The New Website Revealed!

Good stuff here @JimCollinson The radical shift in technology demands you do this. Everything breaks the mold.

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Browsing the site, suddenly realizing the phrase “data chunks” sounds like some made-up official term for a new type of ‘chunk of data,’ rather than just saying that selfsame, more (IMO) flowing phrase: “chunks of data.”

Another thought: hovering your mouse over underlined statements that lead to the FAQ could have the answer appear in a floating box rather than going to the page. I often get lost in all the organization of data; doesn’t seem very attention deficit friendly. Maybe that would break from the uniquely singular design thought process, but it would also be beyond convenient.
I’m also forced to read the huge font size, as even zooming out with the mouse wheel prevents me from viewing the font at a smaller size. (In fact you can zoom in, and the size increases.)
I would remember to just press the mouse wheel to open it in a new tab, but sometimes I’m trying to take in the whole strange site design that I get overloaded and forget to even do that, and by that time I’m already off somewhere doing something else.

That’s a good idea - have mouseover text and a link.
Agree about the font size - too big on the desktop

Yeah, this is worth considering, perhaps for glossary functions too. Although it should be said that mouse-over won’t work for touch screen users.

Yeah, this is a known issue that was just a bit of a stretch for sorting at launch. We’ll get to it though. Thanks!

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I have found some inaccurate information with this part of the new website:

Always Free to Access

Information is always free to access. You’ll never be charged for browsing or downloading. The SAFE Network guarantees equal access to data for everyone. You don’t even need an account, just download the browser

This is not entirely true. If an app developer wants to charge SAFE coins for his services, he is allowed t do so and the Network has no control over this. Please look at fixing it.

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Yes agree this is incorrect, fyi @dugcampbell @SarahPentland

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Obviously, access is free only to information freely provided by safe sites. Changing the message might reduce its impact.

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Interesting angle, however, the data will always be on SAFE and should belong to the user. If as you say and app dev uploads the data himself (somehow) then perhaps he can charge for access, but I am not sure folk would pay? It would have to be a huge share which he encrypts, but then lets folk have the key to access, then somebody could just make it public.

Perhaps I am missing something (been a huge long day of meetings), but perhaps it would be clear to say any public data is always free to access and always available. It can get a bit messy though I am sure.

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I don’t actually think it’s misleading. Browsing is quite clearly not using a service provided by a third party developer. Unless everyone does what you suggests (which is doubtful) then I think it’s a non issue.

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So app developers, music creators, authors, movie makers, game developers will just give their things away for free? Of course not.

The NETWORK is FREE to access. Sure. Just like the current WWW is technically FREE to access, this is kind of meaningless. Websites and Apps will charge what they like, that is the reality.

Do consider also PtP Pay the producer. I do think there will definitely be paywalls (drm type things as well) etc. as there is today though, it’s just producers searching for business models. The free to access is more about accessing the world’s data. Not that we want piracy, but anything made public will stay public. So it is more you can freely access uncensorable information.

I get your point more clearly now though, sorry for the confusion. You are correct there is a difference between accessing data and reading it, also between public and private data. Only public data is free in that case as some will create paywalls, maybe even hold the data off of SAFE and give streaming access etc. I think there will be a lot of competing models and hopefully, we get one where all the producers do get a reward and with even more luck, without so many middle people involved. I suppose we will see through what happens when we open the pandora’s box of free uncensorable information.

Perhaps rephrasing something like, public data is free to access as with the current web, but with the subtle difference that you cannot be banned, tracked or prevented from accessing it, in addition, the data can not be removed or lost. I am sure marketing folks will make this palatable and more accurate though.

Cheers @goindeep point good had you :wink:

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Even better will be videos explaining it all once we go live.

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A bit late to comment, but better late than never.

If the goal was to achieve a grassroots and slightly anarchistic look-and-feel then you’ve achieved it.

I personally prefer the simplicity of hub.safedev.org followed by the design approach of piedpiper.com.

Since PiedPiper forked the SAFE network concept, I think it’s fair to regard their whole website as a pull-request… just search/replace “piedpiper” with “SAFE network”. :wink:

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Just to remind you guys, PiedPiper is a fictional and spoof site. We are the real deal. Who knows how it will end up for them? But let’s not get them confused: this is art imitating reality, not the other way around.

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No need to remind me (I’m a fan of Silicon Valley since season 1 came out) but it may be a timely reminder for others. I can see that my post wasn’t as clearly sarcastic as I hoped for!

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Yes I also agree that it’s fine as it is.

Just like browsing google etc is free, browsing SAFE is free.

And sure, anyone can sell things on either.

But the underlying nets are free to browse and access.

Not to be misunderstood :+1:

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Yeah I did get that :grin:

We actually included the PiedPiper site in our “anti-moodboard” during the design research, as we didn’t want to look fake or spoofy ourselves.

They’ve done a good job of imitating a lot of projects in the space (I lost count of the number that used that flying particle type background, maidsafe used to as well!) and that’s the idea. If we’d have done the same we’d have fit right in, or even ben confused with other less ambitious projects; but that wasn’t the remit.

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Some time has passed and I’m still finding the two column design difficult - visible only on desktop, so only affecting those visitors. For me it would improve the desktop version a lot if it was just one column.

Do you like or dislike two columns?

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Hi @happybeing, thanks for the feedback, sorry it’s taken a while for someone to comment on this. Just wanted to jump in to say that we are still collecting feedback on the website as a whole (including your point) and the goal remains that the website will always be iterative in terms of design. We have resource challenges in terms of summer holidays and other priorities to actually carry out some of this work immediately - so alas we can’t move quite as quickly on this as we’d like - but we do fully intend to keep the website presence evolving (whether that’s in the form of safenetwork.tech, maidsafe.net, hub.safedev.org or anywhere else), particularly as we move onto further stages of development.

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I love the new site!! great work!