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

[David Alayachew]

Hello Suren,

Thanks for putting this together.

While it does look very sleek, I don't like it very much, unfortunately.

The original website suffered from things being too dense, whereas your
mockup suffers from the opposite -- things are far too spread apart.

You take up half the screen with the greeting text.

Also, I'm not a big fan of the boxes for the download/learn/hack. I would
like the border to be much more pronounced for them. The hover effect is
throwing me off. Would also like to see what the link text looks like. As
is, it's just text.

Finally, I think the sidebar suffered from being too tiny and condensed,
but it was important. Stuffing the contents of it in several different
locations is a mistake, imo. I would far rather you turn it into a separate
sidebar that scrolls, like this --
https://docs.oracle.com/javase//7/docs/api/index.html?java/awt/AWTEventMulticaster.html

That way, you can make the text bigger, while keeping things as easily
searchable as they were before. And if the concern is too many words in one
place, we can use a tree structure to help group things up. But even then,
there should be an Expand All/Collapse All button.

On Wed, Mar 19, 2025 at 3:17 PM Suren Konathala <konathalasuren at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi Magnus and Group,
>
> Following up on our discussion, I've created a draft of the website to
> give you a better idea of my vision for the redesign.
> https://thesurenk.github.io/openjdk-website/
>
> A few:
> 1) As of now, code is in a private repo, but the url  is public. I'm
> looking at options to make this site password-protected.
> 2). Tech stack: used Hugo static site builder (https://gohugo.io/),
> hosted on github pages (https://pages.github.com/).
> 3) There are several other open-source static site builders like
> docusaurus, nextjs, jekyll, gatsby etc. Hugo is widely used and easy to
> host & update content,
> 4) The above is a sample, we can discuss further on design, template, tech
> stack and future use-cases to decide if this supports our current and
> future needs.
> 5) Though we can use a content management system (CMS) like wordpress, I
> tried to make it simple with less IT overhead.
>
> I would appreciate it if you could take a look and share your feedback.
> Your insights are valuable, and I'm eager to hear your thoughts on how we
> can further improve the design and user experience.
>
> Thanks,
> Suren
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 26, 2025 at 12:09 PM Suren Konathala <konathalasuren at gmail.com>
> 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.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/ ,
>> and looking at a few other popular open source software (there's so many
>> more):
>> - https://www.python.org/
>> - https://go.dev/
>> - https://www.php.net/
>> - https://wordpress.org/
>> - https://rubyonrails.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> 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/) 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)
>>> >
>>> > 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
>>>
>>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mail.openjdk.org/pipermail/web-discuss/attachments/20250319/df01beff/attachment-0001.htm>