[Bioperl-l] a Main Page proposal
Chris Fields
cjfields at illinois.edu
Tue Sep 22 14:20:47 UTC 2009
On Sep 21, 2009, at 10:59 PM, Jonathan Cline wrote:
> Throwing this out there:
>
> - there should be a screenshot section (whatever that means for
> bioperl)
The only area that would apply is for Gbrowse/Bio::Graphics. For much
of the rest that's a bit trickier, but it's possible.
> - the grammar of the beta page should be more correct.
>
> "Welcome to BioPerl, a community effort to produce Perl code which is
> useful in biology. "
> ==> "Welcome to BioPerl, a community effort to produce Perl code
> serving
> as useful tool in the field of Biology."
>
>>> The About section is a good example. I would bet most visitors to
>>> the
> BioPerl website skip over the About section because they already
> know what
> BioPerl is, ... Dave<<
>
> Most good software front pages say, in a couple sentences, "what it is
> and what it's for", including pictures (as screenshots).
Right.
> I would bet a ton of visitors don't know what bioperl is, or what it
> is
> used for, or how it can benefit. There is likely a metric for this
> (web
> stats) as the ratio of new page visits that bounce away vs. new
> clickthrus from the front page to the download or docs section.
> i.e. a
> visitor found the page and didn't continue reading. I don't really
> know
> all the things bioperl is good for and I've been reading about it
> here &
> there for a while.
>
> I like the following from the About and I believe it fits well on a
> front page, expanding "toolkit" to "software library":
>
> "What is Bioperl? It is an open source bioinformatics software library
> used by researchers all over the world. If you're looking for a script
> built to fit your exact needs you probably won't find it in Bioperl.
> What you will find is a diverse set of Perl modules that will enable
> you
> to write your own script, and a community of people who are willing to
> help you. "
>
> The old school definition of software library is something like:
> "useful
> routines which can be used by an application (& not itself an
> application)" which is basically the description above.
>
> I also like the intro from wikipedia, which I found more informative
> about bioperl, and would be good for a front page:
>
> 'BioPerl [1] is a collection of Perl modules that facilitate the
> development of Perl scripts for bioinformatics applications. It has
> played an integral role in the Human Genome Project.[2] It is an
> active
> open source software project supported by the Open Bioinformatics
> Foundation. In order to take advantage of BioPerl, the user needs a
> basic understanding of the Perl programming language including an
> understanding of how to use Perl references, modules, objects and
> methods."
>
> The screenshots could also include pics of books on bioperl or perl
> +bio,
> that would be neat. (Tisdall's book comes to mind here)
I tend to agree here, but Tisdall only discusses BioPerl in detail in
the second book (Mastering Perl for Bioinformatics). I think we're
safe as long as we indicate that, just don't want to run into a
situation like the recent issue that some users had with Gentleman's
'R for Bioinformatics' book released last year.
I don't think it was intentional, but a lot of users purchased it
thinking it would be a BioConductor book, mainly b/c it was advertised
on the BioConductor website. Unfortunately it had very little to do
with BioC (or bioinformatics, really), and the reviews of the book
reflect that. It's unfortunate, as I found it to be a pretty good
book on R.
-c
> ## Jonathan Cline
> ## jcline at ieee.org
> ## Mobile: +1-805-617-0223
> ########################
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