Write the Drupal 7 release announcement

Just a subscribe for now. Will think about this more as the day approaches.

yoroy - do you need volunteers for this? i can tweet it and see if anyone's interested in working on it.

I would go with:

- usability improvements (toolbar, overlay, contextual links, installer, plugin manager, Seven administration theme)
- new themes (Bartik), new flexibility for themers (render array)
- new database layer (use database engines besides MySQL)
- field API (CCK in core)

OK, so that's 4 :)

Thought about this some more overnight. Here's some possible taglines, with a breakdown of what would go under them:

- The power of simplicity
-- Toolbar
-- Contextual links
-- Overlay

- Drupal gets a fresh new face
-- Bartik
-- Seven
-- theme engine improvements (to fuel the great themes of the future)

- As flexible as you need it to be
-- Field UI

- Enterprise-ready; built just for you
-- New database layer
-- Reverse proxy support
-- Simplified installer
-- Plugin manager

What I really like about the Drupal 6 release announcement was all the screencasts that were linked. Once we settle on a list of features to highlight, we'll have to see if there are screencasts for the ones that need them, and if not, make them.

I think we should probably have more than 4 sections, despite only listing 4 above. Drupal 6 had more than 4, and it wasn't as big of a change from the previous release. We should probably highlight 4 main ones, though.

With the soon to be released Drupal 7 we need to start thinking about the annoucement post, luckily the Drupal.org revamp was done in time and allows us to create a far more exciting annoucement post.

The Drupal 6 annoucement release had some designer input, now its time to do even better and combine design and writing before we run into discussing sentence particulairs. Keep in mind that this annoucement post will be used for many diffrent audiences, so it needs to be accesible to not just developers, themers, designers but also our weekend-warriors. I think the emphasis is on thinking big, this is a product annoucement so it should really excite people to try the new version and not be a boring list of new things.

Yoroy's suggestion of prioritizing seems good, however we have to keep in mind already that we should communicate the big concepts here and our audience might not know what CCK, Field API ect is. My first stab at this is with the wireframe below:

Sorry to be nitpicky, Bojhan, but could you edit your wireframe to just be standard lorem ipsum for the body copy? It's a little distracting as is... :)

You could use http://www.lipsum.com/feed/html to get it.

As for communicating big concepts, I certainly agree: in the actual copy, we would want to explain why the various things were important, not just a "laundry list". I was just listing things for now, since I thought yoroy's suggestion of starting with the features to highlight was a good one.

Alternatively, we could start with trying to answer the question "What are the cool things that you can do with Drupal 7 that you couldn't do before?" and try to answer that in a way that a new person would be intrigued by.

In either case, I prefer to work on drafting the content prior to wireframing it, but that might just be my background in writing :)

One thing we need to consider is what percentage of the release announcement's intended audience is current users of Drupal who we will want to upgrade vs. new users. Because of the necessary lag time between Drupal core and most of contrib, though, when the release announcement is made we may not want as many people to upgrade their Drupal 5 or 6 installs yet, so the announcement may be targeted more toward new people.

Clarification after talking with Bojhan: I didn't mean actually drafting, just more along the lines of my #7, but with more input from other people (and maybe start to pull in the links for the screencasts? since we need to know what screencasts would need to be made if they don't already exist)

Not sure where this should go, but we should also mention RDF module. If we have some sort of "Drupal for the new decade" tagline, it could go under there. Maybe that could be the tagline for the advanced features that novices wouldn't care about, but enterprises would.

I'd suggest taking into account the width of the available section :) The Drupal 6 announcement is currently broken, see #953308: broken layout on http://drupal.org/drupal-6.0 (release announcement) . Drumm has some good suggestions to use the grid classes. That might or might not set up some boundaries for mocks / layout.

Also improved distribution support should go somewhere.

Maybe the headings could be something like the following:

- Dive into Drupal (i.e., "get started quickly")
-- Simplified installer
-- Improved distribution support
-- Many modules added to core
-- Plugin manager

- The power of simplicity
-- Administration theme
-- Toolbar
-- Contextual links
-- Overlay
-- Improved UI text

- Drupal gets a fresh new face
-- Bartik theme
-- Accessibility improvements across all core themes
-- jQuery upgraded; addition of jQuery UI
-- Themer improvements (Stark, render arrays, AJAX framework) for creating the great themes of the future

- Create rich content
-- Field UI (call it something like "add custom fields"; will need explanation; could discuss how this affects users, taxonomy, etc. and all the modules it will replace)
-- RDF module
-- (what else?)

- The most powerful Drupal yet
-- New database layer (discuss what this makes possible)
-- Reverse proxy support
-- (other enterprise-ish features)

- A CMS you can trust
-- Security improvements
-- Test-driven development (should mean less bugs, and quicker responses to reports)

Here's a mockup. I had to add a section or do to fit the layout, so I borrowed from Bojhan's. The "Crafted in detail" section is like the "It's the little things" section on the D6 announcement - a place for putting smaller changes worthy of note that don't fit under one of the major sections.

I don't think we need a separate section called Documentation. Rather, I tried to group the links logically, and make them a larger size. Of course, there would be regularity to font sizes, etc. in an actual layout.

This is a 6-column grid, so each row would be 160px (since Drupal.org uses 960 grid system).

Better cropped version of the image.

@Gabor Hojtsy:

Sorry I missed seeing your comment. I guess maybe 6 columns won't work with the implementation of the grid on the Bluecheese theme.

My mockup may be a bit too dense, anyway, but I think it's important to do the following: a) Highlight the download button (which is why it is in the top right), b) Put most of the key selling points above the fold, c) Provide contextual, actionable links to further help.

Would love to see others' feedback and suggestions.

I'm happy to work on the layout and grid!

Jesse, thanks! Glad to have you on board too.

yoroy, Bojhan, do you think another wireframe would be good at this point, or should we work more on spec'ing out what the content sections/bullet points should be, or, more broadly, what the intended audiences are that we are targeting with this announcement? That might be helpful to determine what the key call to action links should be (aside from the download link, of course), and what a good visual hierarchy would be.

I'm thinking that probably a 3-column layout would be best: although it wouldn't get as much content above the fold as my wireframe, it would probably be more readable.

@Evan Hey, I think we should start hashing out the content for a three column, possibly four column - I think its quite fine to leave of the wireframes for now, webchick is going to chime in too. As soon as we have more, we can start filling in the gaps. I think your design focuses a lot on displaying as much as you can above the fold, I don't think thats necessarily a good idea - I would say aslong as anything above the fold, tells there is a Drupal 7 release + download button, and gives enough incentive to scroll down (for example showing the top column titles).

@Bojhan: I agree with you. Maybe we should have one section or the top of an image above the fold, but the download button (perhaps with the links to installation instructions/getting started directly below it) is the most key thing to have up there (probably at the top right).

@yoroy: Thanks for starting off the wiki - so are you thinking these are the general subject headings we should use, or could we add a few, if necessary? The main one that I had which I'm not seeing on that list is a section for the Bartik theme, jQuery UI, and other improvements for designers/themers.

yoroy, out of the ones you have, the only one I'm not sure about is "Extensible" - obviously, Drupal is extensible but I'm having trouble thinking of what major new features add to that besides Field API which we already gave its own section. I guess the Token API can be extended, but it's not the first thing I would associate with extensibility - I would probably rather put it in a section about modules moved into core, which I had put in my latest lists under "Dive into Drupal" (since it helps people get started quickly to have these things already in place for them).

in re: #25 - that could work. I might be able to make HTML based mockups using that page as a base; but I'll draft some content first.

Bumping this again. We're at RC1 now, and 0 critical bugs.

It would be a really good time to start on this again ASAP. :) Hint hint. ;D

Release announcement copy writing wiki: http://groups.drupal.org/node/103879
Drupal 7 Public Relations meeting: http://groups.drupal.org/node/110449

#D7CX I'm happy to release a translated version on the day that Drupal 7 is released.

Ooh...yoroy this is a lot better than the previous ones. It looks like all the text for it has been copied into the wiki, too?

I'll have more comments/re-wording in the wiki later.

This is starting to shape, perhaps its time to start sliding this into Drupal.org theme? I have suggested on the wiki to start adding links on the bottom of the top levels. We should probally seperate out which parts need work?

Hello, person from Twitter/IRC/elsewhere on the interwebs!

The current version of the release announcement is at http://www.yoroy.com/elders/drupal/d7release/release.html. We need some help massaging the text and making sure that all the pertinent information/links are in place. Thanks for helping!

Subscribing... Will take a look Monday and see if I can help.

Few quick notes (sorry for not having more time lately):

Instead of "Images and Files" it could say "Improved images and file handling" or something, to indicate what has changed.

Aren't "Flexible Content" and "Fields and entities" essentially talking about the same thing? Could they be merged, and something else put in the lower place (maybe something about the new themes, and the death of the old one).

Examiner.com should be one of the examples. I'll have to think of others...
The "Test driven development" should state why this is important - something about stability.

There's a list of Drupal 7 sites being created over at http://groups.drupal.org/node/113489.

There's a lot of "insider" ones (sites for Drupal people/shops or about Drupal) which probably aren't appropriate for the announcement (e.g. we can't very well feature topnotchthemes.com but not metaltoad.com or vice-versa, I don't think). Some nice looking ones in the list.

Just a little note - As this announcement will be translated to multiple languages, perhaps some space on the page should be allocated to the links to all of the language versions of it .

Another area we need help with here is theming http://www.yoroy.com/elders/drupal/d7release/release.html so that it's branded like Drupal.org.

Hey guys,

Sorry for the delay. Here's my stab at the theming stuff:

Theming Bliss!

Fine-grained control over page elements with the Render API, better context capabilities and template options, and the ability to use alter hooks in themes, are just some of the reasons Drupal’s theme layer is better than ever. In addition to getting a visual overhaul with three new themes, Bartik, Seven and Stark, Drupal 7 comes with jQuery UI and built-in RDFa support.

I tried to make it as short as possible. Not sure if it's good or not, but those are the "big deal" improvements, as I see it, so hopefully that's at least helpful. I should also note that the "better context capabilities" is huge, but it still needs a patch to go in before it actually works consistently: #956520: Available theme hook suggestions are only exposed when there are preprocess functions defined.

i'm busying myself with the docs queue (and at some point over the holidays, the upgrade guide) but if anyone is doing a final crunch on this and needs help, send out a carrier pigeon and i'll join in. ;)

Here I took yoroy's page as basis and made it look more like drupal.org : http://i55.tinypic.com/2qui25z.jpg
On weekend I ll try to find some time to sync all the parts of text added here and there, to get something more close to "final".
Perhaps someone wanna join via irc or what not.

@tvn: please consider the header untouchable; think in terms of the http://drupal.org/start page, where the header is usual but the page content is custom. As far as I know that is what we are aiming for.

@tvn: I think we've duplicated our efforts. I've got a themed version that I'm working on at http://sandbox.stevekarsch.com/d7/announcement.html

Let me know if you want to work with me on this. Thanks!

@Gábor Hojtsy All right. I assumed the page could be anything, sorry.

@karschsp I didnt know anyone else is working on this. I guess we could do it together then. I ll be on irc today, or maybe send me an e-mail on how should we proceed?

Hey y'all were looking for some links. Here's what I've got:

- Main (longer) install guide http://drupal.org/documentation/install/basic
- Quick install for beginners http://drupal.org/documentation/install/beginners
- Quick install for devs http://drupal.org/documentation/install/developers

(All three of these are in fairly decent shape)

Then we've got the upgrade guide. The current one is here: http://drupal.org/upgrade so I suppose the new version will be incorporated there *or* added as a child section to that page (I don't know yet as I haven't dug in far enough to what the state of the D7 version is and it is *not* done). The D7 version is currently here: http://drupal.org/node/548922 but I anticipate moving it or incorporating it, so use http://drupal.org/upgrade for now, and if that plan changes, I will post back here. I'm going to try and get some work done on this in the next few days, but it's a bit of a monster and the upgrade path isn't totally done (as far as I know) so I will only get so far...

Other links it seems you might be looking for:

- D7 API http://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/7
- Converting modules + themes to D7... I Found http://drupal.org/node/361112 (Creating D7 modules) and the converting 6 > 7 section which looks a bit unruly http://drupal.org/update/modules/6/7 - and then converting 6 > 7 themes http://drupal.org/update/theme/6/7 (the main theme guide is a combo 6/7 at http://drupal.org/theme-guide/6-7)

Thanks!

Edited page layout suggestion

I just looked at http://sandbox.stevekarsch.com/d7/announcement.html , a quick review :

1) We lack vertical spacing, everything is clumped together - where for example the title "Here's how to get started" has little to no prominence.
2) The titles per section are not prominent enough, we can probably consider making them bold for now.
3) The picture used should be Drupal, we want to show of the product interface as something to be proud off. The sites build with it, requires knowledge of that site, e.g. people in the Netherlands know none of the sites exposed + it has other issues, like implying you should use it for big sites.

Futhermore I discussed with tvn a bit, I feel like we should be adding another row of information - this because currently its a bit sparse. If we add enough vertical spacing, and make the sections a little bit smaller we can probably fit in another row, so below the Test driven development row another one with for example the following topics :

Install profiles (you can really make em now)
New API's
Accessibly (far more accessible)
Extend (ported modules)

The Drupal 7 Announcement reads really good and exciting for a Drupal user. We need to add something upfront to excite a first time CMS user and other users who are looking for approaches and options to build their Portal/website.

Our target Audience should also be the non-drupal community, a short write up to excite them to get started with Drupal would be a good add on to this page.

Drupal 7 - the next generation Content Management System
With Drupal 7, your dream website is just a few clicks away....

A short note on the flexibility, scalability, etc from a more layman's perspective...

Hi, I was asked to repeat my comments here: http://groups.drupal.org/node/103879#comment-369939

It is not clear what Drupal is for and who it is addressing. I'd suggest a couple of grounding statements like the uses of Drupal are for: blog, micro-site, personal and organization websites, intranet, collaboration, community, web platforms, web application framework. See: http://buytaert.net/one-drupal-to-rule-them-all for inspiration.

We should mention that we are strong in specific industries: NPO, Education, publishing, media, government, and health care so that people understand the audiences we are successful in addressing.

ps. proper link for upgrade guide: http://drupal.org/documentation/upgrade/6/7

From Laurie at Acquia:

"Hi Angie,
I suggest we break-up some of the white background and call out the four columns under the main text, right now everything seems to run together, perhaps we can put a nice box with a headline around each of the four columns Easy to Use, Flexible Content etc.

I would do the same for the four columns underneath the video tutorial.

In my browser the "download" button seems to be floating, maybe be can tighten it up to the text and left align.

