[Pdx-pm] learn.perl.org rework (TPF grant)

[Shlomi Fish]

On Sunday 03 May 2009 21:17:22 Eric Wilhelm wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I've put some effort into the design and CSS here and posted the first
> couple of tutorials:
>
>   http://learnperl.scratchcomputing.com/
>

Hi Eric!

Thanks for your effort into trying to improve learn.perl.org. Improving it has 
been long over-due.

First of all, I should note that you should feel free to re-use content and 
ideas from http://perl-begin.org/ (officially under CC-by, but the exact 
licensing terms can be negotiated), and from the Public Domain 
http://www.shlomifish.org/lecture/Perl/Newbies/ (which has been suffering from 
a bit of knowledge-rot, but may still be relevant). I should note that I have 
originated (and am still maintaining) both of these resources, just to let you 
know that I'm touting my own horn.

Now a few notes on the link:

1. When I open the page in a wide browser window (about 90% of my 1280 pixels 
screen), I get a huge empty margin between the right-hand edge of the page, to 
the browser window. Perhaps you want to put the page in the middle and/or make 
it wider.

2. When pressing the Tutorials link, I got led to a page with the same links 
below it, Only without the "books" thing. I find this confusing.

3. You may wish to consult 
http://www.shlomifish.org/Files/files/text/TheHackersGuideToMarketing.pdf for 
information on how to make the site more eye-catching. I should note that I 
did not originate that document, I just keep it on my site for posterity.

> Compared to the existing learn.perl.org, I completely killed most of
> the "news" items and I'm still pondering how to get linked back to the
> perldoc.perl.org (possibly sidebars from the tutorial and/or a "further
> reading" page of some sort.)
>
> The books are definitely moving off of the front page.  Something should
> probably be done to link them back through more of the content
> (sidebar?) and maybe I'll use some cover thumbnails ala books.perl.org.
>
> As navigation goes, that's still somewhat undecided.  I scrapped the
> combust scheme to get to this point, and shebangml has lots of nifty
> tools for includes and conditional links but I don't want to open all
> of the stops (on whatever toolkit) until I know that I'll be able to
> deploy with those features.  Anybody tried to get combust to run under
> e.g. HTTP::Server::Simple?
>
> Anyhow, please feel free to insult my color choices or design.  

I feel the links are too easy to miss due to their colour on the white 
background.

> Feedback
> on the tutorial content or layout is also welcome.  Anybody know a
> newbie who could try it with a fresh pair of eyes?

There are some on #perl on irc.freenode.net .

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

>
> Thanks,
> Eric

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
My Aphorisms - http://www.shlomifish.org/humour.html

God gave us two eyes and ten fingers so we will type five times as much as we
read.