"Jeff Garland" <jeff@crystalclearsoftware.com> writes:
On Wed, 27 Apr 2005 17:09:56 -0400, David Abrahams wrote
Someone at ACCU suggested that we have a "libraries overview page" that contains a short introduction and a mini-tutorial example for each of the libraries. I think it's a great idea and would vastly increase accessibility of the libraries.
Good idea, but what does it mean in practical fact? It would be a hugely long page to have a tutorial of all the libraries.
Make that a micro-tutorial then. It's supposed to be just enough to get an idea.
Just putting the library list no longer fits on a single page. We already have libraries by category.
Yep. It would be long.
Several years ago I had the idea that a graphical view of the library categories might be a nice way to navigate among the libraries. My little prototype is still on the wiki (each category is a hyperlink to the category on the libs by category page).
http://www.crystalclearsoftware.com/cgi-bin/boost_wiki/wiki.pl?BoostUserFAQ
Doesn't work for me. IMO the graphics add nothing. Why not just a table if you like grids?
Now I can imagine we could do other things like bring up lists of the libraries in a category, etc. Is it better than a simple text list? I personally like it better, but it certainly never caught on.
Another idea is to make get the library documentation links immediately available from the front page. Make the front page 3 columns and have all the libraries or at least the categories listed on the left column...
That sounds like a good idea, but of course it addresses a different need.
Yet another idea would be to have a single page library teaser, including code example, linked available from the library list. So a few sentences of intro text and some code examples as a really fast intro that people could scan to get the gist of the library in action.
That is in the same ballpark as what I suggested. However, having to click through to the material will make it harder for a user to get an overall picture of what's in Boost. -- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting www.boost-consulting.com