"Drupal 7 – Easier and more powerful than ever" - this text should be bolder, we can alter the text to be consistent with the press release which reads " Drupal now faster, easier, and by far the most innovative platform to build social and semantic websites" suggest "Drupal 7 - Faster, Easier and More Innovative"

Overall I think we need more space between different blocks of content.

Just my two cents, hope it was helpful. BTW, I am happy to do a video voice over if we have a script I can follow.
Laurie"

Not sure if "innovative" connotes much just by itself. Also, Drupal 7 is only faster if you have the proper setup (reverse proxy, Memcached, etc.). Many people (shared hosting, etc.) will experience it as slower, unfortunately, so we might not want to highlight that.

The design comments are very helpful though.

Regarding my comments in #50, we need to set more context that Drupal is for websites, web platforms, and web applications.

One way to do that would be to move the block "See Drupal 7 in action" to the top row and provide some descriptive meta-data:
Publishing site: Examiner.com
Microsite: example.com
Personal site: http://www.sagmeister.com

that will help people quickly get the use cases for using Drupal.

Subscribing, since I offered to roll this as a patch against the drupalorg module when it's ready.

A few thoughts on the current text in http://sandbox.stevekarsch.com/d7/announcement.html :

- "Define your own content types with the new Field API." -- not really. Would an end user even know the term API? The API is for programmers to define fields and content types. The Field UI is for admins to define their own content types. Suggest: "Define your own content types with the new Field system".

- "Customize workflows with the dashboard, toolbar and shortcuts features. " -- according to our d.o doc style guide, there should be a comma before the "and" here. This pattern is also true for other lists containing "and" in other spots on the page.

- "Combine private/public files and store files directly using services such as Amazon S3." ... I was confused by what "store files directly" meant here.

There was some discussion in IRC about 2.5 vs. 3 years, so I ran some numbers of alternate ways of presenting the information given a date of February 13th, 2008 for Drupal 6:

2 years, 10 months, 24 days

1058 days

see more at http://www.timeanddate.com/date/durationresult.html?m1=2&d1=13&y1=2008&m...

Thanks for the feedback, I will do my best to incorporate it all - do mind we want to avoid solving all of Drupal's marketing problems in one announcement.

Sadly most of Laura's comments are about the layout, since we are using the style guide - I am not allowed to make any alterations as common sense as they might be. I will see how we can do it, perhaps some feedback from mark would be enough. Either way, lets keep this rolling!

This is very minor and I don't think anyone will notice, but just so it's recorded:

"A new database layer lets you go beyond MySQL and postgreSQL: SQLite is supported out of the box and there is support for MS SQL Server, Oracle, MongoDB and more."

The mongodb link points to http://drupal.org/project/mongodb -which is the best place to point people for MongoDB support, but isn't a dbtng driver at all - it's field storage, sessions, watchdog - all things which have nothing to do with the new database layer. The mongodb dbtng driver is actually at http://drupal.org/project/mongodb_dbtng which we don't want to draw any attention to since it's extremely experimental.

The only thing I could suggest would be:

"A new database layer and pluggable storage backends for other systems lets you go beyond MySQL and postgreSQL." - that also covers watchdog, caching backends etc. as well as field storage, which we already had in D6 but are still a major feature anyway.

One more issue. Again it's nitpicky but better said than not:

The main http://www.drupalgardens.com/ site actually runs on 6.x - http://www.drupalgardens.com/CHANGELOG.txt - it's the Gardens sites themselves that run on 7.x.

Could we change that to http://sampler.drupalgardens.com/ instead? This is an actual Gardens/D7 site and IMO not a bad place to link to at all.

Just picked up a mention of this on Twitter - can I pls ask for clarification on the primary target audience of this page? Is this intended primarily for people who are FAMILIAR or UNFAMILIAR with Drupal?

The current version doesn't actually say at any point what Drupal is - the closest it comes is to say that it will 'drive your most demanding projects with ease'. I know we struggle to answer this question but I'm not sure that avoiding it completely is a good strategy - unless this is targeted at existing Drupalistas.

Beyond this, we also need to be clearer about who this page is talking too - especially when we talk about how easy to get started with Drupal is. I think we should be careful not to overplay this - sure, we hope that D7 is more usable for newcomers and generally has a much better User Experience for all but do we *really* believe that it is reasonable to suggest that getting started with Drupal 7 is now 'incredibly easy'? Relative to other versions of Drupal this may perhaps be true, but relative to, say, Tumblr? (Of course, that is not a fair comparison, but if you don't tell me what Drupal is or who you think you're talking to (ie a developer), then I may very well make that kind of comparison... especially if I'm operating on a legacy belief that Drupal is a Content Management System).

Finally - unless the primary target audience is existing Drupal developers please take another look over the content on this page - particularly in the top two 'rows' of content - and ask how much of this will make any sense or be in any way appealing outside of this audience (of Drupal developers). Flexible content sounds very interesting to a lot of people but when you follow it up with 'Define your own content types with the new Field API' - who will be excited and who will click 'back'?

OK. that wasn't finally - this is finally - can we please please make sure that this page is shown to at least half a dozen people who *should* be excited about it and who are not Drupal developers and get some feedback from them (preferably by people who know how to elicit useful feedback but at a pinch, anyone will do). I'm guessing this hasn't been done already and I'm not sure if it's in the project plan but it really should be.

I know this has been a bit of a moan and not v productive - I'm not sure what the timeframe on finalising this is so I wanted to make sure my concerns were noted before anything went live and now I plan to scurry off and draft an alternative which I'll post as soon as I'm able. (Meanwhile, can anyone tell me what the schedule is for getting this live?)

I've got a couple of comments re the visual design (UX, content, writing and tone of voice aside).

- The screenshots shown here give a very US-centric feel. I agree it should use images of the product interface (especially considering the revised UI is a big selling point of the new version).
- Shouldn't the page be branded with the '7' branding? http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-7-link-to-us Makes sense to.
- I think there's an opportunity to deviate from the styleguide slightly. For example, what Apple recently did with the MacBook Air. http://www.apple.com/macbookair/ The Styleguide for d.o. was always meant to be a starting point - a foundation on which to build. It shouldn't be completely set in stone, but should be allowed to breathe as the demands upon it increase.
- I agree with Bojan, there are some vertical space issues, here.

I agree with the comments in the thread: this is a great opportunity for a big product launch. As such, I think the visual style can deviate *slightly* from the rigidity of the styleguide (whilst retaining family-brand feel) to make a big splash.

Like Leisa, I don't want this to appear a moan - I want to help, but am unsure of the timescales.

@leisareichelt the text part was supposed to be done by Thursday, 30th of December. Because thats when we were supposed to start translation effort. Design and code could come a bit later.

As I doubt this will happen - the very last deadline for text, as I see it, is 2nd of January. So we still will have time to translate it, gather all translations and post all the pages.

Fully ready announcement + its versions in about 30 languages should be posted by release date - 5th of January.

Thanks for all your reactions! We received a lot of feedback the past few days, some of that not reflecting in the last sandbox. As far as the schedule goes, the schedule is :

1) Finalize contents by January 1.
2) Port to D.O and make additional changes to fit theme by January 2
3) Get translations going by January 3

Our schedule is somewhat limited and we have few people really working on the actual text plus my time is limited :( due to a book deadlines. But I am sure we can tackle many of the issues raised.

@leisa I think our primary audience is unfamiliar, we still need to do quite some work to make that happen - as you mentioned some parts are very Drupal specific. Our secondary audience is definitely familiar with drupal and developers, for them we have placed a few items lower on the page.

We can definitely tone-down the incredible a bit, I agree we need to pass this by other people who are not familiar with Drupal - I will try some of my colleagues if others can do the same - we should have good feedback.

If you want to do changes to the textt, feel free to change the wiki http://groups.drupal.org/node/103879 - or just post it here.

@markboulton Thanks for the feedback, I will work together with karshcap and do some additional work on the vertical spacing, perhaps making the subheadings bold. I was thinking to repeat the visual style as thumb on the video, which is pretty prominent - but we can do more. Let me get back to you with a revised version and you can perhaps give some additional feedback on which elements we can work on to get that "splash".

Made a few changes to the wiki. On the database layer I realised we're almost saying that Oracle 'goes beyond' MySQL and postgreSQL which would be a travesty.

We seem to have two field API entries now?

Nitpick:
PostgreSQL should be capitalized. http://www.postgresql.org/

Just re-re-read the text in the wiki, here be my nitpicks:

re: "Customize workflows with the dashboard, toolbar and shortcuts features."

i'm just thinking now that this is a bit misleading, and that we might want to specify "Customize administrative workflows with the dashboard, toolbar and shortcuts features." (since it's not customizing Drupal's workflows, just the admin interface).

under "Better theming" shouldn't it be "The theme layer now is better than ever!"

under "New API's" as jhodgdon mentioned above, there should be a comma before the "and" in lists so should be "Our field, session, queue, lock, caching, logging, and many other sub-systems are pluggable, with support already available for MongoDB, Beanstalkd, Memcache, and more." (This is also a really long sentence, could stand to be split in 2?)

for the requirements section, it should probably be linked somewhere to http://drupal.org/requirements

also, the following docs pages have URL aliases (if that matters, they seem nicer to use than the /node/xx URL's to me...)

quick install for beginners http://drupal.org/documentation/install/beginners
converting modules 6 > 7 http://drupal.org/update/modules/6/7
converting themes 6 > 7 http://drupal.org/update/theme/6/7

I've updated http://sandbox.stevekarsch.com/d7/announcement.html with the latest text from the wiki, made the headings bold as Bojhan asked, and changed the screenshot. I've made notes of a number of the comments in this issue and will try to incorporate them tomorrow.

With regard to the concern that we need to explain a little about "what is Drupal" for those completely new to Drupal, I agree, and maybe we can find a way to direct people to http://drupal.org/about which covers that nicely.

If anyone wants to help out with the design/layout stuff I've put the HTML on github, just let me know if you need access.

Ok, here's a soup-to-nuts review of http://sandbox.stevekarsch.com/d7/announcement.html as of 12:11am on Dec. 30.

Top

"Ready and able to drive your most demanding projects with ease. Built for both high-end performance and ease of use."

So this para has two problems:

1. Agreed with others who've said we need a brief "WTF is Drupal?" at the top of this document.
2. Drupal 7 is not, in fact more performant than D6 unless you throw some infra behind it, though it is more scalable.

http://drupal.org/about says:

"Drupal is a free software package that allows anyone to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Hundreds of thousands of people and organizations are using Drupal to power an endless variety of sites."

I think the key words there are "software" and "web" and "sites" and "variety". So what if we changed that para to (trying to hit some of Amazon's keywords):

"Ready and able to drive your most demanding web projects with ease, from blogs and micro-sites to collaborative social communities."

Then the para below:

"After two and a half years of development by over 1,000 contributors, we proudly present Drupal 7: the best version of Drupal yet."

"...the best and easiest to use version of Drupal yet."

Maybe?

"Download" button -> Maybe "Download Drupal 7" for the skimmers among us?

2nd row

"Customize workflows with the dashboard, toolbar and shortcuts features." -> customize /administrative/ workflows (aka what ariane said)

"Define your own content types with the new Field system. " We should mention CCK somewhere here. Maybe change this to:

"...the new Field system, formerly the Content Construction Kit (CCK) module."

"Combine private/public files and store files using services such as Amazon S3." we don't actually support storing files in S3 natively, you'd need an add-on to do that. So maybe replace "and store files" with "and the capability to store files..."

3rd row

"Upgrade guide." has a stray period.

Other links that might be useful to put here include:

http://drupal.org/project/upgrade_status to find out when it's a good time to upgrade
http://drupal.org/project/coder to help upgrade modules and themes that aren't ported yet.

These links:

Creating modules for Drupal 7
Converting 6.x modules to Drupal 7
Converting 6.x themes to Drupal 7
Theming Drupal 6 and 7

....are problematic because they sound like they're going to be tutorials, but they're really just a big-ass list of links to other information (some more big-ass than others :D). I would maybe move them down to a "reference" heading towards the bottom of the page perhaps, or else change the titles so for example it's "Detailed list of API changes between 6.x and 7.x" or similar. Though "Creating modules for Drupal 7" and "Theming Drupal 6 and 7" is honestly so bare-bones now we can probably skip them.

Something you might want to link to instead though is CHANGELOG.txt, which has a human-readable description of things that are different since D6.

4th row

"Drupal 7 has a unit testing framework with 28K built in tests. This allows continuous integration testing of all Drupal core patches and selected contributed modules on Drupal.org."

unit testing framework -> automated testing framework
28K -> over 30,000.
"This" doesn't allow continuous integration testing, that's actually http://qa.drupal.org/. Maybe toss in a link to it, or to http://qa.drupal.org/head-status? Or too geeky?

"Database support" -> "Improved database support" or something. We always had database support. :)

postgreSQL => PostgreSQL (aka what jennifer said)

"Theme layer now is better than ever!" => "Our theme layer is..."

"Everything used to be a node. Not anymore.

Everything is an entity now."

While true, I don't think this makes any sense to anyone who doesn't know what a "node" is (which is an awful lot of people).

Maybe something more like:

"Drupal 7's new entity API allows all data to be treated as first-class content. Build your feature-set as dynamic fields that you can use on any entity, including users, nodes, comments, taxonomy terms and more."

5th row

"Install profiles" -> "Better distribution support"

Possible text:
"With version-specific dependencies, installation profiles as modules, and better data exportability, Drupal 7 makes the perfect platform for polished products based on the framework."

(maybe with a bit fewer P words :P)

"API's" => APIs

"Memcache and more."

Should be a comma before "and"

I'm not sure of the exact wording of the accessibility blurb. Maybe this as a starter:

"Drupal 7 sports numerous accessibility improvements including HTML alternatives to JavaScript-based administrative interfaces, utility CSS classes for hiding page elements consistently, 'Skip to navigation' links, icons, and a variety of other WCAG AA-level items."

(I don't know for sure if we're 100% WCAG AA compliant, but if we are that would be a major thing to put here!)

"Something about ported modules..."
maybe:

"Thanks to the #D7CX movement, over 800 modules are available for Drupal 7, including Views, Pathauto, and WYSIWYG, with more on the way every day."

(in other words, move that sentence down here instead of up around upgrade path stuff, and maybe replace that sentence with a note about Upgrade Status.)

6th row

You have a stray "/li>" on "Requirements"
MySQL 5.0.15 and higher, PostgreSQL 8.3 and higher, SQLite 3.x

let's say "or SQLite 3.x"

Also, eigentor provided some design tweaks over in this comment on the wiki: http://groups.drupal.org/node/103879#comment-371259

ok, as promised, here's my contribution (focusing only on UX, don't take any of this as visual design guidelines!)

https://skitch.com/leisareichelt/r8d4u/d7launchannouncement

I've done some copywriting that could probably do with some polish - I haven't updated the wiki with this copy though because it substantially changes the structure of this page (which I think is necessary).

