Proposal: Modernizing the OpenJDK.org Website Design & User Experience

Sat Mar 1 21:01:23 UTC 2025

Sorry, meant to say line wrap and screen width. Brain had a race condition
lol.

The text line wraps at a super weird point, leaving a whole bunch of white
space on the right, even when viewing on mobile. That could definitely be
skinnier.

Alternatively, the code blocks go careening off into that blank right hand
white space. That's that scroll bar I was talking about.

In general, it feels like the page was trying to be mobile friendly, but
stopped halfway. Fix those 3 things, and I think that would solve the most
egregious errors with the current design.

On Sat, Mar 1, 2025, 3:19 PM David Alayachew <davidalayachew at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Making the site a little more mobile friendly would be nice. I'm
> criticizing the screen wrap behaviour, mostly. Plus, it would also be
> helpful to have code blocks that have their own, separate horizontal scroll
> bars.
>
> On Fri, Feb 28, 2025, 4:57 PM Dalibor Topic <dalibor.topic at oracle.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi Suren,
>>
>> that sounds like a major rewrite you'd like to embark on. If so, it will
>> probably not really end up being as useful as it seems, since the
>> primary audience of the OpenJDK website are developers already working
>> on or looking to work on OpenJDK, rather than the Java ecosystem in
>> general.
>>
>> The current website mostly represents the existing structure of the
>> OpenJDK Community, its Groups and Projects, which then via their pages
>> typically lead to the OpenJDK Wiki for the latest content for the
>> specific domain. That structure doesn't really change much over time, so
>> the website doesn't really need to change much either: most of the day
>> to day content changes happen on the individual Project and Group wikis.
>>
>> There are specific Oracle web sites catering to more general Java
>> developer audiences, such as https://dev.java/ for Java developers,
>> https://jdk.java.net/ for production and Early-Access OpenJDK Builds
>> from Oracle, https://inside.java/ for news and community content, and so
>> on.
>>
>> Community contributions happen through the OpenJDK GitHub organization,
>> which can be found here: https://github.com/openjdk/ . I'm not sure how
>> much that site should be looking differently from what it is right now.
>>
>> I think most likely to be successful path towards modernizing the web
>> site would be to pick up as dedicated and as small as possible specific
>> items that may need improvement, and to then discuss those here, one by
>> one.
>>
>> That would be a very different approach from a redesign, though, and may
>> not be nearly as much fun. And given that most of us build JVMs rather
>> than web sites, it may realistically speaking also take a lot longer to
>> give web site improvements the amount of attention required to implement
>> them in the face of other competing priorities that have a much larger
>> impact for the Java development experience.
>>
>> cheers,
>> dalibor topic
>>
>>
>> On 26/02/2025 19:09, Suren Konathala wrote:
>> > Thanks Magnus.This really helps.
>> >
>> > Sure, I can give it a try and it will be a privilege. I have been
>> > developing & managing websites for over 15 years and this would be a
>> > great experience. The only challenge is to get a consensus on the
>> > website design but we can start somewhere. And will also document my
>> > ideas and findings.
>> >
>> > Here's a few to start with:
>> > 1. User experience: I would like to see more community engagement &
>> > contributions to OpenJDK projects. I was not looking for any fancy, but
>> > a basic upgrade on the website design to make it responsive, adaptable
>> > to the latest devices and some standard screen resolutions.
>> >
>> > 2. Usage: A few major themes I see for the website are : Core OpenJDK,
>> > Documentation, Community. And add a few more.
>> >
>> > 3. Audience: Identifying the target audience may be a challenge, but if
>> > the team has some analytics on the website usage we can derive some
>> > results. Else , we can start gathering some with the new design.
>> > guessing some common groups that may be interested on the site.
>> > For eg:
>> > - Java is still the widely used programming language in high schools,
>> > universities and educational institutions.
>> > - Code contributors
>> > - Developers looking to download and read more
>> > - Other community users
>> >
>> > 4. Alternative options: Although Oracle's other Java sites https://
>> > www.java.com/en/ <https://www.java.com/en/> , https://www.oracle.com/
>> > java/technologies/ <https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/> maybe
>> > more engaging. But OpenJDK being it's own entity, it's better to also
>> > have this site updated.
>> >
>> > 5. Competition: Microsoft has something similar and does a good job on
>> > their .NET & other related open source at https://dotnet.microsoft.com/
>> > en-us/ <https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/> ,
>> > and looking at a few other popular open source software (there's so
>> many
>> > more):
>> > - https://www.python.org/ <https://www.python.org/>
>> > - https://go.dev/ <https://go.dev/>
>> > - https://www.php.net/ <https://www.php.net/>
>> > - https://wordpress.org/ <https://wordpress.org/>
>> > - https://rubyonrails.org/ <https://rubyonrails.org/>
>> > - https://www.typescriptlang.org/ <https://www.typescriptlang.org/>
>> >
>> > I will keep the group posted.
>> >
>> > Thanks
>> > Suren
>> >
>> > On Wed, Feb 26, 2025 at 9:55 AM Magnus Ihse Bursie
>> > <magnus.ihse.bursie at oracle.com <mailto:magnus.ihse.bursie at oracle.com>>
>> > wrote:
>> >
>> >     Why don't you create a mockup of how you think the site should look
>> >     like? I agree that the design feels dated, but I'm not sure how it
>> >     should be changed to be better and more helpful to the intended
>> >     audience, and not just prettier and more modern looking.
>> >
>> >     I'm not sure what other answer you were expecting. It's not that the
>> >     OpenJDK community has a lot of web designers hanging around and
>> >     willfully ignoring the website, just because nobody has pointed out
>> >     that
>> >     the design might be lacking...
>> >
>> >     Instead, my suggestion is that you design some sketch of what you
>> are
>> >     thinking about, send out a link to that, and perhaps give some
>> >     rationales or arguments for why this should be more functional than
>> the
>> >     current site. That could then be a more constructive ground for
>> further
>> >     discussion in the community.
>> >
>> >     /Magnus
>> >
>> >
>> >     On 2025-02-21 18:43, Suren Konathala wrote:
>> >      > Dear Web Group,
>> >      >
>> >      > I'm writing to propose a redesign of the OpenJDK website
>> >      > (https://openjdk.org/ <https://openjdk.org/>) to enhance its
>> >     design and user experience. This
>> >      > is a follow-up to my previous thread from May 2020
>> >      > (https://mail.openjdk.org/pipermail/web-discuss/2020-May/
>> >     thread.html <https://mail.openjdk.org/pipermail/web-discuss/2020-
>> >     May/thread.html>)
>> >      >
>> >      > The current OpenJDK website's design appears outdated,
>> resembling a
>> >      > site from decades past. A modern and intuitive website is crucial
>> >     for
>> >      > a project of OpenJDK's significance, improving navigation, visual
>> >      > appeal, mobile optimization, and overall user experience. This
>> will
>> >      > ensure key resources are easily accessible, the site is engaging
>> and
>> >      > professional, and it functions seamlessly across devices.
>> >      >
>> >      > I'm eager to contribute to this effort and collaborate with the
>> >      > community to create a website that effectively serves the OpenJDK
>> >      > project.  Please let me know your thoughts and suggestions.
>> >      >
>> >      > Sincerely,
>> >      > Suren Konathala
>> >
>>
>> --
>> <http://www.oracle.com> Dalibor Topic
>> Consulting Product Manager
>> Phone: +494089091214 <tel:+494089091214>, Mobile: +491737185961
>> <tel:+491737185961>
>>
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