support messages
> to read and respond to in addition to
> a large backlog of new
> submissions and changes to old project
> records. Thanks to everyone who
> wrote with both positive feedback and
> constructive criticism, thanks
> to scoop for endlessly revising the
> code, thanks to the staff for
> whacking down the metric of pending
> foo, and thanks to CowBot for her
> constant moo.
>

Hmm...
This new design is nice, and I am sure the code is cleaner... but the old design was just so much nicer. The only good thing I see is the new login system, sorry. Why tempt fait?

Re: Hmm...
what about a section of stats that tells how long the submission queue is ???

Brent

Right hedlines
It seems that the right headlines commint from slashdot.org, etc... are not working very well...

I see slashdot.org twice, I do not see securityfocus, kuro5hin.org is displyed two times and linuxtoday has disapeared.

Re: What happened to the lounge button?

> I noticed the lounge link was dead and
> only recently I noticed that my main
> means of keeping up was (much faster! =)
> news.freshmeat.net which also contains
> nothing now.

It seems to be back with one news group now.
Only there seems to be a ^M at the end of every paragraph.

The new appindex (web) is horribly slow compared to the old one =(

Good work !
Good work ! I love it !
Cheers,
Olivier.

should have kept the design..
I guess, this new "verdi" release will have its features in enhanced functionallity. which I did not test and though not judge on yet)..
designwise I really loved the old one and this one steps far behind it !

mourning..

mostart

Re: Suggestion, Themeable Freshmeat like themes.org

> Suggestion
> Make the site themeable as the folks
> at themes.org and you could choose
> what theme you want.

This would be great. As the poster in comment 2606 mentioned, black text on a white background is not the easiest on the eyes for many people, myself included.

Of the three iterations of freshmeat I've seen, I still like the FIRST one (two iterations ago) the best. The black background, while suggesting an underground-ness to the site, was much nicer to look at for me. I also liked the freshmeat logo from that version.

It would be great if you could add themability, or at least color customization, to fm][.

Re: Suggestion, Themeable Freshmeat like themes.org

>
> Of the three iterations of freshmeat
> I've seen, I still like the FIRST one
> (two iterations ago) the best. The
> black background, while suggesting an
> underground-ness to the site, was much
> nicer to look at for me. I also liked
> the freshmeat logo from that version.
>

I second that. I prefer the dark look myself, much easier on the orbs. I recall one of the reasons scoop changed it to a static color scheme was that the dynamic color pages actually put quite a bit of load on the box he was using at the time. He's running some vastly superior hardware now compared to then, I wonder if they'll at least give dynamic colors another go. Maybe full blown theming if that goes well...

A:hover gone?
I've just wanted to show a friend the navigation
of freshmeat. But no
fancy hover effect.

He was asking about the differences between old
Netscape and new Mozilla.
One of the things I've mentioned is the hover effect.

OK, I have to show him some other sites ...

co-authors
I like the new design. It's nice, usefull, and becomes more and more intuitive.
But.. why did You drop the co-author(s) feature?
It's nice, when there is more than one maintainer.
Especially when You gave us the possibility to announce different branches separately...

Re: FIRST POST! FIRST POST!

>
> % FIRST POST! :)
>
>
> Puta mierda de mensaje
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Come on, you can do better than that, me, i'm portuguese and i can do better than that in spanich :PPPPP ( Nice work and congratulations to everibody )

Re: FIRST POST! FIRST POST!
freshNEAT...

source code
can i download the source what using in freshmeat.net, because the sourceforge can be download.

by the way, i want to make a software download site, but i can not find any source code can be use to download site, anyone can help me, introduction some good source code for my download site, thanks. or make change with my search engine:
http://www.oartsearch.com