OSDev website feature request time

[Chase]

Hi everybody,

I've had serveral great suggestions people have mailed me about improving this site. An overhaul of the site is actively being worked on that will incorperate many of them but I'd like to get as many ideas as possible. You can reply here or email me  at [email protected]

Thanks,

Chase

[hefe]

something which would be very nice, is a links list which is user editable AND has categories. categories, sub categories and entries could be added by the users. in this list won't be any osdev sites, but direct links to the topics.
for example it could look like this:

root
|-filesystems
     |-fat16
        -link1
        -link2
        -link3
     |-ext2
        -link1
        -link2
        -....
|-protected mode
        -link1
        |-idt
           -link1..


the adventate of such a link collection is, that if i need infos on a special topic, i don't have to go search all osdev sites for infos about this topic, i just can take a look at this linklist..


kind regards
hefeteig

[Chase]

That raises two questions:

1) Deep linking: If another osdev related site hosts several tutorials should we link directly to the tutorial or to the other site which might not have organized their tutorials in the same fashion?

2) Editing of links and categories: Do you think the OSDev community(everyone that visits this site atleast) should be able to modify all existing links and categories? Or would we be best served if we went with a dmoz.org style setup with myself and a select few that have modification rights?

-Chase

[Anton]

1)You should make it(Message Board) accesible as a news group.
2)You should't list all the messages one after the other. You should make some sort of expansions(like in a file browser, or in newsgroup browsers). So i see only the topic starters, and if i would need to see the details, i woul click a '+' to expand the needed thread.

Anton
PS Thanks, for the nice site.

[Chase]

With number 1:

I've looked into it and there are some problems. If I tried to integrate the board into a group like alt.os.development then the only way to make it work correctly (and legally) would be to pay for a news feed. Good news feeds cost a couple hundred dollars a months....Unless someone that works at an isp will give me news group access and allow me to relay message for vistors to this site I just can't afford it right now.

Making a nntp server at osdev.org that hosted just one group was something I thought about but after discussing it with a few people we came to the conclusion that it'd hurt the OSDev community by fragmenting alt.os.development.

With number 2:

On the list already is to have user accounts where you can set you viewing preference to have the threads expanded or not.

-Chase

[Neo]

The main thing that this site needs is organization.  Most OSDEV sites that you find will be extremely disorganized and hard to navigate.  Yours is fine right now but it would be helpful if the pojects page had different categories(x86,Amiga,Protected Mode) and each OS, when it was added, would be asked to fill out a check list of what categories are related to it.  It didn't do a very good job of explaining it but I hope that you cought my drift.  Thanks for the greatest OSDEV site in the world!!!
     -Neo

[pepito]

I belive is necesary a 'find/seek' option here in the mesagge board.

pepito

[hefeteig]

1) Yes i personally would prefer direct linking to the tutorial. So if i klick a link in the Filesystems/FAT16 folder, i get !directly! to a website with FAT16 tutorials or docs, and i don't have to search them on the website first.

2) Everyone should be able to add links/categories and as you said, only a few mods should be able to change/delete the entries. However, it would be nice if each link could be reported as "bogus" and/or "broken" to the mods.
so for example:  http://www.osdev.org     description    [report bogus] [report broken]

if a user klicks on one of this 2 links, the mods get an email and can see if the link is really bogus or broken and remove it


kind regards
hefeteig

[hefeteig]

hm.. and also the existing "Development Links" should not be removed.
they are also very good. maybe they can get their own category like a "not strictly topic related" category.

maybe there should also be a good description of this linking system, so that users don't misunderstand it (it should be clear that the link has to point directly to the tutorial/doc for the specific topic)

kind regards
hefeteig

[Brill]

That's something i've been making for my College First year implementation project for computer hardware docs.
Visit:
http://babel.nlincs-coll.ac.uk:2000/hdc007/Project/

The main page does not load so to view my database and asp you need to click the second link that makes the status bar say "group" (all my link images currently say group but the status bar says different).

That's a lot more to add submission of docs details etc. But like Chase any feedback would be nice.

Brill.

[Chase]

2) I was thinking of having a component that runs at certain intervals and checks the links to make sure they aren't broken. A link that gets tested as broken 3 times(don't want to declare a link broken just cause the server was down for a moment) gets moved to a dead categorey. That way it's still around to be updated if someone know the url that the site moved to....

I guess a broken/bogus button would be good too in case content of the site changes....

-Chase

[df]

i think deep linking, directly to tutorials on other sites is impolite.
but say direct linking to files in an FTP is ok.

[Neo]

In response to the "no deep linking" thing:
Without "deep linking" people wouldn't be able to find the resources that they need and that would send OSDEV.org to the bottom of the OSDEV food chain if you know what I mean.  People should still have to add their own links but they should be pre-screened.

[mikeleany]

I don't think deep linking is impolite. I think it's impolite to make people search a poorly organized site for something when you can link directly to it IS though. For example, linking to http://www.intel.com/ for the IA docs is kind of pointless, because nobody will ever find them that way. The problem with deep linking though is that you have to constantly make sure your URLs are up to date. I would recommend two link lists (in addition to the projects list): one of specific tutorials and documents, the other of OSDev related sites. The second list would obviously be much shorter but is useful to list very helpful sites which cover a lot of topics.

[df]

since we are talking osdev, what sites are you going to link to? every article in the OSRC? everything in the cottontail library? THATS impolite. akin to stealing content in my eyes.

outside of the sites like osrc that have already collected content, linking to intel will yield what? 5 links? last time i looked, you can link to the page say teh IA32 specs are on, but the actual download itself is masked by eulas clickthroughs and ftp/http proxy selections so you can link directly to the content.