Comments on: Appnews launch week results

By: Rarst

Rarst — Mon, 11 May 2009 13:50:38 +0000

@Terry

There is no such thing as stupid question! :) Appnews is very young service, tailored for our readers – so we are very willing to hear feedback from them.

By: Terry

Terry — Mon, 11 May 2009 06:04:31 +0000

Ow, so that’s why. Now that I understand all the things that you considered, I feel like I brought up a stupid suggestion. LOL

And yeah, Appnews is serving me well. As I type this, I’m downloading Photoshop SpeedUp 1.00. Thanks!

By: Rarst

Rarst — Fri, 08 May 2009 07:17:01 +0000

@Terry

I had tried different approaches to download link and we decided on linking to download page.

- Not all software provides direct download links.
- Some projects hosted on services like Sourceforge have geolocation that redirects to nearest download server. Providing direct link for such would mean people far from specific server would get terrible download speed.
- Some developers frown on direct links to their software from 3rd party sites, looking up if this is an issue for each software title would add too much unproductive overhead to process.

I like direct links myself but these issues forced against using them in the end.

Thanks for your input and I hope Appnews will serve you well. :)

By: Terry

Terry — Fri, 08 May 2009 06:38:05 +0000

I think it rocks! I love the whole stripe thing you got going on there. A suggestion though:

It would be totally awesome imho if I can click on that download link and it does not take me to another page but automatically downloads the software I wanted.

By: Appnews Stats After A Week

Appnews Stats After A Week — Wed, 06 May 2009 19:19:46 +0000

[...] have started Appnews, a software update service, about a week ago and Rarst was so nice to compile a few stats after the first seven days of service. If you have not heard [...]

By: Seelenwahnsinn

Seelenwahnsinn — Tue, 05 May 2009 21:19:16 +0000

Heh, I understand. I’ll keep my offer anyway (and by the way, I wasn’t thinking about charging for it if that’s what you thought), just get in touch if you think I can help out somehow in the future. ;)

By: Rarst

Rarst — Tue, 05 May 2009 21:09:09 +0000

@Seelenwahnsinn

We are not actually advertising Appnews so I guess having good banner is of no great concern at moment. :) Again – free and gets job done.

By: Seelenwahnsinn

Seelenwahnsinn — Tue, 05 May 2009 21:02:13 +0000

Yeah, but the number of dark backgrounds is decreasing drastically. Look a few years back in time, it used to be very common, now it’s worth of notes. And stripes are getting modern again, as you may observe, not only on the web.

I used to play making banners and stuff like that some years ago. Maybe if you guys have an idea about the banner design I can see what I can do. Can’t promess you anything (I’m in lack of time and creativity), but get in touch if you think it’s worth a shot.

By: Rarst

Rarst — Tue, 05 May 2009 20:44:20 +0000

@Seelenwahnsinn

There are still quite a few dark backgrounds around I think. And stripes are… well stripes. They are more eternal then modern. :)

Small know-how about banner – it was not made as image. It was made as tiny web page and screenshoted. :) That’s my personal techinque for making images because I have absolutely no skills for raster drawing. Need to do a post on it.

By: Seelenwahnsinn

Seelenwahnsinn — Tue, 05 May 2009 20:32:53 +0000

Congratulations on AppNews’ first week and impressive growth.
I wanted to give a design feedback on my tweet but I had to cut (as I said, I’m still getting used to the character limitation on Tweeter). I was shocked at first glance, since black layouts are vanishing from the web. In my opinion, the black background is great and the stripes give it a fresh, modern look. I personally enjoyed the buttons located on the right side of the post (download, e-mail, etc). My only complain about the design is the banner. This font style is ok for text but it doesn’t work for titles.
Keep up with the good work and I’m sure a lot of good things will result from it.