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

Thu Mar 20 15:04:35 UTC 2025

 Hello David & Team,
I appreciate your detailed and constructive feedback. These kinds of
discussions are essential as we move forward.

- Greeting text, font, more white space -- i chose this theme to align with
the popular website design trends. And to cater to the younger generation
of users.
- We can try to add sidenav/tree for all pages, like how it is in /docs.

Website designs can be subjective, personal preferences, so achieving a
consensus can be challenging.
1. Can we have some discussion board like "Github Discussions" and/or any
team may have used in the past?
2. Usually teams start with designs mockups in tools like in figma, to
annotate/comment on the designs. And when approved, built as website pages.

I'm open to suggestions and excited to take this forward.

Thanks,
Suren

On Wed, Mar 19, 2025 at 8:33 PM David Alayachew <davidalayachew at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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
>>>>
>>>
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