[ANNOUNCE] New mod_perl site Release Candidate 1

[Per Einar Ellefsen <pe...@skynet.be>]

What?
-----

As you may know, the work on the new mod_perl site started in
September 2001, and after almost a year we are glad to present to you
the outcome of this work. The new site's goal wasn't only to create a
nice design, but mainly to improve its documentation organization and
navigational aspects, because of the ever growing amount of
documentation that the mod_perl community generates.

We have now come to the point where we are very satisfied with the
design and overall usability of the site, so we are proud to announce
the Release Candidate 1. Depending on the feedback from you, the site
may undergo some minor fixes if there are problems and will eventually
be released for you all to use.

Where?
------

RC1 is now located at this URL:

      http://perl.apache.org/release/

When the Release Candidate gets all its bugs rolled out, it will
replace the existing mod_perl site:

      http://perl.apache.org/

What Problems To Report?
------------------------

Throughout development, the site has been tested extensively on many
different OS/browser combinations: Unix, MacOS and Windows. However,
we couldn't test with every possible browser/platform combination, so
it's possible that certain combinations are problematic.

This is why we ask for your help: take some time to browse the site,
and take note of:
- errors with browsers (crashes and/or rendering problems)
- usability: are you satisfied with the navigation and organization
   of the content?
- your general satisfaction with how the site is.

Before sending your feedback, please remember that the site has been
designed with respect to the HTML 4.0 and CSS 2 standards, and it is
therefore possible that the rendering might be flawed in some browsers
that do not follow these standards, either because they are old (and
these standards didn't exist at the time of their release) or simply
broken. However, we still tried to make the site usable for these
browsers, which also somewhat restricted us in deploying the standards
to their full extent.

So if you see a rendering problem in a browser that is known not to
support these standards, but the site is still usable, you may have to
live with that and possibly you will need to consider upgrading your
browser.

The text browsers "lynx" and "links" seem to work fine with the new
site, please report any problems with other text browsers that we
didn't have a chance to test with.

The punchline, is that you should remember that we don't claim that
the site is perfect and it's still much better than the existing
one. We will *not* try to provide a solution for every browser out
there, because we simply don't have the resources for that, and we
don't want to maintain a dozen css style sheets to accomodate for
idiosyncrasies of every browser. However, we do want to get it to work
as best as possible for everyone.

Also we would like to remind you that you've had many chances to
influence the overall design of the site and at this point it's too
late to suggest drastic changes, so please stick to bug reports since
we want to release the new site soon. If you've ideas for the future
generations of the site, please consider bringing them up after this
site is released.

Where to report?
----------------

Before reporting a problem, first please check whether the problem
that you've have been reported already here:

     http://perl.apache.org/ISSUES

If your issue is already listed, please do not submit it again.

For a list of working OS/browser combinations, see here:

     http://perl.apache.org/STATUS

Otherwise please post the description of the problem to the docs-dev
list:

      http://perl.apache.org/release/maillist/docs-dev.html

To post, send an e-mail to:

      docs-dev (at) perl.apache.org

You do not have to be subscribed to post, but your message will have
to be approved first so it might take some hours before it gets to the
list.

When reporting, we will need as detailed information as possible:
- Operating System's name and version
- browser's name and version
- a detailed report of the *exact* problem you are having
- if you have a rendering problem please provide a snapshot, though
   please try to keep the snapshot's size small.

If the site is working OK for you, and it's not listed at
http://perl.apache.org/STATUS , you can send us an "OK" report so that
we know what works and what doesn't.

Please be as precise as possible to help us find out the problem and
fix it. Furthermore, if you know hot to fix the problem, we will
appreciate that.

When the new site goes live?
----------------------------

If there will be no major bugs hopefully in about 1-2 weeks.


-- 
Per Einar Ellefsen
per.einar@skynet.be