Ubuntu.com needs to improve its 'looks'

[arnab_das]

So far my 3 year stint with ubuntu has been nothing short of fantastic. however i do have a small grudge. i do realise that ubuntu has reinvented itself by changing the branding, but frankly, ubuntu.com still looks very old-school in terms of web design etc.

i know canonical is not really cash rich like microsoft and apple but frankly, the site could have been better. initial looks do count dont u think? i mean, millions of developers are dedicating thousands of hours to develop free open source softwares, surely someone can transform the website.

compare for urself.

http://www.ubuntu.com/

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/

http://www.apple.com/macosx/

[Bachstelze]

compare for urself.

http://www.ubuntu.com/

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/

http://www.apple.com/macosx/

Compare the loading time.

[arnab_das]

loading time comparison: (click on the link, it will give u the results)

http://www.iwebtool.com/speed_test?domain=http://www.ubuntu.com/%0D%0Ahttp://www.microsoft.com/windows/%0D%0Ahttp://www.apple.com/macosx/

not much of a difference really.

[MCVenom]

Have you seen the upcoming site redesign? I think it's on par with, if not better than the Windows/OSX sites :p

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Brand2

[sisco311]

Brand2

[Bachstelze]

loading time comparison: (click on the link, it will give u the results)

http://www.iwebtool.com/speed_test?domain=http://www.ubuntu.com/%0D%0Ahttp://www.microsoft.com/windows/%0D%0Ahttp://www.apple.com/macosx/

not much of a difference really.

And what do you see? The Apple one, which is very similar to the Ubuntu one in terms of design, loads in roughly the same time, while the Microsoft one is a lot slower. What's your point?

[MCVenom]

And what do you see? The Apple one, which is very similar to the Ubuntu one in terms of design, loads in roughly the same time, while the Microsoft one is a lot slower. What's your point?

Now now, we are discussing asthetics, not load times (and the slowest one is only slower by a second on my comp., it's a rather negligible difference /sarcasm)! :p

[swoll1980]

I have a feeling on release day Ubuntu.com, and the forums, will have a new look.

[bwhite82]

I actually prefer the cleaner, leaner design of Ubuntu's website. The "web 2.0" gloss and bevels are beginning to look dated on the other sites, too "photoshoppy" looking for my tastes.

[Uncle Spellbinder]

...compare for urself.

http://www.ubuntu.com/

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/

http://www.apple.com/macosx/
Compare the loading time.
Instantaneous for all three, here.

[arnab_das]

And what do you see? The Apple one, which is very similar to the Ubuntu one in terms of design, loads in roughly the same time, while the Microsoft one is a lot slower. What's your point?

aesthetics :)

[gethighprlinks]

I think you have not seen the re-designed look of ubuntu. Hope will get a look soon and will satisfy by seeing.

[jwbrase]

So far my 3 year stint with ubuntu has been nothing short of fantastic. however i do have a small grudge. i do realise that ubuntu has reinvented itself by changing the branding, but frankly, ubuntu.com still looks very old-school in terms of web design etc.

i know canonical is not really cash rich like microsoft and apple but frankly, the site could have been better. initial looks do count dont u think? i mean, millions of developers are dedicating thousands of hours to develop free open source softwares, surely someone can transform the website.

The problem is that you'll never please everybody. I for instance, find the Windows and MacOs pages to be hideous, and the Ubuntu site to be tolerable, but not great.

[arnab_das]

I think you have not seen the re-designed look of ubuntu. Hope will get a look soon and will satisfy by seeing.

have seen it. but difficult to judge from small screenshots.

[juancarlospaco]

compare for urself.

http://www.ubuntu.com/

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/

http://www.apple.com/macosx/

Compare for Yourself:

http://www.ubuntu.com/ (http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ubuntu.com%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0)

http://www.apple.com/macosx/ (http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.apple.com%2Fmacosx%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0)

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ (http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.microsoft.com%2Fwindows %2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0)

290 Bugs on Microsoft Website
:)

As i said sometimes is not the browser but the poor coded websites

[Roasted]

If you think Ubuntu's site looks bad, check out Debian's.

