Poll #27

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Poll #27

The FLTK website was designed with speed in mind. The design as a result is very minimal. Should we change fltk.org? Please write your suggestions into the comments section.
I love the site the way it is 4192 / 25%
it only needs a different color scheme 2225 / 13%
it needs a redesign, but minimalistic is good 6671 / 40%
the FLTK site needs a complete redesign - please hire an artist 3222 / 19%
16310 total votes.
This poll is closed.

User Comments

Submit Comment ]

From brdjns, 06:52 Aug 16, 2016 (score=4)

The site needs more basic information on what FLTK is, its philosophy, its history, and what it can do for both users and developers. As it stands, there's not enough information of this kind in a single, easily accessible area.

The site design as it stands is fine, but could use some modernisation; it looks like the World Wide Web circa '98. Of course, minimalism should be emphasised; it should load quickly in any modern browser, but there are some areas that need a real overhaul, such as the 'Articles & FAQs' section. All the content in this section is clustered together with no way to disambiguate between articles (in the widely understood sense) and release announcements. In fact, release announcements (including snapshots) should really be separated, with an easily accessible link on the main page or on the downloads page.

The 'Forums' link is misleading as it implies a direct link to forums in the mainstream sense. Instead, the page contains links to Google Groups newsgroups. A renaming to 'Newsgroups' or even 'Community' would be more appropriate.

I hope these suggestions will be taken into consideration.
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From Anonymous, 10:12 Oct 30, 2014 (score=4)

I don't mind minimal, but the site looks like something out of the 80s... It doesn't give a good first impression for the library.
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From AlexWTucker, 08:24 Jul 04, 2014 (score=4)

People seem to get some good impression when they see metro-like website design.
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From jplc, 16:50 Nov 30, 2016 (score=3)

This site needs a complete redesign, Forums section specially.<br/> At first look the project seems obsolete, it needs a modern presentation.
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From sbrk, 15:48 Aug 16, 2016 (score=3)

"... it looks like the World Wide Web circa '98"

Which is why it is fantastically excellent. This is exactly the mind-set that I want when writing an app. Just enough to get the job done, but no more fluff. Heck, most of these web pages have 1 page of HTML mark-up driving them. You'd rather have a couple hundred megs of addthis.com bloat on top of that so it looks "modern". Pfft!

Great job! Keep it just like it is!
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From Lonami, 11:45 Jun 22, 2016 (score=3)

I love the speed of the site. It's blazingly fast! However, yeah, the look kinda looks old. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd rather it have this speed than a better design but, I don't know, if it could look... different. Speed first though! Otherwise leave as is. Thanks for the polls
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From benuser, 08:52 Nov 04, 2015 (score=3)

I was attracted to FLTK by talk of a lightweight portable c++ GUI library with a simple API, visited the website and saw a very old style website with a simple and uncluttered design. I wasn't exactly surprised. Although I must admit I am a little off-put by the sheer ugliness of applications that fltk makes (for me the benefits outweigh), the ugly website is great! I really don't like the new fancy websites of the style of QT, as I find them rather hard to navigate. Here I could find downloads, compile help, and documentation quite easily. The main thing I look at in a library website is the accessibility and usability of the documentation, which looks great. I might agree that there should be more up front (if not on the homepage then one one of the main tabs) explaining what sort of features it has.
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From rhofer, 06:09 May 26, 2015 (score=3)

I'm looking for a light weight UI. Your work should focus on the toolkit and the documentation. I don't care much about the website design.
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From will18, 16:46 Feb 21, 2015 (score=3)

The existing colour scheme does not render well in monochrome, e.g. on a Kindle the text is dark grey on a mid-grey background. This makes navigation unnecessarily difficult, although the page layout is fine. (Monochrome) mobile device access could be much improved by a small change here.Perhaps I just need an up-to-date gadget.
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From ralmarri12, 01:59 Nov 24, 2014 (score=3)

I can re-design it for free if you wish.
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From c0de3code, 01:07 Mar 11, 2014 (score=3)

When I look for GUI toolkit - and there is a lot of them for Python - the first impression of that toolkit is look and feel of its homepage.

I hope FLTK is really beautiful. Now, run and hire an artist)))
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From AnyCPU, 13:58 Jan 27, 2014 (score=3)

I propose more modern and clean UI. For example: semantic-ui. It is configurable and lightweight, hmtl5 compatible and modular, easy to learn.
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From mdickie, 07:03 May 21, 2013 (score=3)

I think it needs a redesign using html5, newer div techniques and a better overview. Also I think Bugs & Features should be replace through another Bugtracker because it is heavy to find duplicates. In Bugzilla it's much easier to find duplicates. Greetings, Mariusz Wojcik
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From overthetop, 10:59 Apr 10, 2012 (score=3)

It needs a redesign but it does not look bad now. It looks fine, but it is way to messy underneath. It should be designed with minimum html and the spacing, layout, etc... should be done with css.
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From bmorel, 17:36 Mar 09, 2012 (score=3)

Hum... Need for beauty? Pfeu! I don't mind beauty, I just wan't easy, clear accessible sites.

Now, about the site... I am sorry, I will be hard. Very HARD.

1) wikipedia gives you many more credits than yourselves. The problem is that on YOUR site, the newcommer does not see why to choose FLTK instead of WxWidgets or Qt? (for Gtk and MFC, it is easy: portability...)