I think we need to come to the following agreement re: this page structure:

1. the top two 'rows' are for outsiders and assume no existing knowledge of Drupal (except perhaps that it has historically been a little scary)
2. content below the first two rows assumes that you either have or are interested/willing to obtain both technical and 'Drupal' knowledge
3. we don't 'download' from this page (too many outsiders with limited knowledge/skills will click that button and not be ready for it) - we update the Get Started page with Drupal 7 content (including the video) and link to that. That was the explicit plan of the D.O homepage in response to extensive testing - I strongly recommend we continue with that strategy here.

A few things I think we need to do:

1. change the opening statement to combine 'what's better about this version' with 'wtf is Drupal'
2. change what we're doing with screenshots so that it actually achieves a purpose - Seven and Bartik are only sexy/interesting if you're familiar with what precedes them. The list of big, exciting, sexy sites already deployed on D7 are both sexy and provide reassurance re: choosing D7 as a platform. Let's headline with those.
3. change the second row to include points that focus on what 'outsiders' would be interested in and make sure these are free from Drupalisms. Outsiders don't care about CCK or fields or any of that stuff... they care about what it means for them/their project. Also, for outsiders, being able to have images 'out of the box' is a given not a sales point.
4. move all of the getting started stuff off this page and onto the Get Started page. This page's job is to get people to the Get Started page by selling to multiple audiences. The Get Started page's job is to make sure that the right people have the right experience of Getting Started (eg. non-technical people are probably best not to click the 'download' button.)
5. focus the bottom of the page (row 3 and down) on a technical sales pitch - here is where you can start talking about fields, CCK, how exciting it is that Drupal has images out of the box etc. (the audience that reads this far is more likely to know/care that this is actually A Big Deal)

A text version of my content for the top two columns follows - I'll leave it up to someone else to take the initiative to move this over to the wiki (as mentioned, this is a big departure late in the game - I'm only sorry I only just found out this work was going on otherwise would have been in here much earlier).

Introducing Drupal 7: Friendly but Powerful
The Drupal community is proud to present our best work yet - a friendlier and more powerful, free software package that you can use to build and manage everything from blogs to enterprise applications.
[Get Started with Drupal 7]

Easier to Use
It's tough to make something this powerful easy to use. We've worked hard to improve usability for developers and content managers

More Flexible
Define your own content structure, add multimedia, forms, create your own modules for extra functionality or use one of over 800 we've upgraded for Drupal 7 already.

More Scalable
Your Drupal 7 site will be speedy, responsive and able to handle huge amounts of traffic thanks to improved JavaScript and CSS optimization, better caching and more.

Open Source
Come for the software, stay for the community. Over 1000 contributors built Drupal7 in 2.5yrs and it is being continually improved by hundreds of thousands of people all over the world.

I'm not sure how far along the Views D7 port is, but there's only a dev release on the project page, this is likely to be the same for many of the other 800 projects - so can we really say they're "available" without risking FUD?

I think Leisa's comments make a lot of sense, although the specific text would probably need tweaking. "Friendly but Powerful" makes a better tagline than the others so far suggested, in my opinion.

I would have the first sentences after Introducing Drupal 7 read as follows: "The Drupal community is proud to present our best work yet - a friendlier and more powerful, free software package that can be used to build nearly any kind of web site, from blogs and micro-sites to collaborative social communities." (Kind of a merger of webchick's and Leisa's suggestions.)

The part I like the best is the "Open Source" text, although I think "2.5 years" should be "two and a half years" - looks too "technical" otherwise, and doesn't read as well. (I think I had "over two and a half years" originally in the wiki, so we still need which is best.) I also agree with her that showing the websites that were built with Drupal 7 at the top is a great idea, although Seven and Bartik should still be shown off in the center left, since the announcement's other audience is people upgrading from earlier versions of Drupal.

I think I would have Leisa's "Easier to Use" blurb say "site builders and content editors" rather than "developers and content managers", since that is more the audiences at which the D7UX & other improvements were targeted. Developers actually will, as usual, face a pretty steep learning curve for all the new features & changed APIs. Also, I would add a sentence to the end stating how it was improved: something like "The new administrative interface, toolbar, and web-based module installer let you focus on building a compelling site."

Another good thing about Leisa's suggestions is that they could get around the seeming duplication of information where in one place we talk about the "Fields system", and another "Everything is a node. Not anymore." The text near the top could talk about how Drupal now had a flexible system for storing all kinds of data, like images and files, and then the section below (for upgraders) would go into more detail about it, stating that it was the Fields system, the next-generation of the Content Construction Kit, and it worked for nodes, users, taxonomy terms, or any other custom objects you chose to make (I think objects is better than entities even for upgraders - entities sounds super-intimidating.)

At first I disagreed with Leisa about moving the download link to a Get Started page, but now that I've seen her Skitch, I think it could actually be a good idea. It certainly makes the page a lot friendlier, since otherwise it has all the big-ass link lists which webchick mentioned, and is uber-long. I think that the Get Started page should be one that is focused on Drupal 7, though, not the general one, since the general one also talks about more general community topics, like getting support, which are version-agnostic, and has a different IA flow, with the four steps proceeding left to right. I think that the Get Started with Drupal 7 page could essentially be the middle third of the mockup from #70, including a video screencast on the left that would introduce Drupal 7's features in more depth. It could have the headings phased as questions, like "New to Drupal?", "Upgrading from Drupal 6?", "Switching from Another CMS", and "Want to Develop for Drupal 7?", with links to appropriate documentation for each.

webchick, arianek, jhodgdon, et al. have also made some great suggestions for the grammar and factual content, although some may no longer be applicable if the announcement was revised in the direction Leisa suggests. I think it should be revised that way, though, since it would go a long way toward addressing the concerns about audience voiced by Amazon and others.

@EvanDonovan - glad this all makes sense. I have no problems with your suggested copy improvements :)

The only thing that you've suggested that concerns me a little is having a separate 'getting started' page for Drupal 7 - just thinking of d.o as a holistic universe, what do we link to from the homepage/header navigation of d.o if we have two different 'getting started' pages?

I imagine that - sooner or later, the D7 getting started page will become the default one, right? But for the transition period, we probably need two sets of content -the current one and all this new stuff for D7... it strikes me that what we need is a toggle within the getting started page so that you can switch between the two sets of content but still have one destination - you could then set the default depending on where you were coming from. Provided that the option to switch/choose between the two main versions was clear, this should work well.

You could then link to a D7=on version of getting started from this launch page, and then we'd just have to decide what the global default setting for getting started should be and how to best include a 'switch' to the alternate version content.

make sense?

Was just going to throw out that before we decide to link to the getting started page, is it agreed that the download link there and all the module references will be switched to Drupal 7 versions?

I also wanted to point out that we have a helper function in drupalorg that could provide that button, if we make this page a mostly static page in that module. The function would automatically return the current recommended version of Drupal, and adds the version number to the end of the text, so it would read something like "Download Drupal 7.0" if we decide to use that.

Bojhan and I took some time this morning to try and incorporate a lot of the feedback, both about the copy and the lack of vertical spacing, here: http://sandbox.stevekarsch.com/d7/announcement.html

I'm not sure we'll have time to create a new start page (or modify the existing one) as @leisa suggested, but we did try to move the "outsider" information above the fold and leave the technical stuff lower on the page.

Thanks!

Looking good! Some minor suggestions:

a) 1,000 should not have a comma in it usually.

b) "Define your own content structure, add multimedia, forms, create your own modules for extra functionality or use one of over 800 we've upgraded for Drupal 7 already."
= This really doesn't scan well at all for me. How about:
"Define your own content structure, add multimedia and forms, create your own modules for extra functionality, or use one of over 800 modules we've upgraded for Drupal 7 already."
= Also, what is it about forms that is so new for Drupal 7? I don't think we have a UI for doing anything with forms in D7 that I'm aware of.
= The ability to create your own module is also not new for Drupal 7. If it's under the heading of "more flexible", it should concentrate on what is more flexible in D7.

c) "fast, responsive and able to handle huge amounts of traffic" should have a comma before the and, according to our d.o writing style guidelines.

d) "Drupal and its themes, modules and distrubtions are continiously improved."
= Needs comma before "and" as in c. ALso distributions is misspelled.

e) "Installation & Upgrade - You are now able to install Drupal 7!"
How about "You can install Drupal 7 now!". "You are now able to" is very ... bland... or something, indicates to me that you think I have the ability to do so, not that it's available.

f) Test driven development --> test-driven

g) "There are also drivers for MS SQL Server and Oracle."
I am wondering if we should replace the word "drivers" to instead say "There are also modules that add support for ...", because it avoids the jargon and is more consistent with the rest of the paragraph?

h) "Drupal 7 brings fine-grained control over page elements with new Render API, better context capabilities and template options, ability to use alter hooks in themes. "
==>
Drupal 7 brings fine-grained control over page elements with the new Render API, better context capabilities and template options, and the ability to use alter hooks in themes.

i) "Build your feature-set as fields " ... what does this mean? How can I build my "feature set" as fields?

j) "can use on users, nodes, comments, taxonomy terms and more." see (c) above, needs comma

k) heading "Extend" seems to be the wrong part of speech when compared to the rest of the headings. Maybe "extensibility" or ... ???

This is looking better. A few comments (in rough order of priority):

1. that top row really needs a good visual designer to look at it - it feels really unbalanced and inconsistent with the d.o visual language at the moment and the button is floating badly. Suggest it might be worth pinging Mark B and seeing if he has a tiny bit of time to help tighten up this section. Given the recent focus we've been having on Good Design (both on d.o and D7) we should make sure we're telegraphing that effort through a nice tight design on this page. I'll help twist Mark's arm. (Or any other arms available) (pls note: really not intending to offend anyone who has designed this so far - from what I can gather we've been getting by with a mixture of developers and UXers and a style guide and done pretty well so far - sometimes the most 'simple' bits are the hardest/most important to get right!)

I think my copy (with @EvanDonovan's suggested improvements is better than what's currently there, but then.. I would. I'm not going to argue that one further.

2. I *seriously* recommend that we don't have the major call to action at the top of the page left as 'download'. Seriously. I don't consider this a 'nice to have' request. Please remember that all the recommendations I'm making here are based on *extensive* research with 'outsiders' undertaken during the d.o redesign project and ongoing. If we can't update the Get Started page or (at a pinch) make a new one, then I recommend that we take the button out of it's current location and move it down to the bottom of the text beside the introduction video under Installation and Upgrade. If we agree that there is an imaginary line under the second row that separates the 'outsiders' from those who are at least tech and possibly Drupal-friendly, then this is the appropriate place to put that button - definitely NOT in the top two rows.

If you're not going to update the Get Started page prior to launch then what is the plan post -launch with the Get Started page, link from homepage/global navigation etc.? Have we thought this through yet?

3. Similarly, I think we are missing a big opportunity to impress if we choose bartik/seven screenshots rather than 'case study' screenshots. You might think they look great, this is only relative to what we're used to in Drupal. If you don't want to put a case study screenshot here then consider putting something entirely different... seriously, if you're not familiar with Drupal, the current screenshot is not going to get you excited.

4. The Easier to Use paragraph needs an extra sentence. Otherwise it looks less important than the others. And it's not. (There are suggested sentences in earlier comments from myself and @EvanDonovan you could consider)

5. The accessibility snippet feels really flippant when it represents a lot of hard work and a particular focus for this version. Can we change 'Drupal 7 sports numerous accessibility improvements including' to something more like 'Inclusive design and making Drupal accessible to all was a major focus for this new version. Improvements include HTML alternatives to JavaScript-based administrative interfaces, utility CSS classes for hiding page elements consistently, 'Skip to navigation' links, icons, and a variety of other WCAG AA-level items' (edit back the end of the second sentence to fit)

6. Typo : distrubtions

A couple of quick notes in response to jhodgdon (anything I don't mention I agree with)
B1. I like your revised copy
B2: Happy to kill the forms bit, I put that in, not sure why. Just to make it sound comprehensive and flexible
B3: In the top two rows we're focussing on people who don't know much about Drupal so who won't be drawing comparisons between previous versions of Drupal and this one - just letting them know what this one does so they can compare it easily to competitors. (at least, that's what I've suggested we do) - the vast library of modules is one of Drupal's key selling points (at least, initially) so we should mention it. Esp. as it is perceived as key to Drupal's flexibility.

I just wanted to point out that for changes to pages like 'Getting Started' and the 'Download & Extend' page, there is a setting in the drupalorg module that we can flip that will make all the download buttons point to Drupal 7. I don't see how having 2 getting started pages would help anything, also, it might be an awkward jump for those reading a translated release announcement.

I went through the list webchick linked to in #37.
For showcasing, sadly, not much is usable. Most are very small sites, and hardly any has professional Design. No really big sites among it, Examiner and drupalgardens will stay on top here for a while, I guess.
The best so far:

http://www.left-click.us/services -> about pretty, only the start page with that hideous header image spoils it. Category small IT Products and Support company
http://www.iqmetrix.com/ -> a bit boring but at least professionaly designed -> Category: Software producer
http://www.voxel.net/ Category: Also not innovative, but the best Design so far. Category: Webhosting company
http://www.ipswichalebrewery.com/ While lacking in typography, surely a nice and fresh site - Category: Brewery
http://www.adasca.pt/ The brutal red may be controversial, but at least interesting design. Sadly only the front page is about nice. Also a very small site. - a portugese blood donation NGO

Sadly no ones in the list for big media, education or government showcase.

I see what Leisa is saying about having one Getting Started page; if it would be less work to edit the existing Get Started page, I'm for it, as long as Drupal 6 is still discoverable from the page, and the "what's new with Drupal 7" content doesn't obscure what I think is the really nice focus on that page of the steps that are needed to get started with Drupal in general.

I think that the inertia is around the layout & copy that Bojhan, yoroy, karschsp, et al. have put together so it might be too late at this stage to make the kind of changes that Leisa is suggesting. I really think that it would help with the problem of intended audience though, so I'd like to see at least some revisions toward that. I'll not be on IRC today, but I will be some tomorrow and perhaps Saturday, as well, if anyone wants to talk through things.

This is not to diminish the work that you all have done though; it's definitely shaping up. I think the design is fairly good, but I am not a designer so there may be subtleties I am missing.

Alright, I am going to try and change all the text accordingly. Sadly my time is very limited! So I might be missing a few comments here and there - please notify if you feel we are missing anything.

Visual design
This really needs work still - I am hoping mark can chime in a bit, but otherwise we will continue and at least fix the vertical alignment. Ideally we get some feedback on usage of the gray bars.

User Experience
We changed the top to reflect more to the "outsider" audience, it probably needs a bit more copywriting work to also make it sound appealing. Flexibility is certainly one that needs extra work, I don't mind repeating already existing features - we improved them too. A note on this all though, many of the suggestions are great - some however don't fit the design (often too long).

