After 10 years ReactOS website has got new design

> providing a ground-up implementation of a Microsoft Windows® XP compatible operating system.

I actually couldn't find that in the new website. I wondered what they're targeting, and I couldn't find it.

Years ago there was a project to redo the site, which I even participated in. Why did they abandon that effort and go with this?

> Animation makes this even worse, because the user has to sit and wait while the site slowly delivers information in animated word-sized chunks.

This is exactly what pissed me off within the first 3 seconds, that there is no way to see everything they have to say without waiting until the animation goes whole cycle and then waiting some more to make sure I didn't miss anything.

It looks like they took design tips from people optimizing for addictiveness, not usefulness. Hint: you don't need their tips if you are a FOSS project and actually lose money on people spending more time on your site than necessary.

> called PowerPoint presentations "chart junk"

Not quite. "Chartjunk" is Tufte's term for anything in a chart that doesn't communicate information. PowerPoint presentations can be (and often are) bad in ways that have nothing to do with chartjunk, and lots of chartjunk occurs outside PowerPoint presentations.

Maybe the old website catered to developers while the new one to users. The old site didn't have a text to focus on. While the new one moved my eyes directly to "Do you think" animation. Actually made me interested to download the OS.

I definitely like the old site more. The new design feels like yet another generic "me too" startup-ish marketing site, of which I think there are far too many today. To me, the large fonts, animations, and images are like the visual equivalent of screaming --- it certainly catches attention, but quickly tires the viewer. The old site feels far more sedate and pleasant.

I wonder if I'm getting old, or if attention spans are getting shorter, because the new site is quite optimised for the latter.

Similar thoughts I had for a different free software project's site redesign: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10512772

Hi Pavlov! We hoped also that the tide of the "bloated info" came back during these latest 10 years...and we didn't have any luck :) Otherwise we wouldn't have spent too much work on the new ReactOS website. We've replaced the "Screenshot" to a "Gallery" link, which I personally think it is much better. Try to find the "Gallery" in the older one ;) Legal links are coming, but to mention some we've added a legal link needed by the German Law (that we didn't include in the past). For us sadly asking people to join us is not "gratuitous" but a serious need as we don't have any support of companies. We're the first ones willing to remove the "Help us fundraising", "Join us"...but sadly we're probably one of the biggest open source projects out there without any kind of support but the Community one. Btw, it is planed to create a "hide the slideshow" via button or once registered. On the other hand, the current information quality ranges from newbies to high skilled developers, while the old information one was just focused to (and understandable by) developers. Density is not synonym of quality, and our old site had tons of info and pages duplicated, with some of them just reachable through one link. The new site pretends to ease the contact for newcomers while greatly increase the level of the info as you move deeper. The fact is that the new site links to more Wiki articles, and have more info than the old one. Stats say!Just under its proper category. Thanks for your feedback.

I spent a good three minutes on the new website without fully understanding what this was about. A Linux distro? Something related to React.js? And why the hell is everything bouncing around every time I click a link?

On the old website I found everything I needed to know in 0.2 seconds. Didn't even have to click on anything.

"high information density"?

This is why 99% of programmers shouldn't be involved in design.

It's 'spy-cy'. Get it? They're saying Windows is spyware without actually saying it, by saying it's 'spicy'. 3edgy5me.

I've seen similar websites done for my former high school and former employee. I think in both cases it was webmasters showing off and justifying their existence combined with website owners being impressed by their 1337-skillz and maybe having some complexes that they aren't modern enough.

It also didn't help that owners weren't actually users of the website and that the design was probably demoed to them on developer's machine over localhost where it may have performed reasonably fast.

I don't mind the animations but I just can't stand it when websites mess with the scrolling. The page does not behave as I expect when I scroll using the trackpad on my macbook. I don't know how it behaves with a mouse scrollwheel but I assume it feels strange.

There is no universal way to reliably mimic scrolling with javascript. There's too many different browsers and devices, all of them treat scrolling differently.

Also 72 (72!!!!) requests to load the page, including: 1.3 MB of javascript and css, 2 MB of images, 6 custom fonts, and most annoyingly the scrolling is completely messed up. Please, never ever do custom scrolling. It's an instant turn off. If this was a site selling me something, the scrolling would have lost a potential sale from me.

Oh my god. You're not kidding - this reminds me of the days of animated GIFs on Geocities pages.

Aesthestics / readability aside, I worry that those animations will be painfully slow / battery draining on old slow machines with underpowered GPUs, and I would've thought that's the ReactOS target market. The folks stuck on Windows XP boxes who can't upgrade to Windows 10, and for whom a lightweight XP/2000 compatible OS that still gets security updates would be ideal.

This doesn't bother me as much — FOSS projects don't need a rockstar designer for their website, do they?

Unless a "designer" "developed" the website for them and they got blindsided, which I'm sure happens more than I care to understand. I've seen it happen at well-funded companies — employees claiming they designed something, management had no idea they didn't really do much work at all, etc.

Please, please, please don't override scrolling. On OSX with a Trackpad it's unusable.

This.

Hi! Vicmarcal from ReactOS here. Which issues are you having navigating with the new ReactOS site? I'm using Ipad, and while there is too many work to be done in the responsive area(some bootstrap fixes mainly), I see it working in my Ipad. :)

No. They're both using the same Wordpress theme (http://themeforest.net/item/porto-responsive-html5-template/...).

ReactOS has made great progress. The last time I tested it I wondered if it could ever be useful. Now it provides an instant desktop with XP compatiblity, variable desktop sizes and flawless network access.

In my opinion XP was the best Windows ever. I think there are many people with legacy PCs who think the same, and who would love to have a XP alternative with real sustainability, even more due to Microsoft's attempt to lock every Win7 user into the privacy-less Win10 ecosystem.

The ReactOS team should consider to make a business of it. There are so many options. Company support, driver development, 3D, better OSX/Linux cooperation, Docker-like applications w/o desktop etc. They could provide a whole new ecosystem around Windows while retaining independency from MS.