I already PM'd the fb2k Admin about this, but its been a few days, and I thought posting this might get something done. [he/she was most likely ignoring me, but the only pain that could come from this are flames from stangers I will never meet ] I was wondering if any devlopment was planed for the main website, http://foobar2000.org/. Now it seems like this program has gone under alot of progress and it might attract more users if there was a larger, more professional visual apeal. FB2K is a great program in itself, and with some more eye-candy, it would become more appealing to the average viewer. Now Im not saying to expand so much that you get a bandwagon of n00bs [ironic, eh?] who come stormin on flooding the boards. Im just suggesting that since it looks like the program is solid and expanding, that 'we' start showing it. I'd be willing to help in any way, and if you need any references to why I would be able to help, Im sure I could find some people and give some designs.

Anyways, just and Idea. Don't know if anybody was really thinking in that direction, so I just was shooting it into the air.

Anybody Interested?

Nexion

I disagree. The FB2k website is a perfect example of good web design. It's fully standards compliant, extremely straightforward, and will degrade gracefully to older and less capable browsers. The website is a perfect counterpart to foobar2000.

As for "professional appeal", a web designer truly worth his salt will understand just how well-designed the page is. There is no useless fat on the page. There is no useless graphical content, short of a very subtle background image. There is no complex layout, short of a floated link list. The people who desire pompously flashy multimedia web portals tend to be CEOs, not people looking for well-written software.

For a good example, compare the usability of the winamp website with that of the fb2k website. Three clicks and a fair amount of reading/comprehension is involved to download Winamp. One click with little reading required to download fb2k. That's the website's prime purpose. Thus, the foobar2000 website is better designed from a usability standpoint.

Hell, if you were stuck with only a text-reader and an HTTP downloader program, it'd be downright oppressive to download winamp. It's marginally more difficult to download the latest version of foobar2000 using that setup than it is to download Winamp with a graphical browser.

*sigh* I know it is A good website 'per say'[sp], but it feels to plain. Nothing at all makes me want to download this program. Its flat boring. I mean, the only reason I d/l'd it was because of a good source. Even with that source, I thought it would be a waist of my time. Ended up being an excelent program, but so many people are turned off by such simplicity. Heck, even in the terms you put it, a little 'fat' is nice to have. This is the new mellenium. Almost everybody has Netscape/IE 5+/Mozilla. Flash, 56k+[though most have cable/dsl]... We don't need to run on text and tables anymore. A nice design can do wonders.

Nexion

Perhaps people should download foobar on its own virtue. Perhaps the type of people who think a flashy commercial website means a quality program are not the type of people who should be using foobar in the first place.

I've seen websites coded with pure, standards-compliant HTML that are much more visually appealing than websites with big chunky Flash clips. One of them is the current Mozilla beta website.

And you'll be surprised. With the exception of South Korea, I daresay practically every other country with Internet access has the majority using dialup.

I thought the website was a perfect example of the actual program, simple and steamlined in appearance but powerful

Any other website design just wouldn't work well with foobar2000

I think the FB2K-Website is very well done, straight to the point - and in that sense it fits perfectly to the programme its offering.
On the other hand I do understand Nexion's point as a media-professional. But we must be aware, that it is obviously not the wish of the developer(s)/website-designer to advertise FB2K through a flashy website and stuff.
After all, it's about communication and the way the communicator wants his message to be received. And in zZzZzZz's case, we can witness a special kind of communication - but he get's away with it, being the developer of a great programme... like it or not.
Tom.

I'll chime in with the "me too" crowd to say it too:

Foobar2000 gets its job done, and does it well. Just like the website does. If the assertion that "The medium is the message," is really true*, then I think the current website is definitely giving me the message that Good Stuff is available there.

* I haven't read Marshall McLuhan's essay, so I'm just quoting the title.

*me too*

IMHO the current fb2k website visually perfectly fitts. The website is like fb2k itself: standards-compliant, clean, non-bloated, gets the job done.

Other sites of 3rd-party-plugins even adopted the "fb2k-style" instead of doing some kind of "eye-candy" - because this style fitts.

- Lyx

on another note: something which currently is way more of a problem with the website, than its appearance, is the 3RD PARTY PLUGINS SECTION.

Someone is needed who would be willing to take over the 3rd party section and who has webspace/server which has sufficient traffic-limits(because if i remember right, this was the problem: there were people who would be willing to maintain the site, but there was no one who could handle the traffic-demands).

- Lyx

I'll agree with some of what's been said too - flashing up the website will only dissapoint people who download the app, because it's not 'that sort' of app. I think the design works great.

Cheers, Paul

I could not agree more.

I think it'd be good, as a matter of principal, not to try and lure people who decide to download stuff based on the looks of a website.
It would be different if the site would be downright unprofessional. But it not being flashy is imo not a problem.
Perhaps over time people will learn to judge things on merrit as opposed to packaging.

fb2k admin didn't create that website. It is Case's work.