1) We introduce Drupal in the begin, the suggestions offered so far are to big for the section.

2) In general I like the strategy of leveraging the "Get started" page, however from the comments so far I am unsure how we can achieve this. It feels like we'd need to move a whole lot of specific D7 announcement information to the "Get started" page and additional changes like; extend Drupal needs to cover only D7 updated modules, documentation needs to be updated and we need to remove the majority of documentation from here since it doesn't apply, books need to be changed - additional information like upgrading needs to be placed somewhere else. In light of the fact that we only have 1 day to get this done, this seems rather difficult? Especially the lack of proper documentation for end-users, to me seems like a rather hard challenge to do in one day (I feel EvanDonavan is underestimating this). The strength of the "get started page" is the pages it links too. I have compensated for this now, by minimizing the Install & Upgrade part significantly - and linking off to the "Get started" page (we might want one under Download too)

3) The "insiders" information is placed below the video. I still feel some of this is too techy (even for developers) we need to make sure its clear not just adding jargon for the buzz. The accessibility section is an example of this, I hope people can add some extra comments on this - ideally we want to streamline the flow a bit on this too - some of it is far to jumpy.

4) I like the suggestion of already running sites being expanded and preceded by category. Lets make this happen.

5) Lets do a case study picture, marks mockup made it possible.

6) Easier to Use paragraph is rather useless now we are just saying its easier to use, but not saying what makes it so.

7) Leisa's B3, is something we definitely need to find a place for.

8) The download button, finally :) I think this goes kinda hand in hand with our ability to make "Get started" useful, I have no strong opinion on this yet - as I have solely focused on getting all the hands in place to actually make this happen.

In terms of the strategy behind not going for "Download" I am a tad bit confused though, the decision was made for d.o because "we are deliberately making the download link a little more difficult to find so as to better support the experience of newcomers to Drupal who do not have the ability or time to evaluate the product by downloading it " however this is a product page announcement, not the d.o homepage - doesn't this reach a different audience? (many more existing users). Remember this page will fade away over time, "Get started" will stay the place to go then. Eitherway if we can make "get started" useful for people coming of this page I am all for it, it seems people are interested in this route - so if they make the changes required I am fine.

My thoughts for now, sorry for being so short - I will spend some time tomorrow to finalize parts, continue with feedback!

I knocked this up as a quick visual to address my visual concerns.

I though this announcement needed more visual impact, more closely tied with the branding (although not incorporating the drupal logo twice in close proximity) and giving much more visual importance to the four key 'outsider' features.

It's a really quick mockup. The swirly graphic (hinting at D7 branding done on the announcement banners) is a grab from a stock library so will need sign off on the rights (or just using the one from the branding, but I don't have that one).

Note, the getting started page is available in the Drupal.org customizations module for easy patching/hacking. (Er, well, by developers. ;P)

Code: http://drupalcode.org/viewvc/drupal/contributions/modules/drupalorg/drup...

Um. HOLY *@$ING *(@&#! #83 looks AMAZING!

Awesome Mark, can more people help karschsp with getting this into gear?

You may need to get hold of that swirly graphic as well, unless we buy the one I used (which I will, but I need to be sure on rights issues). It will need some manipulation to make sure it's the right tone and will scale with the browser.

Bojhan: ping me if you need the PSD, or who I can send it to.

I definitely second Leisa on making the download button a "Get started" button. I understand this was one of the most important decisions they made in designing the d.o. starting page - kinda admitting drupal is not easy enough out of the box and makink people aware of it ("install at your own risk" ;) ). So reverting that decision here would be inconsistent and compromising an important part of the d.o. redesign.

The "WTF is Drupal" is still missing for me. Why not mentioning Drupal is a CMS? Most People know what that is:

The Drupal community is proud to present our best work yet - a friendlier and more powerful content management system. You can use this free software package to build and manage everything from blogs over online shops to enterprise applications.

Trouble is Drupal is a mixture of content management system and Content Management Framework. But how to say that without clumsiness? CMS is more widely known and people will soon find out that it is more of a framework.... ;)

Needless to say I second about everthing else Leisa says: Putting less content on the page makes a lot of sense, putting the "outsiders" stuff on top makes sense, giving this page a cutting edge design in the style of d.o. makes the most sense of all. Do we have to twist Marks arm or can we maybe use more suble yet mean psychological methods? Ugh, reality has overtaken me and I was slower to write than he to design. :)

And yeah, use other screenshots. Drupal Gardens, Examiner, or from the prettier ones I have listed above.

________

Edit: regarding Marks mockup: Leisas idea to include the more "insiders" and hardcore developers stuff at the bottom could still be done, adding one row with the four most important features, without messing this page up too much. But if we want to keep it as splashy as we can, we could leave it out completely. Maybe a link to another page that goes more into detail could be an alternative. The "Drupal 7 for developers" at the bottom on the side of the video could be a bit bigger and lead there. For some people will want a comprehensive overview over the technical details of the new features.

+1 to linking to /start instead of tarballs. We're talking in IRC and think that basically if we just flip/flopped the links at http://drupal.org/start (so DRUPAL 7!! was in the big box and "Drupal 6" was in the link below), most of the other content is pretty generic.

Would be great if there's a way to rig that book block to show D7 books though. As much as I love Using Drupal being there and all. ;)

Let me repeat, as the post of me above might seem confusing. I am all for doing the "Get started page" as link rather than the zip, but for that the /start page has to :

1) Link to Drupal 7 as primary download link.
2) Documentation sections have to be revisited and D6 documentation marked as out-of-date (e.g. Structure is out of date)
3) Documentation D7 links have to be added (including a page that lists clearly where to go for D7 specific information).

Anyone who can pick this up?

@markboulton - nice one. that's what I was talking about :))

Some notes in response to Bojhan's #82

1) Looks like Mark made it fit nicely ;) So, how do we like the copy, does it need tweaking?

2) I'm really surprised that we're only just talking about the Getting Started content now - let's make a note of making this a job that some has to do well in advance of the launch of Drupal 8 - go over d.o and look at what needs to change to support a 'transition period' between releases. Anyway... things being as they are, the Get Started page is an issue that needs to be resolved urgently whether we do it as part of this issue or not... as soon as D7 'launches' this page becomes redundant and it is a key page on d.o. We need to work out a way to include D7 content there somehow. Is there really no one thinking about D7 implications on d.o marketing/new user content? (Amazon perhaps?)

Perhaps I can help with this if someone can point me to the people (content/docs/marketing/dev) I need to talk to?

As mentioned above, a compromise to enable 'get started' content being here on this page is to move that green button (which would presumably have to change back to download') down below the second row.... that would make Mark's design much less gorgeous tho'/

3) I, personally, don't have an opinion re: the techy jargon of the lower part of the page - I'm going to focus on advocating for the outsiders for the moment. Just to be clear tho, my issue with the Accessibility content is not the jargon but the tone - this is really important work that makes a BIG difference to people's lives, we need to make sure the tone is serious and not flippant.

5) Hopefully Mark's design has cleared up any confusion? I should also add that I have not seen your video Bojhan and I am operating on the assumption that you will be showing people the new interface there. I think this is a much better way to show the new admin interface than in a big screenshot at top of page. Agree people want to see it, but let's show it in best light.

6) Not quite sure but I think we agreed this paragraph needs more work, right?

why not download from this page:
Re: the 'don't download from this page' strategy, I think a message I received on Twitter sums this up the best:
' "we don't 'download' from this page", people who know what they're doing will just use drush or git ;-)'

If you think about the 'sales lifecycle' of Drupal, there are a significant number who will be coming here because they've heard some buzz about it but they're not Drupal people. Drupal people will know where to go/what to do/etc (or, if not, will have more patience finding it). Project managers, marketing people, garden variety managers who fancy themselves as a bit cluey, user experience consultants - we'll all come along and want to have a look at this new, easy to use Drupal.

now. for most of those people, if one of the first things they do is hit a download button because it is the biggest, most prominent call to action on the page - this is *not* a good outcome. If you linked them to http://drupal.org/project/drupal they are hit with a bunch of terminology they most likely don't know the first thing about. If they start downloading a tar.gz file they're in an even worse place.

the best thing you can do is expose them to the greater system of Drupal (modules, documentation and community), make them more knowledgable about Drupal and it's infrastructure and in that process, make it clear that they *shouldn't* necessarily be able to install it and get it running by themselves. (Encouraging them to click a download button suggests that they *should* be able to install and get Drupal running by themselves).

Make sense?

@leisa

1) Perhaps the word micro-sites is not really clear?

2) I am hoping to lure people into making Getting started better, which we should be able to complete past the 1 Jan deadline of this announcement.

5) The video is now in the works, that is a video about the video. But yes showing the interface.

Download: I definitely agree on the strategy, just feel we might be underestimating the amount of people who come here who know Drupal - your pointing out, they can go through a little bit more trouble. I was confused why we would not aid them, they are likely to be a good perhaps even majority of users visiting this page - thanks for clearing that up. I hope at D8, we can change this strategy though - Drupal should be so usable that audience can just install it and use it.

If we can get some concrete, actionable steps for the Getting Started page, I'm sure we can do some work on that this weekend/early next week.

@webchick - does 'flip/flop the links' (as per your earlier message) count as a concrete, actionable step?
assuming all the necessary D7 links exist (and I note that is a big assumption) that works for me, I think.

Yeah, that counts as an actionable step, but what's not actionable yet is:

a) What are the necessary D7 links?
b) What's the most important information people coming to this page are going to want to know about D7?
c) Do we have docs for that or do they need to get written?
d) What links are obsolete and should be removed?
etc.

We basically need a spec of "Change this to this and that to that" for /start, and then I'm sure we can wrangle someone to implement it.

@bojhan @webchick i've been trying to follow here, but i'm not sure what it is bojhan is looking for updating docs-wise (and why d6 docs are needing to be marked out of date, since it's still supported)...? if you need help skimming through pages and updating things to say 7 let me know - there are probably hundreds (thousands?) of pages that name 6 as the current version, and it will just take time and/or many people's help to deal with that (and archiving d4/5 docs which is an ongoing task).

@bojhan, webchick Consider myself lured into being able to update the Get Started page. :) I can do patches and post screenshots (but let's use #1011206: Update Get Started page for Drupal 7 to discuss, since it's its own page.)

As for the feedback so far, I don't think Jacine's theming copy has been incorporated (though it's very insider-y so it belongs with the other insider copy).

100% agree that we need the top of this page to mention that Drupal is a CMS.

@lisarex: So maybe as simple a change as:

"The Drupal community is proud to present our best work yet – a friendlier and more powerful, free content management system that can be used to build nearly any kind of website, from blogs and micro-sites to collaborative social communities."

as opposed to

"The Drupal community is proud to present our best work yet – a friendlier and more powerful, free software package that can be used to build nearly any kind of website, from blogs and micro-sites to collaborative social communities."

Mark, can the swirly graphic be repeated horizontally? It looks like maybe, I just didn't know if your PSD had cropped the left and right.

Had a quick look through http://drupal.org/start and I don't see that much that needs to be changed.

Download link should change to D7.
The themes thumbnails has a book with "Drupal 6" in the title - but http://drupal.org/books has D7 books on it so that's quite minor.
We don't have versioned links to any docs pages etc., and scanning through several of them are marked as for both 6.x and 7.x which is fine - anything that needs updating to D7 can just be updated in the handbook without requiring changes to the landing page.

Bojhan's right that the 'structure' page is only for D6 (and only some of that will apply to Drupal 7), but I don't really think that's a blocker.

One other thing is that module popularity is going to be largely based on D6 usage, but that will correct itself over time and I don't see any reason to mess with it (assuming it's based on data from all versions and not pointing to D6 at the moment, don't know how those blocks are done).

The latest sandbox version has been posted to http://sandbox.stevekarsch.com/d7/announcement.html

This mostly just incorporates Mark's awesome design and not any text changes. I opted to leave the dev stuff at the bottom so basically it goes:

* Big splash/overview above the fold
* Video/how to get started mid fold
* Techie/dev stuff below the fold

Like I said, I still need to work with Bojhan to incorporate the content changes recommended in the feedback, but I think we're getting there.

Thanks!

Wow - a lot of progress has been made in a few hours! Bojhan, yes, I'm aware that this would be a lot of work, which is why I said that it might not be possible (initially, I had been going to say that Leisa's suggestion of linking to the get started page was impossible, but then I saw the mockup and it made sense.)

I think Mark's mockup takes us most of the way there for the announcement itself, although I think some of the "techie" copy could be reincorporated into the bottom.

The main suggestion I would make would be that another sentence be added to the "Easier to Use", probably something mentioning toolbar and overlay (and possibly the new update manager - if WordPress is a potential target here). I also agree with @jhodgdon, though, that the "More Flexible" should focus on changes that have made to Drupal, since it raises the question of "flexible compared to what"? "Content structure" and "multimedia" make sense; the only other things I can think of at the moment are "file attachments", and improvements to theming, but the improvements to theming might be too technical to mention in the top-row context.

I think the links in the Installation & Upgrade list should probably be bullets.

@lisarex, if we are going to take on updating the Get Started page, which is a big investment I recognize, is there a separate issue for that?

EvanDonovan: #1011206: Update Get Started page for Drupal 7 (as Lisa Rex posted in #97 ;))

@karschsp: Great progress! Yeah, that background swirl does need work. Bojhan passed me the banner files and they're not much use - The swirl on those graphics is even less likely to scale well. This is the image I used in the comp: http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-illustration-7086944-smooth-punch.php so, I need to buy it and do some manipulation on it so it scales better than the one in the current mockup.

Alright, a quick visual review :

1) The feature pane titles need to be bold
2) The feature pane has a white glow around it, remove this.

Furthermore it seems really nice, we will probably need to do the implementation of the site scroller somewhere next week (doesn't need translation) so its best to postpone that unless someone wants to deliver the code for it. @karschsp I expect mark, will give you updated background picture for the header as soon as he finds the time.

Lets fix the rest of the page in terms of visual design, @mark if you have any ideas on this - let us know. I made a mockup shown below, to add some hierarchy to this last part. Don't pin me down on the actual titles, they are just fillers.

If we shorten accessibility a bit, the feature part can visually look like a whole - I am not totally pleased with the bottom part but I think thats mainly because it lacks content.

If people wonder why we have to edit the background picture.
It doesn't look good yet on high res screens.
BUT I do like/love the new design.
I disliked the old one but didn't want to say something cause I'm a terrible designer myself :)

==> http://awesomescreenshot.com/0765bt118

Can we reduce the part below the video to one row or two the most? (pick the greatest) because like it is now it clutters everything and somehow contradicts Marks Mockup.
I would not even mind a collepsible Fieldset (Holy mother, have mercy on my soul) with a "Wanna know more?" or something.