(but I still <3 Debian)

[Old Marcus]

Compare for Yourself:
290 Bugs on Microsoft Website
:)
As i said sometimes is not the browser but the poor coded websites

Ok, who, besides purist web developers (and me) gives a flying f*ck about validation? As long as the site loads and works, no one gives a damn. I used to fuss over validation, and making my code perfect, but it became too much hassle when I wanted my sites to do interesting stuff and I didn't fancy reinventing the wheel, just because existing options aren't 100% valid.

[3rdalbum]

The Microsoft site looks horrible, especially the annoying popup survey (though it does give you prior warning of what you're in for if you buy Windows).

Ubuntu site loads quickly, looks nice, and is uncluttered. The only thing I take objection to is the subheader for the link to the News page - "...all the latest Ubuntu antics". When I look at a website for a product that I'm going to be installing on enterprise production computers, the last thing I want to hear is that anyone connected with that product has been having any "antics" :-)

[Crunchy the Headcrab]

The Ubuntu site definitely looks better than the Windows one. I like it's clean design. Also the re-branding looks amazing!

[kaldor]

I think the new colours Ubuntu chose for 10.04 are a good step. The orange/purple on the site in Brand2 looks very, very sleek and professional yet at the same time friendly.

I still really, *really* love the brown, but the purple/orange instead of brown/orange still works. I just wish the new wallpaper had a less crappy design and incorporated the new colours the way the site did.

[Crunchy the Headcrab]

I think the new colours Ubuntu chose for 10.04 are a good step. The orange/purple on the site in Brand2 looks very, very sleek and professional yet at the same time friendly.

I still really, *really* love the brown, but the purple/orange instead of brown/orange still works. I just wish the new wallpaper had a less crappy design and incorporated the new colours the way the site did.
Agreed. The new default wallpaper is in the top 5 of ugliest wallpapers I have EVER seen.

[gemmakaru]

I prefer the Ubuntu one. The windows one just looks like a fancy picture with a hundred tiny links at the bottom which I can barely read.

[Ben Crisford]

compare for urself.

http://www.ubuntu.com/

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/

http://www.apple.com/macosx/

The micro$oft site looked better (once it had eventually loaded) until I noticed the "bing" bar at the top... It is nice to know that micro$oft trust bing as a good engine, but lets face it, its pretty darn useless.

Mozilla know that, try getting yahoo or ask in your firefox search bar...
That was easy wasn't it:

Now try getting bing... I tried, and had to go to the add-ons website, search for it, and install it. This only takes a minute, but all the searches recognised as good take a single click..

EDIT; In fact, search engines are a perfect example demonstrating that looks certainly aren't everything.
http://www.netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.aspx?qprid=4 - look at that market share - 85% to google.
Then compare: http://www.bing.com/ and: http://www.google.co.uk/ for looks.

You don't need to have a sexy homepage to be better and more popular ;).

[3rdalbum]

EDIT; In fact, search engines are a perfect example demonstrating that looks certainly aren't everything.
http://www.netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.aspx?qprid=4 - look at that market share - 85% to google.
Then compare: http://www.bing.com/ and: http://www.google.co.uk/ for looks.

You don't need to have a sexy homepage to be better and more popular ;).

In a day and age where we get complaints that gEdit opens in 1-2 seconds, the Bing site takes much too long to load. It takes 5 seconds here; Google takes under 2 seconds.

Google's frontpage is spartan for a reason: Less load on the Google servers and quicker page loading; which leads to quicker searching for everyone. Why do you need to wait for an image of a nebula to load before doing a search on Bing?

[qualtch]

I personally liked the new ubuntu.com UI! Clear, simple and nice colours.

...but my girlfriend apparently said that the tone of the orange colour is terrible :P but that's just her taste!