Thoughts on the Opera Community
By Eddie Lopez. Tuesday, 5. September 2006, 15:34:53
The announcement of the OC Dev Blog got me thinking again about the OC- I thought I would make a few points...
Technical cohesion
There are a ton of great technical and development resources in the Opera community. The two issues I see are: first, there's not a good hub to keep everything together. Second, when technical articles make it to the front page of the community... like say for example- SPARQL, there should be a visual way to determine that it's a "technical" topic. That way the more socially inclined could easily determine that it's not something for them. With this in mind, I think Opera should consolidate into an “opera tech” section. Or at the least, give it a slashdot like styling so that we know this is technical stype stuff we’re reading. Between Opera Labs, Platform, Developer, UserJS, Desktop Team, Applications Team and the long forgotten SPARQL and foaf type stuff, there’s too many “places” that don’t seem to be meshing well.
This is the best place I've seen for this a "homepage" for tech:
http://my.opera.com/community/dev/
It has...Widgets,Platform, and many other resources, but we need to tie in these great sources too:
http://my.opera.com/devblog/blog/
http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/
http://my.opera.com/webapplications/
http://labs.opera.com/
These should be branded as something like "Opera Tech" (or under the existing "Opera Labs") and given a common "theme" amongst them. Something along the lines of how Slashdot.org differentiates the different sections of its site (Apple has a 'glossy'/silver looking feel, articles about gaming are themed purple, IT are themed khaki colored... etc)
More cohesion in the developer community would be nice.
Searching sites
Two issues:
1) Its currently broken for groups (search for yourself) The screenshot below should return *something* from my site. The URL is "/usability" and the group and most of the posts are tagged that way as well.
2) Google is doing a better job. I've created a search engine query using google.that only searches my site:
...relying on google to search the Opera Community seems less than desirable. I wish I could use an Opera search to get at my old posts, but google is much more efficient.
Incidently, another great search I've added is this one that will let you go straight to your tagged items from the address bar:
Rudimentary site stats
99% of the community (myself included) would be using this for narcissistic purposes, but I really would like to know more about what is referring people to my site, what kind of browsers they are using etc. With the User Centered group I've started- I'm always curious to know how much of my audience is just Opera users that found me through the OC, or usability people that have found me through usability related links. I get tons of posts on old content all the time- it would be nice to see what people are looking for, and what drove them here. I might focus content more based on the audience. I write User Centered with the specific mindset of a "usability" audience, but if I find out that 80 percent are Opera users anyway, that would be useful to know.
As of now, I get this (for the Moug)- and from what I understand, those all could be just from me alone
Technical cohesion
There are a ton of great technical and development resources in the Opera community. The two issues I see are: first, there's not a good hub to keep everything together. Second, when technical articles make it to the front page of the community... like say for example- SPARQL, there should be a visual way to determine that it's a "technical" topic. That way the more socially inclined could easily determine that it's not something for them. With this in mind, I think Opera should consolidate into an “opera tech” section. Or at the least, give it a slashdot like styling so that we know this is technical stype stuff we’re reading. Between Opera Labs, Platform, Developer, UserJS, Desktop Team, Applications Team and the long forgotten SPARQL and foaf type stuff, there’s too many “places” that don’t seem to be meshing well.
This is the best place I've seen for this a "homepage" for tech:
http://my.opera.com/community/dev/
It has...Widgets,Platform, and many other resources, but we need to tie in these great sources too:
http://my.opera.com/devblog/blog/
http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/
http://my.opera.com/webapplications/
http://labs.opera.com/
These should be branded as something like "Opera Tech" (or under the existing "Opera Labs") and given a common "theme" amongst them. Something along the lines of how Slashdot.org differentiates the different sections of its site (Apple has a 'glossy'/silver looking feel, articles about gaming are themed purple, IT are themed khaki colored... etc)
More cohesion in the developer community would be nice.
Searching sites
Two issues:
1) Its currently broken for groups (search for yourself) The screenshot below should return *something* from my site. The URL is "/usability" and the group and most of the posts are tagged that way as well.
2) Google is doing a better job. I've created a search engine query using google.that only searches my site:
http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=%s+site:my.opera.com/usability
...relying on google to search the Opera Community seems less than desirable. I wish I could use an Opera search to get at my old posts, but google is much more efficient.
Incidently, another great search I've added is this one that will let you go straight to your tagged items from the address bar:
http://my.opera.com/usability/blog/index.dml/tag/%s
Rudimentary site stats
99% of the community (myself included) would be using this for narcissistic purposes, but I really would like to know more about what is referring people to my site, what kind of browsers they are using etc. With the User Centered group I've started- I'm always curious to know how much of my audience is just Opera users that found me through the OC, or usability people that have found me through usability related links. I get tons of posts on old content all the time- it would be nice to see what people are looking for, and what drove them here. I might focus content more based on the audience. I write User Centered with the specific mindset of a "usability" audience, but if I find out that 80 percent are Opera users anyway, that would be useful to know.
As of now, I get this (for the Moug)- and from what I understand, those all could be just from me alone
WIDGETIZE
Stu_Pedasso # 8. September 2006, 18:17
Eddie_Lopez # 8. September 2006, 18:28