@eigentor I dont know what you are asking, to step back from two rows of content to one? If thats your question, its unlikely something we should do - because we DO want to offer our audience a good bunch of information, especially in announcements this is not a uncommon strategy.

1. existence of the bottom rows of text:

I checked in with Mark on this and he did intend for the rows of text to come under the video, just didn't have space to show it in his mockup.
I also agree that it is fine to be there, and I don't mind if it goes to two rows - remember - people will only see this if they scroll to it, they won't see it in a screenshot the way we see it now so it won't feel cluttered in the same way it might look it as a screenshot.

The idea is that we push the most detailed, technical information toward the bottom so that only people who are seeking more information will actually get that far down. Most won't. This is fine/good.

2. text on the call to action:
do we think this should be 'get started with Drupal 7' or just 'get started with Drupal'? I would have expected it to say Drupal 7

3. content in the bottom two rows: following on from my comments above, this might give us a better way to group the content in those bottom two rows,
the first row can be the more 'non-techy' and the last row is the uber-techy content

so,
first row would be: better theming, flexible content, accessibility, images and files
the second row would be: test driven development, improved database support, better distribution support, extend

I've got to go do something urgently but I'll come back shortly and have a go at tweaking the text for those final two rows if that would be helpful.

Well: actually it is much much better than before even like it is now. But Mark and Leisa introduced not only a mockup, but the general idea not to clutter this page.
At the moment it are threee rows, for the bottom one I see also as content, even if it is "only" see drupal in action and reqirements.
Maybe Mark and Leisa can have their say on this. Personally, I would spice the bottom part a bit up in the likes of http://drupal.org/about but with less and less comicky icons. http://www.dialogix.com.au/ does a good job at that, even if that is too playful still.

In Germany we have the word "Textwüste". Almost all drupal.org is one, which is not too big a problem, but on an announcement page it is.

@leisa Thanks, I will work on moving stuff around and the copy a bit this afternoon (I won't be able to work on it this evening/tomorrow morning)

@eigentor What do you mean? The idea of not cluttering is not an idea of anyone, thats just a principle. If you mean spice up this page with icons, I already responded to that earlier - we do not have the proper icons. Lets first start with good content in that bottom part.

ok, a stab at massaging the content for the bottom two rows. Not wedded to any of this, just trying to make it a little punchier and focusing on benefits.
note that I have no real idea about the accuracy of most of these claims... so anyone who does know, pls step in!

Second from bottom row: better theming, flexible content, accessibility, images and files

better theming
The Drupal 7 theme layer gives designers more control thanks to better context capabilities and template options, a new Render API, and the ability to use alter hooks in themes.

flexible content
More flexible than ever. Now you can define your own content types using the new Field system by attaching custom data fields to Drupal entities (content nodes, users, taxonomy vocabularies, etc.)

accessibility
Drupal 7 includes a range of WCAG AA-level compliant items including HTML alternatives for Javascript-based admin, utility CSS classes for hiding page elements consistently and 'Skip to navigation' links.

images and files
Drupal 7 supports image handling out of the box. Resize and alter your images with ease. Combine private/public files and store files using services such as Amazon S3.

Bottom row:

test driven development, improved database support, better distribution support, extend

test driven development
Even better code quality thanks to Drupal 7's automated testing framework with over 30 000 built in tests allowing for continuous integration testing of all Drupal core patches and selected contributed modules.

improved database support,
Drupal 7 has a new database layer, adding SQLite support out of the box in addition to MySQL/MariaDB and PostgreSQL. There are also drivers for MS SQL Server and Oracle.

better distribution support
Drupal 7 makes the perfect platform for polished products thanks to version-specific dependencies, installation profiles as modules, and better data exportability.

many compatible modules
Thanks to the #D7CX movement, over 800 modules are available for Drupal 7, including Views, Pathauto, and WYSIWYG, with more on the way every day.

So once this announcement is written is this temporarily going to be the Drupal.org homepage, or is it going to be linked from the homepage? If the latter, where is it going to be linked? I am concerned that it will not have as much impact or get as many pageviews as we would want if it is just linked the same way a regular story would be.

I think that for at least 3 days or so, it would be great if this were the homepage.

@EvanDonovan, you raise a good question. I don't think it can be the homepage, even for a couple days, as it'll mess with our SEO mojo. Also, this page wasn't designed as a homepage.

I'm a bit out of the loop on D7 marketing, but I'd imagine this new page will be linked from all outgoing communication as well as have a big "ad" on the homepage. Hopefully someone is designing that ad.

@lisarex: I guess that's a point...wasn't thinking about SEO. I think we will need to figure out a prominent way to get people to the announcement from the homepage though.

The other reason I asked was if we linked to Get Started with Drupal 7 from the homepage, then most people will bypass the announcement entirely, but if we didn't then people would have to go 3 clicks in to get to a download link, which seems a bit much.

Alright, I am trying to work through all the suggestions so far I see a small number of issues :

Accessibility
Drupal 7 includes a range of WCAG AA-level compliant items including HTML alternatives for Javascript-based admin, utility CSS classes for hiding page elements consistently and 'Skip to navigation' links.
Notes: We need someone from the accessibility team to look at this one, because I am unsure we are voicing the most important improvements. Also we can drop the WCAG AA-level bomb, but I am quite sure we are not compliant yet.

Images and files
Drupal 7 supports image handling out of the box. Resize and alter your images with ease. Combine private/public files and store files using services such as Amazon S3.
Notes:We should probably drop the Amazon S3 part, as mentioned earlier that is not supported without additional modules. If we shorten that we can expand a bit on the resize and alter your image with ease.

Better distribution support
With version-specific dependencies, installation profiles as modules, and better data exportability, Drupal 7 makes the perfect platform for polished products based on the framework
Note: This is still all over the place, lets focus with the basis - Drupal is now a better platform for products, and then go into the specifics, what are the overarching optimizations? Rather than version-specific dependencies.

Extend
Thanks to the #D7CX movement, over 800 modules are available for Drupal 7, including Views, Pathauto, and WYSIWYG, with more on the way every day.
Note: Yhea, this clearly still needs work. Except very innies, most don't know what the D7CX movement is. Lets just state, we worked hard to get many modules supported upon release - or something like that.

These are my notes for now, we still need some work on the intro and featured pane. But that should solidify soon!

Ok some comments on the other sections:

The top row
Easier to Use: Needs one more sentence, about why (very short sentence).
More flexible: Needs some adjusting to talk more about the overall flexibility of Drupal, then into specifics (drop the already ported modules part, thats unrelated here).
More scalable: Good
Open source: Good

With version-specific dependencies, installation profiles as modules, and better data exportability, Drupal 7 makes the perfect platform for polished products based on the framework
Note: This is still all over the place, lets focus with the basis - Drupal is now a better platform for products, and then go into the specifics, what are the overarching optimizations? Rather than version-specific dependencies.

Perhaps something like this:

Building reusable web applications in Drupal has never been easier! Version 7 allows tailored installation profiles to customize Drupal's user interface, manage their own version upgrades, and manage dependencies more efficiently. In addition, more of Drupal's internal configuration can be managed in code by developers, making it much easier to capture and distribute solutions to common problems.

We've been discussing on IRC what the main audience(s) of this announcement are. There are two:
- People who've been using Drupal for some time, and who need to be told about 7 specifically
- People who need to be convinced to use Drupal over other CMSs.

So the approach would be to get to the second audience with the top of the announcement, because the old Drupalists will read down to get to the description of what's new in 7.

In which case, here's a suggestion for the top text blocks:

Easy to Use
Drupal's redesigned administrative interface makes getting started with Drupal easy.

Flexible
Define your own content structure, add multimedia, install one of over 800 modules already available for Drupal 7, and use your choice of database back ends.

Scalable
Your Drupal 7 site will be fast, responsive, and able to handle huge amounts of traffic thanks to improved JavaScript and CSS optimization, better caching, and more.

Open source
Come for the software, stay for the community. With thousands of contributors involved, Drupal and its themes, modules, and distributions are continuously improved.

@eaton Thanks!

@jhodgdon Puts forward an important point, we are talking about the top section being for new users yet the titles and easier to use section compare it to previous, perhaps we can reframe it all a bit to make it work - should be possible.

Furthermore lets kill our habit of starting each topic with "In Drupal 7", "The Drupal 7", "Drupal 7" a little bit.

Talked with Bojhan about space requirements and the Distributions part can be chopped down to:

"Installation profiles can customize Drupal's user interface, manage their own version upgrades, track dependencies more efficiently, and capture more configuration settings in code."

big "ad" on homepage: Maybe we can temporarily remove the "sites made with drupal" part? Cause that's the one with the image. Replacing left or right block in the top row would also be possible, but mess up Design more.

Apparently we don't want the top section headline to say "Easy to use". So how about the first chunk:

Usable
Drupal's administrative interface has been totally redesigned to make your daily tasks easier to find and carry out.

(leave the other 3 headlines as: Flexible, Scalable, Open Source)

I want to remind once again that this page will be translated into over 20 languages, so some way of cross linking them all should be thought of. Some place for language links needed.

I agree with @jhodgdon about the top row, although I wonder if any of @Leisa's copy could be reincorporated into those headings since I thought it was good, and gave a little more detail.

Especially, I would want another sentence under easy to use, as I'v stated before - mention toolbar, overlay, update manager, probably, to show that Drupal is a reasonable alternative to WordPress, et al. Would want to say possibly, easy for whom - i.e., site builders/content creators. Also, I wouldn't talk about "database backends" under flexible though since that targets a different audience than the site builders/content creators who would probably be the main focus for reading that top row.

The middle row needs some more formatting on the links: possibly use bullet points?

Bottom 2 rows:

"Test-driven development": Need to state why this is a benefit. "Stability and reliability of the code base" or something similar. Probably move this further over since it is not the most significant improvement in Drupal 7 since it is behind the scenes. Don't mention selected contributed modules on Drupal.org, probably, as that is not a D7-specific improvement.

"Improved database support": Also state that this will make it easier for people to write their own database drivers. I guess we are not mentioned NoSQL now, since the stable MongoDB is not a driver, and not core? Possibly this should be bottom row too.

"Better theming": Mention Bartik (possibly Seven, too, but that is not a front-end theme, and was mentioned above). Do many people know what "context capabilities and template options" are? Could that be clarified? As for the Render API, I would use the active voice: "Alter any part of the page from the theme layer; hide and show individual fields with the new Render API." (Something like that.) Probably mention that Stark reveals Drupal's core markup, and that many cleanups have been made to HTML & CSS. Come up with a better title than "Better theming" that suggests both stylishness and power.

"Flexible content": Rather than "Build your feature-set" should say something more like "Add fields anywhere - users, nodes, comments, taxonomy terms - to suit your site's architecture."

"Better distribution support": I think eaton covered this.

"Images and files": Lead with a sentence like, "Add images directly to your content - no extra download needed." ("Supports image handling" sounds awkward.) I agree about dropping S3, but could mention that CDN support can easily be added in. (Could the Media module be referenced here, although not core, since the Media module was made possible by the stream wrapper changes?)

"Accessibility": Seems good to me, could we ping Everett or mgifford. We definitely aren't 100% WCAG AA-compliant, but mostly there, and possibly closer than other other open-source CMS, which might be good to say, if it could be confirmed.

"Extend": Agree about dropping #D7CX. Should mention as well as the # of modules available, the # of themes, and should mention that there are many new APIs that make developers' lives better. Possibly mention a few specifics, like Token API.

There are also grammatical issues but I think the content issues are more pressing, so I won't bother reviewing those.

Also, should we link to the changelog somewhere, for people who want to see the detailed, technical list of changes?

I still think we can say "Easy to use" especially in comparison to a lot of more proprietary CMS's. "Usable" just doesn't sound like a selling point.

Bojhan: In re: Requirements, I think they are fine, although we may want to say something like "Contributed modules may require more than 32MB of RAM", since that really is a bare minimum.

I don't know what else would need to be added there.

"Test-driven development": Need to state why this is a benefit. "Stability and reliability of the code base" or something similar. Probably move this further over since it is not the most significant improvement in Drupal 7 since it is behind the scenes. Don't mention selected contributed modules on Drupal.org, probably, as that is not a D7-specific improvement.

An important point: Drupal is not using TDD. That's a specific methodology, in which unit tests are written for functionality before the underlying functionality is written, and all tests are expected to fail. When all tests pass the functionality is considered complete. It's Tests-As-A-Functional-Spec.

As a community, we're using Automated Testing, which is definitely good but also definitely not the same thing as TDD.

@eaton: I was just quoting the release announcement :) I think changing it would be good, for accuracy's sake. "Automated Testing Framework" perhaps, although that is a boring title.

I pinged the accessibility group to ask for some help on that section: http://groups.drupal.org/node/115864

Since this is going to push what we are doing technically, there is an issue for actually posting this, #1011850: Publish the Drupal 7 release announcement

It's been noted by drumm & tvn that we need some place to put the links to the ~35 translations. drop-down? list of links? other?

Text from the wiki (and I'm coming in very late, so please forgive me if I'm going over old material!)

Overall: Since one of the themes of these release is usability, we need to make sure the prose and the talking points are user- or at least public-friendly, while preserving the technical honesty that has always been Drupal's hallmark (and remembering that developers are users too....)

Also, not sure if there's a word count limit for any of this, so I didn't try to maintain that.

Rather than force somebody to revert all my wiki changes, I'll just write them here. Take what you like and leave the rest!

* * *

1. Easier and more powerful than ever.

Easy. And more powerful than ever.

WHY: "Easier" can still be hard. So we're easy.

2. Ready and able to drive your most demanding projects with ease. Built for both high-end performance and ease of use.

After two and a half years of development by over 1,000 contributors, we proudly present Drupal 7: the best version of Drupal yet.

We proudly present Drupal 7: the best Drupal yet. After two-and-a-half years of development and usability engineering by over 1000 contributors, Drupal can handle all your projects, from the simplest to the most demanding. Users, administrators and developers: All will appreciate Drupal 7's high-end performance and ease-of-use.

WHY: It's an announcement, so move "present," which announces, first. Then play to Drupal's credible technical strengths in plain language. Then make sure to say that ALL will benefit. Usability "engineering" to highlight the usability focus.

3. An entirely revamped administrative interface makes getting started with Drupal incredibly easy. Customize workflows with the dashboard, toolbar and shortcuts features. Update modules and themes directly from within Drupal.

Drupal 7's Dashboard, Toolbar, and Shortcuts keep it simple for users, and painless for administrators. Boost administrator productivity by updating modules and themes directly from within Drupal. Boost reliability by using the automated test harness after installation.

WHY: Moved concrete (user-oriented) material first. Then abstract (administrator) material. And rang various changes on "easy" -- like "keep it simple," and "painless."