2) your site, using a cover of simplicity is just not complete (the main page should say why you are so good, so beautiful, so intelligent... oh, sorry, you are an open source project? And? Does it mean that we are stupid to use and produce open source softwares?), or at least, make the user think he is not in the right place. BTW... look your "forum" page. Are you sure it is not a mailing-list? I am not, and I am a visitor. Err... I do not like rich interface, I do not like also web scripts, but... using a more common design does not cost resources (images are not loaded on text browsers so if you do not use them you could reach minimalism, and be clearer than you are. Anyway, most images can be light! -- use svg by example -- )

3) I am here to look if I can find a standard, C++ compatible, easy to use, and portable library, better that wxWidgets (to be more precise, menus management is ... no, no comment). I just know you because you are producing an open source software. I already seen projects using fltk on debian. They were not beautiful, but they were useful. The best thing for a software.

Seriously, you wrote a library which is well known... only under linux! If I would troll, I would say that the look and feel of fltk softwares I seen is like this website: disgusting (in appearance). But, I never stop myself on graphics. The main problem I think you have is that you even do not speak of your specificities, and ADVANTAGES! (you probably have, but which?). Why are you different of Qt and wxWidgets? If you does not have good differences, why not merging? I should have ask this question of your forum, I know, but I just seen a mailing-list-like website instead of a forum.

There is also Versions. Even on your FAQ, the conclusion is at... The end! F-A-Q ==> Frequently Asked Question. People want quick replies! They do not want to learn history of the project... they will have to learn your library, and to do that, they will need to want it! They will not want the past... By the way! You plan to have a compatibility layer between: 1.2, 1.3 and 2.0, merged in 3.0! I do not understand... to merge version is ok, but keep compatibility with your old versions? I do not think it will help you.

Hum... maybe you will ban me for that comment. Or maybe you will ask me to speak with you. I would prefer the second, because I don't want to see an open source good project to die.

Mail me if my comment cause problems.

(I have more to say, but, it is time to sleep)
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From engelsman, 14:45 Mar 18, 2012 (score=3)

Several points to reply:

  • FLTK is a Fast Light Toolkit, designed to run on MacOS, Windows and Linux, and with a small footprint and few dependencies so that you can also run it on small embedded systems.
  • FLTK is a fraction of the size and complexity of Qt and wxWidgets in order to keep it fast and light, but it does mean that you might have to roll your own widgets if you want something particular.
  • The site is a little, um, non-standard, and the "web" forums are really just views into a set of mailing lists, which are also gatewayed and available via NNTP to newsreaders. It's pretty versatile and people can access and archive however they want.
  • The version number confusion is the result of history but is covered in the Article What are the Versions of FLTK? which is tweaked so that it remains on the first screen of the "Articles and FAQs" tab.
  • Yes, there should probably be a more obvious link to a FAQ list.
  • Constructive suggestions and patches are always welcome, so sign up and get involved :-)

    • Reply ]

      From ArneBab, 07:11 Dec 23, 2014 (score=4)

      I think it would help a lot, if the quick info showed the size of a FLTK Hello World vs. a Qt Hello World: Size of the pure dynamically linked binary (for users who already have FLTK/Qt) and the size of a statically linked Hello World binary.

      Hello World Size Example

      • Size of Binary (kiB) FLTK | QT
      • Dynamically linked: XX | YY
      • Statically linked:  XX | YY

      This is a purely developer-targeted information. It shows how good FLTK is at achieving its goal with a raw metric. Speed is hard to measure in a way which is consistent with what users experience. In contrast size is easy and direct.
      Reply ]

From Frank, 12:48 Nov 16, 2011 (score=3)

I says the same as nick, if I were good at selling things -- I would sell you a new look ;)

I like the minimalism of the look for this page, but a small dash of colour and padding here and there would not hurt. I also consider the red text to be hard to read, a darker value would probably be better.

Well, enough chatter here! I'm going to install FLTK1.3 (Last time around I used FLTK2.0, it had the highest even version number!) and figure out how the hack I can make a multi-threaded MVC program with asynchronous callbacks in C/C++ and Lua ;)

The reasoning for using MVC-like architecture is so that I can shovel away the V component when FLTK3.0 comes out with ease. And for the “multi-threaded asynchronous-callback”-thingie; Lets just say that I've become a node.js junkie in the last one and a half month (Right now it's the only model my brain can think with, the conversion did hurt though).
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From nick, 23:41 Nov 04, 2011 (score=3)

It's a very dated look, but the minimalistic /feel/ is good. Unfortunately the layout relies heavily on what I like to call "table madness." There are tables 5 levels deep on the home page... try:

document.querySelector('table table table table table');

...and also, blank table cells are used instead of padding, etc. This is not really minimalism after all, because a ton of presentational markup is sent across the wire with each page request, which could instead be achieved by a single css file cached in the browser and much less markup.

In short, this is what people were doing around 1999/2000, before css had really matured and become widely supported. I think it's time for an update. If I was more of a sales guy I'd sell you an excellent redesign package myself ;)
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From TeXJunky, 18:20 Oct 25, 2011 (score=3)

love is not the right word, but it easy to navigate.
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From dejan, 03:06 Oct 23, 2011 (score=3)

FLAK.org??? FLKT??? :) Someone had too much alcohol while typing message for this poll. :)
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