4. ## Flexible content

Define your own content types with the new Field system i. Add custom data fields to a variety of content including users, comments, taxonomies and more.

Drupal 7 lets you tune content creation to precise client and user needs. Using the new field system, administrators can add custom data fields to all content, plus comments, taxonomies, users, and more.

WHY: Give benefit of defining content types; flexibility is not good in itself.

5. ## Images and files

Drupal 7 supports image handling out of the box. Resize and alter your images with ease. Combine private/public files and store files using services such as Amazon S3.

Drupal 7 lets you add images to content in one step, with no extra downloads. Resizing and altering images is simple and straightforward. Administrators can combine public and private files, and use storage services like Amazon S3.

WHY: Just tweaks. Though if I don't understand "Combine private/public files" I suspect many others won't.

6. ## Built to scale

Optimize your site for high speed and huge amounts of traffic, with improved JavaScript and CSS optimization, better caching, master/slave replication, reverse-proxy and content delivery network support.

Drupal 7 is the platform of choice for high-speed, high-traffic sites, with enhanced JavaScript and CSS optimization, faster caching, master/slave replication, reverse-proxies, and content delivery network support.

WHY Not for a generic "your site"!

7. ## Installation
Basic installation guide
Quick install guide for beginners
Quick install for developers (Command line)

COMMENT If there is a "Basic installation guide," and "Quick install guide for beginners" that to me already suggests complexity; suppose I'm just starting out, am I "Basic"? Or "A beginner"? Suggest there be only two titles: "Quick install guide", and "Developer install guide". Then move the "basic" prose into "Quick Install," breaking out categories of users in the prose as needed. (And if D7 is all that simple, there won't need to be much breaking out.

8. ## Upgrading
Your Drupal 6 site can be upgraded to Drupal 7, once Drupal 7 versions of all modules and themes it uses are available. Over 800 modules are already there for Drupal 7.
Upgrade guide.

Drupal, and your Drupal site, depend on modules and themes contributed by the community. For Drupal 7, over 800 contributors took the #D7CX pledge, and you can use their contributions in Drupal 7 on the same day that Drupal 7 is released.

WHY: Disagreeing with Evan, I mention the "pledge" because it's the word is such a trust builder. But on this real estate, is there a reason for the link to upgrade guide for developers only?

9. ## Test driven development

Drupal 7 has a unit testing framework with 28K built in tests. This allows continuous integration testing of all Drupal core patches and selected contributed modules on Drupal.org.

COMMENT This doesn't demonstrate benefit. So I moved "test harness" into the benefits for admins. So I think this can be deleted. I would replace it with:

## Linked data

Drupal7 brings linked data to the CMS world for the first time, bringing search engine optimization, and mashups, and information interchange to the next level.

10. ## Database support

We've added a new database layer, adding SQLite support out of the box in addition to MySQL/MariaDB and postgreSQL. There are also drivers for MS SQL Server and Oracle.

Drupal 7 now supports SQLite out of the box, besides MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and drivers for Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle. Or write your own driver!

WHY Capitalize PostgreSQL. I've tried to make Drupal 7 the actor throughout....

11. ## Better theming Theming bliss
Drupal 7 brings fine-grained control over page elements with new Render API, better context capabilities and template options, ability to use alter hooks in themes. Theme layer now is better than ever!

Drupal 7 gives themers fine-grained control over page elements, more sensitivity to context, more template options, the power to use alter hooks when theming, and includes three fresh themes and JQuery UI.

WHY Jacine @40. I think "theming bliss" meets Evan's requirement for "stylishness and power." No "Render API" because Developers will know it's an API, and there's no reason to confuse the rest of us. (Ability is not the same as power....) Concentrate everything about APIs in one place that can be skipped by users whose eyes glaze over easily....

* * *

That's all I can do for tonight; the champagne is kicking in. I hope some of these thoughts are useful; I'm sorry if I rehashed already settled issues, and I'll try my hand some more tomorrow.

Evan, I went through my rewrite at #132 and added as much as I could from your comment (though some of it was the parallelism of great minds ;-)

I agree about a link out to the changelog -- and I think we should be thinking "links out" to a lot of complexity, like to the translations, for example. Dropdowns would send a message of complexity in our practice, no matter what the words...

Dupe, delete.

@webchick, I'm responding to your ping — not for the Accessibility Group so much as in the role of "the only group organizer who isn't at an actual party this New Year's Eve!" ;-)

Bojhan has noted:

I am unsure we are voicing the most important improvements. Also we can drop the WCAG AA-level bomb, but I am quite sure we are not compliant yet.

Yes, we should leave out references to WCAG, but not for that reason.

It is simple to note that, as a page on Drupal.org, our announcement cannot conform with WCAG 2.0 at Level AA. There is inadequate color contrast in several areas of the page:

• The blue background in the middle of the top section contrasts too poorly to the white text.
• The green background of the buttons contrasts too poorly to the white text.
• In the footer, only the black text has sufficient contrast to the background.

Ironically, that might be the only issue that holds us back from conforming at Level AA. (We are going to have a script — and therefore a transcript — for the video, aren't we?)

But WCAG stands for "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines." They are for the content produced by a CMS, not for a CMS itself.

The more appropriate guidelines for a CMS are the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG). To conform with ATAG, an authoring tool must have an accessible interface and support the development of accessible content. I'll have to huddle with the Accessibility Group and see what level of conformance we're comfortable claiming for Drupal 7.

As for comparing our performance to that of other content management systems, let's not go there. I doubt that any other CMS has been assessed as carefully as we've assessed Drupal, but to make a worthwhile comparison, we would have to be as familiar with the other CMS as we are with Drupal.

I noticed elsewhere in this thread that you're talking about deadlines of Jan. 3 for the final wording. I'll do my best to get input from the group this weekend, but I'm sure many of us will be spending it unplugged.

Just in case we can't get anything more to you by that deadline, here is my best post-champagne shot at it: "Drupal 7 is highly accessible itself and helps you create accessible websites, too. Our Accessibility Group is dedicated to making sure that continues to be the case."

Jacine @40:

I'm not sure that RDFa is a theming thing -- certainly not for outsiders. I also think that all outsiders need to know is that there are three new themes (not the name). I l-o-o-o-v-e "fine-grained control," though.

Cliff @135

Is there an appropriate logo, so we could say "accessibility" visually as well as in prose?

OK, now for some very quick comments on the design: Most important is that the "Easier to Use – More Flexible – More Scalable – Open source" box appears to be a false bottom to me. In other words, it was only after I did some tests with an accessibility-checking toolbar that I noticed that there was anything below that box. Can we do something to encourage people to scroll? (Honestly, I was at a loss for what webchick wanted me to review. I could not find the Accessibility blurb because I thought the dark gray box was the page footer.)

And do we need the drop shadow on the headings in that box? They make me wonder about the adequacy of my glasses; for people with actual visual or cognitive disabilities, the words might be completely unreadable.

Finally, I hate to add this, but the series of headings with short blurbs makes me think of tombstones in a cemetery. I see now why they told us to avoid that kind of layout when we were composing my junior-high-school newspaper. (That was back in the days of hot lead type, I haven't studied design since, and that's about the only design principle I recall.)

Sorry to be so curt. I do see a lot of good in the page, too, and even more in the collaborative rewriting here. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings — I just need to devote my time and attention to the wording on accessibility.

shunting @137, there's no logo that I know of. Accessibility is quite unlike markup validation in that respect.

On the short blurbs, we could turn the handle the other way... Though maybe a single stream of text with embedded links out is more what you had in mind? (Not everyone is a visual thinker; I think prose has a role to play.)

@cliff: good one with the tombstones :) Actually, I do not have that connotation. Changing it, we would need to change half of d.o. These small boxes are everywhere. And I cannot think of a more effective way of getting a lot of content on a page in a way that does not need lots of tweaking for every page.
The point with the drop-shadow on the text is a vaid one, though in the actual version of the sandbox it is only on the headings of the "black box" and it stresses the importance of the four first points. I think Mark chose to be decidedly splashy and as such it is a valid means (personally I also hate it :D )

A bit of a problem with the design is: the only way we are going to reach a consensus on it is when Mark does it. He rightfully has a very high reputation for that in the drupal community. Starting a bikeshed about it - argh. I am sure Mark will read these comments, even if he does not chime in so very loudly, and if some are valid, he might propose a bit of tweaking. But until that, for the sake of a consensus that is so very hard to get to in these discussions, let's leave it as it is.

I will be working on the copywriting, so far I have seen few comments on the sections I have asked feedback on most notably Flexible, Installation & Upgrade, Extend and the bottom two area's.

Last demo is up at :
http://sandbox.stevekarsch.com/d7/announcement.html

@Cliff thanks for your feedback, I agree the point should be it allows you to create more accessible websites. Its unlikely we can work on all the specific issues you address in terms of accessibility of this announcement at this point, since they are largely blucheese problems (we need to make a note of them in the blucheese queue though). In general the "there is something below" will always be a problem with this kind of layout, perhaps we can solve it - I have tried to by optimizing the bottom of the flop (but thats not going to work on all resolutions)

The dark gray box needs a tiny little padding left and right, else the text gets too close to the border.
apply this:

Right side should get the same, but is difficult, because then the text breaks in a way the distance gets too big:

So for now, leave right side as it is.

Ah, yes and making the text-shadow not entirely black reduces the eye-strain a little bit:

#header-highlight-inner h3 {
    color: #FFFFFF;
    font-weight: bold;
    letter-spacing: 0.1em;
    margin-top: 0;
    text-shadow: 2px 2px 0 #222222;
}

Minor corrections under 'See Drupal 7 in action':

- 'Chicago Public Meda' missing the 'i' in 'media'
- Stefan--not Steven--Sagmeister (or possibly 'Sagmeister Inc.' would be more accurate as this is the company site).

Bojhan, the color contrast failures of the Bluecheese design have already been raised — months ago — in the Bluecheese issue queue, under QA: Simplify green hues. (I would use the issue number for that link, but I can never find it when I need to create a link. We hide them well, don't we?)

I also pointed it out to Dries when Drupal Gardens was released in beta. (Perhaps that's a different theme, but, if so, it's the same color combinations.)

So what do we need to do to get this issue taken seriously? Until it is, Drupal.org will not conform with WCAG 2.0 at Level AA.

I've been sick the last few days so jumping in late in the queue here. Wanted to bring up the wording that was last agreed to by the accessibility group:

Drupal 7 is highly accessible for webmasters, content authors, and website visitors. Our Accessibility Group guides the many Drupal developers who have pledged to make their contributed modules as accessible as possible.

The community focus for accessibility is important. Accessibility isn't really about checklists, however that is how things are often judged.

@EvanDonovan thanks for mentioning me & Everett. @webchick - thanks so much for pinging the accessibility group. I'm quite certain I'd have missed this entirely if it hadn't been posted here.

Something to think about for D8 is how to more actively draw the right folks into new threads earlier in the discussion. Accessibility was first brought up in this thread at the end of October but it took two months for the accessibility folks to notice it. Could we create new threads in specific GDO groups when a process like this is starting?

WHY: "Easier" can still be hard. So we're easy.

This is beating a dead horse, but I want to weigh in on the 'Easier' side of thing as well. Just because 'Easy' is a stronger word doesn't mean we should use it. Drupal is orders of magnitude more complicated than many of its direct competitors because of the architectural and interface choices that have been made over the past decade. D7UX has made a lot of great improvements, but no one is helped by overselling it.

In a release that's likely to be read by programmers, end users, and corporate decision makers, absolute claims like "Now it's easy!" fall into the "Also cures cancer" realm: they will either be ignored, or they will lead to anger when the software is used and proves to be more complicated than Tumblr. D7 includes lots of evolutionary changes in the Drupal interface, and saying it's "Easier than ever" is true without veering into hyperbole.

Do we have something actionable why Drupal 7 is more accessible, we had that before. I am asking this because we cannot put in "Our Accessibility Group guides the many Drupal developers who have pledged to make their contributed modules as accessible as possible." - we don't say that for UX, performance or anything else either which have centralized groups working on it.

@Cliff I am sorry, we can perhaps solve it by providing suggestions. However lets do that in the other issue.

I am working on it now, we should finalize the text today (and a bit of tomorrow morning ) but the request for translations should go out tomorrow.

UPDATE: Additional editing is underway, I will take tomorrow morning to tidy up and respond to the different comments.

@148 Fair enough. I guess my standard is vertical, against previous Drupals, not horizontal, against other CMS systems, and by that standard D7 is, in fact, so awesomely easier as to be easy.

If the litmus test for the brand is technical honesty, though, which I think it is, and "easy" doesn't pass it, then heave "easy" over the side by all means!

Maybe you have some influence on the start frame of the video, that is shown in the preview.
Having it all blue also loses Balance on the page now which is almost completely blue and does not draw the eye towards the video.

I might be wrong, for this could be also seen as CI-compliant.

Also my gut reaction was to see the Word Drupal and Drupal 7 once more (the third time on the page) is a bit too much. There was a proposal for Drupal marketing that it should avoid the word Drupal altogeher. Sure this is not possible on a release announcement :P. But three times makes a bit of a narrow-minded impression to me.

#149: @Bojhan, I'm not sure what "something actionable why Drupal 7 is more accessible" means. This is one version of what we had before (apologies if I'm missing something; I don't have much time):

Inclusive design and making Drupal accessible to all was a major focus for this new version. Improvements include HTML alternatives to JavaScript-based administrative interfaces, utility CSS classes for hiding page elements consistently, 'Skip to navigation' links, icons, and a variety of other WCAG AA-level items.

Of the improvements mentioned, only "'Skip to navigation' links" is something that a broad audience might — might — recognize as being related to accessibility.

And as for mentioning "a variety of other WCAG AA-level items"?

• Well, one thing is that we wouldn't say "WCAG AA-level"; we would say something like "conform with WCAG 2.0 at Level AA."
• Another is that we're saying that on a page that has an obvious problem to anyone who is familiar with WCAG 2.0 and can see: It has a number of significant features that fail on color contrast.

One way to address the color-contrast issue would be to add a link to a high-contrast version of the content (same content and layout, different color scheme in the CSS; while we're at it, kill the drop shadow in that CSS, too).

We should also either caption the video or link to a transcript.

Those actions would go farther than any statement to demonstrate a commitment to accessibility.

I'll think this over a bit and get back to you. I know this is wrecking your timeline, but I really do have a lot going on this weekend.

Alright, we have an updated version! I have worked through a lot of suggestions, almost all of the paragraphs are changed.

See : http://sandbox.stevekarsch.com/d7/announcement.html

For the sake of getting this all finalized this evening, I think we should work on the following parts :

• Easier to Use: The examples appending are a bit disconnected.
• More Flexible: This piece needs a whole rewrite.
• Accessibility: The administration screens part appending, also is a bit disconnected

All of the other text to me is of good quality, perhaps the text below Installation and Upgrade could still need some work but the rest is pretty good. After staring at this text for way to long, I have gotten somewhat biased though - so open to any suggestions.

Ok feedback on those items:

"Easier to Use:
An entirely revamped administrative interface will make your daily tasks easier to find and carry out. Using the new dashboard, toolbar, and shortcuts."

That's actually pretty okay, other than

Let's change this to something like:

"Drupal 7 includes many new modules that provide an entirely revamped administrative interface, designed to make your daily tasks easier to find and carry out. Provide customized administrative experiences for your site's end users with the new dashboard and shortcuts modules."

(Except that needs to be like 100 characters shorter. :\)

"More Flexible
Define your own content structure, menus, blocks, categories and much more. Also extend it with many themes and modules.
"

This definitely needs work. There is absolutely nothing here that's not true of Drupal 6's flexibility.

I discussed this with Bojhan at length in IRC, and what we're basically shooting for here is some kind of "hybrid" thing that both gets across Drupal's existing flexibility and also what Drupal 7 does to improve upon it. However, for typical end-users, the major point in flexibility improvements is the Field system, hands down. And we already have a point about that "below the fold". I almost wonder if we should scrap "More flexible" and move "Flexible content" into that space, and add a new "insider" paragraph for something else (RDFa, maybe? The RDF keyword isn't anywhere in this announcement.)

I came up with this:

"Drupal 7 allows for expanding on Drupal's existing modular system by providing custom metadata fields on site content, comments, tags, users, and more. Drupal 7 also provides enhanced file handling and multimedia capabilities over previous releases."

But .. meh.

Other stuff:

Under "Improved Database support" we lost reference to "NoSQL" / MongoDB? I'd suggest something like:

"Additionally there are also modules to provide support for MS SQL Server and Oracle, as well as NoSQL databases such as MongoDB."

(That's getting a little long, but the NoSQL/MongoDB keywords there is important.)
NOTE: I wrote the above before chx vetoed it in IRC, so he's going to post an alternate.

Also, it sounds like we can't in good consciousness put Views in that list (Merlin wants to have an alpha release of Views out by Wednesday but can't confirm it can get done.) So we'll need something else, or to just drop it.

Attach custom fields to content types, users, comments, taxonomy terms and more entity types. These can be stored locally in SQL or NoSQL (like MongoDB) or remotely.

This moves the NoSQL part where it belongs -- it does not belong to the DBTNG section. Please link MongoDB to http://drupal.org/project/mongodb

Please, RDFa. "Linked data" is important in RL, and totally buzzword compliant!

shunting, could you try your hand at a <= 170 char blurb on RDF and why it's awesome?

@154
"Drupal 7 includes many new modules that provide an entirely revamped administrative interface, designed to make your daily tasks easier to find and carry out. Provide customized administrative experiences for your site's end users with the new dashboard and shortcuts modules." (278 characters)

Drupal 7 revamps the administrative interface with many new modules to make your daily tasks easier to carry out, including a customizable dashboard, a toolbar, and shortcuts. (176)

Drupal 7 improves the administrative experience with many new modules to make your daily tasks easier to carry out, including a customizable dashboard, a toolbar, and shortcuts. (178)

@157

Sure. Give me a moment to cudgel my brain. I'll update here.

UPDATE How about:

Join the world of "linked data" by enriching your content with RDF. Core themes are RDFa-compatible. Supports schemas for DC, FOAF, SIOC, and more! Or create your own. (168)

NOTE That's awesome to a geek, but I think anybody who knows the RDF acronym will find this awesome. If you want a rewrite for the awesomeness of enriched content as such, say the word...

Ok changing a few bits:

Introduction
open source software package > content management system

Easier to use
An entirely revamped administrative interface will make your daily tasks easier to find and carry out. With many improvements for site builders and content editors.

More Flexible
[] custom fields.

Flexible content
Attach custom fields to content types, users, comments, taxonomy terms and more entities. These can now also be stored locally in SQL or NoSQL or remotely.

Accesible
It's now easier to build highly accessible websites thanks to many front-end improvements. Additionally, administrative screens are now far more accessible.

Improved Database support
A new database layer provides out-of-the-box support for SQLite, MySQL/MariaDB, and PostgreSQL. Also, MS SQL Server and Oracle can be used through contributed modules.

Images and files
Image handling is supported out of the box. You can now resize and alter your images with ease. Improved handling of private and public files.

Remove Views. Add Webforms ( http://drupal.org/project/webform )

Copy edits on current release at:

http://sandbox.stevekarsch.com/d7/announcement.html

Chicago Public Meda -> Chicago Public Media

30,000 built in -> 30,000 built-in

more efficiently track dependencies -> track dependencies more efficiently

elements with new Render API -> elements with the new Render API

(Since the serial comma is handled two ways, I opted for the least ambiguous style.)

categories and much more -> categories, and much more

better caching and more -> better caching, and more

terms and more entities -> terms, and more entities

Pathauto and WYSIWYG -> Pathauto, and WYSIWYG,

* * *

Since this copy is very dynamic, there's probably no reason to make these changes now. This is more in the nature of a plea for a stage in the workflow: A single copy edit before the final commit.

UPDATE

@160 Accesible -> Accessible

I couldn't bear to see this release announcement get string frozen without mentioning RDF, and I have no idea what "better context capabilities" could possibly mean, so I suggest this instead:

The theme layer now gives designers more control over the page with the new Render API and alter hook capability. We've also added RDFa to provide semantic web support.

Btw, this is not to take a dump on shunting's #159, it's just that I don't think we can go into that kind of depth in a release announcement. :\ People aren't going to widely understand what all those acronyms mean.

@163

So, er, your editorial directive would lead to something more like:

Join the world of "linked data" by enriching your content with RDF, now in core. Help search engines, social media, and other applications understand your content better! (170)

More feedback:

"Image handling is supported out of the box. Resize and alter your images with ease. File handling now supports private and public files."

2 things:

1. "Resize and alter your images with ease" would seem to me to imply we include something like an imagecache crop + wysiwyg sort of capability and we don't. It'd be more accurate to say something like:

"Image support is now included directly in core, including both images as native fields and image resize/alteration capabilities."

2. "File handling now supports private and public files." Drupal always supported private/public files, so this is nothing new. The new thing is you can use them both simultaneously now, on a per-filefield basis, and also that file fields can point to external data sources (which is mostly covered "Flexible content" paragraph).

So maybe:

"Private file handling is now far more robust and can be used alongside public files."

Which together (minus some stuff) would be:

"Image support is now included in core: both images as native fields and image resize/alteration. Private file handling is also more robust and can be used alongside public files."

178 characters.

"These can now also be stored locally in SQL or NoSQL or remotely."

I'd change this to:

"These can now also be stored locally in SQL or NoSQL, or even remotely."

@shunting, glad to see that you're on the ball with the copy editing. Saves me from the worry.

One major issue: It doesn't matter what we say about accessibility if the page itself is inaccessible. And we have three glaring problems, two of which we should be able to solve after the wording is worked out:

• The opening statement — "The Drupal community is proud to present our best work yet — a friendlier and more powerful open source content management platform that can be used to build nearly any kind of website, from blogs and micro-sites to collaborative social communities." — is improperly coded as an h2. But my guess is that anything you enter in that field in Bluecheese will become an h2. If so, there isn't anything we can do about that. It could expose us to ridicule in the accessibility community, though, because proper semantic structure is a keystone of accessibility.
• As noted above and in the issue queue for Bluecheese, the color combinations afford too little contrast. You don't have to change the way this announcement looks — just add a link that switches to a CSS that affords high contrast if the visitor needs it. And be sure the link has high contrast to its background — no lime green buttons!
• The video is undetectable to and inoperable for people using screen readers — and yes, they would love to hear what it has to say. The sound track is unavailable to the Deaf — and yes, they would like to know what it has to say. The solutions are:
  • To make the video perceptible to and operable by people who cannot see:
    1. Use the video plugin for only the canvas.
    2. Put all the necessary player controls in the HTML.
    3. Have those controls interact with the plugin via Javascript.
    4. Add audio description, at least to the extent of naming the websites shown.
  • To make the content accessible to the Deaf and Deaf/Blind:
    1. Add captioning.
    2. Add a transcript.
    3. In the transcript, include a list of the websites shown.

It seems to me that each of these can be done separately, incrementally, and after you put a freeze on changes to the text. (Of course, you would have to thaw that freeze momentarily to add a link to the high-contrast CSS.)

Making as many of these changes as possible will make a far greater impression than any words on the page about the Drupal community's commitment to accessibility to all.

It's Sunday, and we need to allow two days for translation. So unless someone gets on those video improvements like right now we're not going to be able to go live with them. :( Anyone up for typing up a transcript? That'd at least be better than nothing.

@Cliff Yhea, as webchick said its probably a bit to late to accommodate all of that - but I still think we can do the transcript. Can anyone help with that? I have no idea how to do that.

The last text change from me:

More Flexible
Define your own content structure and add custom fields to content, users, comments, and more. Extend your site with one of the over 800 modules already available for Drupal 7.

Compilation of feedback from IRC:

"a friendlier and more powerful, open source content management platform" -> I would remove that comma

---

"Get started with updated documentation for Drupal 7: from best practices and API documentation to upgrade guides and more."

this is now a lie. We only link to install, ugprade, and getting started.
Let's add back the link to http://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/7 (API documentation)

---

"These can now also be stored locally in SQL or NoSQL or remotely."

Let's do: These can now also be stored locally in SQL / NoSQL, or even remotely.

---

"Installation profiles can customize the interface"

I'm 98% positive that should be "can customize the installation interface". Customizing the interface isn't something new in D7.

---

"over 800 modules are available for Drupal 7, including Webform, Pathauto and WYSIWYG, with more on the way every day."

Webform doesn't work. Let's get it out of the list.

I'd really, really like to put Views back there, because it's SO important to adoption (and also for finding bugs and making Views more stable). But in order to do that and be safe, we need to change "available" to something else. We kicked this around in IRC and came up with "available or under active development" as something we could live with. So let's use that.

---

PHP: 5.2.x and higher should be "5.2.4"

---

"Drupal 7 is already in use on some high profile sites. Some examples:"

Let's drop the first "some". And actually, are any of these "high-profile" to outsiders, other than Examiner? Could we replace "high-profile" with something else? Large? Dunno.

I think we need some sort of description next to these links that describes what people are about to click into. http://groups.drupal.org/node/113489 had descriptions next to most of these.

Meh. On that last note, I can't really see pushing off string freeze anymore for link descriptions. And Bojhan pointed out that descriptions won't make people any more or less likely to click these. So let's leave it as-is.

A last note. The top tag line says, Friendly but powerful. Shouldn't that say Friendly and powerful. Because we are basically making it a statement, as if friendly can't be powerful. Understandable to some engineers and ux'rs as a complex challenge, but for the general audience this seems a bit to much of a complex statement?

Well friendly but powerful puts an emphasis that drupal is not simplicistic like Tumblr. Drupal is a complex system, I guess that was what Leisa was after.
Friendly and powerful does not feel as punchy to me. the "but" puts more an emphasis that those are two poles. We accomodate both of them, but are aware that they are useful to two different audiences: beginners and power users.

So for me, leave it as it is.

Hm, thinking about it again: the and implies more of a harmonic relationship between the two groups of users. Though this is not true, the peaceful version might be better... Hm. Difficult.

#169: Bojhan, I assume there is a script somewhere for that video. Ask the folks who did it.

At the very least, create a link after the video that says "Transcript of video tour" and link to a text file containing that script. Where the script mentions various types of websites, add to the transcript inside square brackets the names of at least some of the websites shown.

#172: In English at least, "Friendly but powerful" sounds more compelling that "Friendly and powerful." If you feel it needs to be changed, I'd do it this way: "Drupal 7: Friendly. Powerful." Still compelling, but avoids the semantic issues associated with the choice of conjunctions.

Cliff: There is not AFAIK an existing script/transcript, and if there is we're unlikely to find out before it's too late. Could you chisel out some time tonight to make one? We are literally out of time.

Will do what I can.

Just noting this change to "Easier to use" as discussed with yoroy in IRC:

"Many improvements were added specifically for site builders and content editors."

We are proud to present you our best work yet: Drupal 7, the friendly and powerful content management platform for building nearly any kind of website. From blogs and micro-sites to collaborative social communities.

Missing "to" in "present you", and "From ... " is not a sentence. Change to:

We are proud to present to you our best work yet: Drupal 7, the friendly and powerful content management platform for building nearly any kind of website, from blogs and micro-sites to collaborative social communities.

---

Many improvements specifically for site builders and content editors.

Also not a sentence. Change to:

We've also added many improvements specifically for site builders and content editors.

---

Distribute your custom Drupal product. Use installation profiles for custom interfaces, manage upgrades and capture more configuration settings in code.

Hm. Not totally accurate. The big deal is actually that install profiles are modules now, and thus you can manage your own installation profiles/distributions's upgrades now.

How about:

Create your own custom Drupal-based product. Better installation profile APIs and content exportability mean you capture more configuration settings in code.

---

truly radical alter hooks

I've been teleported back to the 80s! ahhhhh! ;)

This is probably fine, but it's not clear why alter hooks warrants the hyperbole and other things don't. In terms of game-changing stuff, RDFa probably deserves the 'radical' more than alter hooks. :) But I'm fine with this.

---

Install contributed modules to use MS SQL Server and Oracle.

...Oracle, and more.

---

5.2.x and higher -> 5.2.4 and higher

I suggest a clarification in the 'Accessible websites' section:

Administration screens are now far more accessible. Many Front-end improvements make it easier to build highly accessible websites for you, too.

I wasn't sure who "for you, too" was referring to. Taking out a few words seems to make it clearer and stronger.

Video transcript as a text file, unproofed. I'd like to add a Word doc as well, but I see I can't upload it here. (In the Word doc, I could add site names and other info presented only visually, by presenting it as commentary in footnotes.)

Ideas for getting you a Word doc?

Also, if we truly are working on wording, this is what the Accessibility Group came up with:

Drupal 7's administrative screens are more accessible than ever. Building accessible websites is easier with Drupal 7, too. Our commitment to accessibility guarantees this will always be true.

I've been told this is inconsistent with the other blurbs, but I see them linking to content. And why is it important? Because the blurb we now have:

Administration screens are now far more accessible. Many front-end improvements make it easier to build highly accessible websites for you, too.

sounds like the marketing drivel anyone who works in accessibility has seen in VPATs (voluntary product accessibility templates) so often they want to puke. It's generally a signal that the people who wrote it have no idea what accessibility is and are just saying the right thing to get their foot in the door.

If you want to impress people who care about accessibility, cut out the fluff — "front-end improvements" — and link to what makes Drupal unique among CMSs — the content developed by a dedicated group of accessibility professionals.

We've made a lasting commitment to helping everyone involved with Drupal understand what they need to do to make it an accessible tool that generates accessible content. And just because we can't present specific "actionable" accessibility improvements in 140 characters or less, I don't think our input should be thrown out.

Frankly, "Lorem ipsum" would be better than what is under "Accessible" now.

That's my $0.02 worth, but I doubt you'll find any disagreement if you poll the entire Accessibility group.

Thank you all for your feedback! You have made the Drupal 7 release announcement rock!

After much discussion here and in IRC with Bojhan, webchick, arianek, yoroy, chx and many more, the final version of the text can be seen at: http://d7.redesign.devdrupal.org/drupal-7.0/

We are still working on the theming so please excuse any visual inconsistencies. At this point, only grammar and typo changes, please, so we can allow the translation team to do their work.

Thanks again!

That seems to be a password-protected site. Oh, well. Now I have a deeper understanding of how my friends with disabilities feel when everybody's talking about that killer video that they can't find or operate.

User/pass is drupal/drupal, as noted in the prompt. Want to be sure Google, and everyone else, doesn't think it is the real drupal.org.

Marking RTBC to signal that this text is now "locked" so that we can begin the translation effort. MANY thanks to all who participated in this, and especially to Leisa for the initial copy jumpstart, Mark for the beautiful design, karschp for dealing with 100s of revisions, and Bojhan for wrangling the whole effort. :)

Also, translators, there's a video transcript is available at http://drupal.org/files/issues/drupal-7-marketing-video-transcript.txt (Thanks, Cliff!!)

@Cliff I don't understand why you are so upset, only because we don't want to include a statement in the text? I have tried to understand your points, but no argument I gave seems to have swayed you to understand why we didn't put it in. My arguments are:

1) It is out of tone, we don't give statements on anything else (not on UX, performance, code, anything).
2) Statements are hard to understand for the general public, what does it mean - it will be accessible always?
3) Statements are for innies, for people who know Accessibility throughout and understand the importance of such a statement.
4) Statements are a promise, again thats out of tone, we don't make promises in the text.

Anyway, I think I have clearly communicated why I don't think it fits. It might seem like a really important sales point for you, but to me its truly a notice for innies, and we have tried to avoid that as much as possible for all the text. We can't make everyone happy with this text, some sales points won't be made - as important as they might seem.

I wish we had more time to get this all discussed and work on the accessibility issues of blucheese, sadly my calls for contribution didn't attract everyone :( - but we really have to close the text now, to let translators do their work.

I think that the updated text is great, except for 2 things:

1)

We are proud to present to you our best work yet – Drupal 7, the friendly and powerful content management platform for building nearly any kind of website: from blogs and micro-sites to collaborative social communities.

Can a dash & colon be used together like this? I would think just a comma would be better than the dash in this case. I think it looks confusing otherwise.

2) The Accessibility statement is very vague now. Surely we could have said something more detailed than this, and still be telling the true? If we don't want to mention standards, which is understandable, since we aren't (yet) 100% compliant, then maybe stating that we have a team working toward compliance would be better than the current text.

DrupalCon is the best place for new people to Drupal to learn about Drupal 7 and its new features. To help promote this experience please add "Attend DrupalCon Chicago to learn more about Drupal 7" to the right sidebar next to the video.

See attached screenshot or this one:
https://skitch.com/jacobredding/r8tbc/screen-shot-2011-01-03-at-2.30.49-pm

Was really, really hoping not to touch the text again, but it really is silly for us not to mention DRUPALCON of all things under the "Learn more" section.

Bojhan and Jacob and I discussed this on IRC and so we are going to let this change pass. Very sorry to the translators for this last-minute addition. :(

We have almost finished the german translation, except the video transcript. Where do we drop it? :)

@eigentor All the info about where and how to put translations is here: http://groups.drupal.org/node/113499
I sent you this link in e-mail earlier today.

At the bottom of http://d7.redesign.devdrupal.org/drupal-7.0, there is now a basic list of available languages.

Oh, right, both PM and Release announcement in the same place. Thanks.

I think title "Available languages" should be "Available languages for release announcement" or "Available translations for release announcement". I may be wrong, but I think this way it's more clear what is available in those links.

Re Webchick's comment, I actually think that the comma should be a semicolon, since it's not a place for a longer pause. The Oatmeal has a cool and informative comic about that here. I also think after 'Drupal 7', the sentence ends, like this:

We are proud to present to you our best work yet: Drupal 7. The friendly and powerful content management platform for building nearly any kind of website; from blogs and micro-sites to collaborative social communities.

//EDIT
After re-reading the Oatmeal comic myself, I actually have to re-think the whole semicolon part, but the end-of-sentence part stays in my book.

Bojhan, I'm trying hard not to rant here. But here's why I'm — no, we, the Accessibility Group, are — upset:

• We had 60 hours to contribute to the design and authoring of this page. Your team has been working on it for at least 60 days.
• We took time away from our families while on vacation to review the page and come up with suggestions. I myself spent several hours — probably more, actually — on New Year's Eve and into the wee hours of the following morning. In fact, at the stroke of midnight in my time zone I was composing my first response to Angie's plea for help. And Mike Gifford came out of his sick bed to contribute. So, yes, we were inconvenienced, to say the least.
• Because no one is going to listen to what we say about accessibility if our website is inaccessible, we identified the significant accessibility issues of the announcement page and showed that the most egregious problems could be fixed even after the wording of the site was set. But you have rejected all but one of those changes — the transcript for the video.
• Let's talk about the transcript. The only reason we have it is that, after being told that no script could be found, I transcribed it myself. Time and again, I said that whoever created that video had to have worked from a script. But you neither contacted the members of the Public Relations team who had already posted a draft of the script online nor put me in touch with them. I had things to do Sunday, but rather than go to bed when I needed to, I stayed up at Angie's behest to transcribe the video from scratch. (While transcribing it, I thought I recognized Tom Geller's voice, so I pinged him. He sent me the link to his draft, but I received it after I had already posted mine. I could have done so much more, even in only two hours, had you connected me with him — or Jeff Robbins — to begin with.)
• Because having a team of knowledgeable professionals leading the effort to make Drupal more accessible, not just with this release but continuing into the future, will impress people who are looking for accessibility in their CMS, we included a link to the Drupal Accessibility Statement in our wording for the small item under "Accessible." You categorically rejected the idea of including the link, no matter how we worded it.

As a result, our announcement page tells people who need a CMS that meets the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG 2.0) that the Drupal community only pays lip service to accessibility. That is far from the truth — but, based on this announcement page, many of them will choose not to use Drupal for their projects.

And I fear that people who pick up the vibes I've picked up — that the person who has been tapped to lead us in developing Drupal 8 thinks that accessibility is only a "sales point" — will drift away from the Drupal community and see if their talents are better appreciated elsewhere.

You see, Bojhan, you gave reasons for rejecting our ideas. But you never weighed whether your reasons were truly more important than our concerns.

That's been a pattern throughout our work on Drupal 7. I do not look forward to seeing it repeat as we work on Drupal 8.

@197: JayNL, I'm not going to look at the item in Oatmeal because it's either wrong or irrelevant. The two phrases are in apposition to "Drupal 7"; as such, they should be set off from it and from each other by commas. That's coming from decades of experience in copy editing.

Hey, Cliff. I understand you are upset. But the tone in your post is really wrathful against someone who is also purely a volunteer in this initiative (picking it up after the initial volunteer who started it got busy with real life) and who also spent their entire New Years' weekend on this, along with a bunch of the rest of us. Without Bojhan, we wouldn't have this release announcement at all, and would just have pasted CHANGELOG.txt somewhere and said "It's out. Read it." (Ok, maybe that's slightly exaggerating, but it's impossible to understate the level of involvement he's had in making this come together.)

Both he and I and several others, including and @drupal account on Twitter have sent many, many, many notices about this initiative over Twitter, Drupal Planet, and other places literally begging for people to come work on it. The results were pretty lackluster up until last week. So with release date creeping up so fast, we got desperate and so started pinging some groups directly, including the accessibility team. You could argue we should've done so way sooner, but we've been a bit busy getting Drupal 7 done.

It's unfortunate this initiative didn't get on the right radars with enough notice to see everything accomplished that you would've liked to really promote accessibility in the way it deserves given its importance and also the level of effort that was put into it in Drupal 7. But I feel your post crosses a line and makes it personal against Bojhan, and he does NOT deserve that.

So let's talk after this is all over about how to make this process much smoother for next time.

For the video, it sounds like we might want to just switch to a non-Vimeo place to host. Is there a good 3rd-party video service that is strong on accessibility and has clean embeds? They should be big enough to handle the traffic and put no ads or other clutter on our page.

@189: EvanDonovan, thanks for your support for our position on the wording under "Accessible."

The problem with saying anything specific is that there is nothing I can think of that we can say in four or five lines of text without being so vague as to be meaningless. What were the significant improvements? Well:

• One involved a way to make Overlay work for people using screen readers and giving them a way that, if they found the interface too confusing, they could turn Overlay off. Just that sentence would take up our four lines of text, and we haven't even mentioned accessibility or explained what "Overlay" is.
• In another series of fixes, we made sure that the default color schemes for all core themes provided sufficient color contrast. We could mention that, but the theme for the announcement page itself — Bluecheese — fails that point miserably. So we should say, "Yes, we know this is important, but we don't care"? Besides, we were told that we should stay away from words that would be familiar to "innies" only, so we probably would have to explain what a "core theme" was. Oops — more than four lines again.
• We made several fixes to ensure that each form field in core and core modules has a label element. "All form fields have label elements." How does that grab you?
• We also made changes that systematized the use of heading tags so the overall semantic structure of the page would be sound to begin with. But, again, we would be saying that on a page that fails that point — the entire introductory paragraph is coded as an <h2> instead of simply a properly styled <p>. And the first thing anyone who knows accessibility is going to do is check the page structure with one of the free analysis tools, so it would take about three seconds for anyone who cares about accessibility to decide that that statement is false.

So, simply put, we were and are vigilant for all the ways Drupal and its modules or themes might undermine the building of an accessible website. Wherever we found that going on, we created an issue and tried to help the responsible developers figure out a way to fix the problem.

Maybe that's the short blurb we need: "We make issues of barriers to accessibility — and then we get them fixed!" But I doubt many will get the double meaning of "make issues," and few of those who do would laugh.

And that's the problem — improvements to accessibility take too many words to explain, so anything we can say in the space allotted is going to sound vague, insincere, or both.

Other than a perfectly accessible announcement, the only way to impress people that Drupal is the CMS to get for accessibility is to demonstrate that we have a talented pool of professionals contributing their best efforts to make sure Drupal complies with ATAG 2.0. A link to our accessibility statement would have done that.

Nonetheless, thank you for caring. I appreciate it deeply, and I know the rest of us who work so hard on accessibility (and I realize you're among us) do, too.

@Cliff I am going to try and ignore all the personal points, please remember though that this text is a community process - I might disagree, but it will always be a discussion - if webchick and others for example agree, I have to step a side.

The fact that we had very little time, made it so we couldn't fully discuss all of the points. I am sorry, you had so little time - but in the mess of things, I haven't been able to reach everyone involved as webchick mentions.

I am sad, you think that my standing on accessibility is only a sales point. I have spend countless hours working on accessibility improvements to Drupal 7, making sure they look good and get committed - I don't know what else I can do to show I care for it :(. In Drupal 7 through my involvement I have kind of gotten the bad job of weighting decisions between UX and accessibility, I hope you understand - its not a position I want to be in either (its though, stressful and almost always someone will disagree), I wish they would always live together in harmony - but at the end of the day its a community process and I do not hold a veto only an opinion. I am very open to just having a talk about this, a negative vibe is never good.

In terms of fixing the announcement page accessibility, I only voiced reality - if you feel we can fix it all, I see no reason why I would imply that isn't right.

@201: drumm, the problem is not the tool used as the screen so much as the difficulty of the controls. You can ask @ezufelt for more details, but adding html-based controls that operate the Vimeo frame through Javascript would fix the problem. Switch to another viewer and you'd have to be sure the same type of controls were present there. (Frankly, I'm surprised that we don't have a Drupal module that does this.)

@200: Angie, I would be a lot more gracious to Bojhan if he would just once give me a valid reason we cannot address accessibility. Do you honestly consider his reasons for not linking to the accessibility statement valid? Let's go through them one by one:

1. "It is out of tone, we don't give statements on anything else (not on UX, performance, code, anything)."
   Um, nobody gives statements on usability, performance, or code. I am sorry that Bojhan is unaware that accessibility statements are an important standard feature of websites, but today they are. It would have been courteous of him to accept the opinion of the Accessibility Group that the Drupal accessibility statement is a significant feature to mention and, in fact, link to. And it would not have changed the overall character of this announcement to have done so.
2. "Statements are hard to understand for the general public, what does it mean - it will be accessible always?"
   When we say, "Our commitment to accessibility guarantees this will always be true," we mean that our team of professionals is here for the long haul. As far as any of us can tell, that's a unique feature for a CMS — and we are very well-connected in the accessibility community, so we would have heard about similar initiatives with other CMSs if they were occurring.
   Having an ongoing commitment is important because accessibility is not something you can do once and then walk away from. It takes continuous maintenance to keep up with changing markup languages and technologies.
   If the general public gets "It will be accessible always" out of that statement, that's fine, too.
3. "Statements are for innies, for people who know Accessibility throughout and understand the importance of such a statement."
   Excuse me, but these statements are clearly for innies in their respective areas, too (I'm not sure where to find the final language; forgive me if http://d7.redesign.devdrupal.org/drupal-7.0 isn't current):
   • Many front-end improvements make it easier to build highly accessible websites.
   • Store the data for these fields in SQL, NoSQL, or use remote storage.
   • Install contributed modules to use MS SQL Server, Oracle, and more.
   • The new RDF module provides semantic web markup.
4. "Statements are a promise, again thats out of tone, we don't make promises in the text."
   Are these not promises:
   • A new database layer provides out-of-the-box support for SQLite, MySQL/MariaDB, and PostgreSQL.
   • Adding images to content is now built in.
   • [O]ver 800 modules are available or under active development for Drupal 7, including Views, Pathauto, and WYSIWYG, with more on the way every day.
   • Control exactly what gets shown where on the screen with the new Render API and some truly radical alter hooks.

Excuse me, Angie, but those aren't reasons — they're arbitrary statements for rejecting the input of the Accessibility Group. I tried several different times to make my point, but Bojhan always decided that his understanding of "the larger picture" trumped my understanding of what is true and will impress people who care about accessibility.

But let's try to put that behind us for now. If we're not going to show that Drupal has perhaps the most active and robust team of accessibility professionals behind its development (which is one thing that link would have demonstrated) of any CMS, then let's make the changes we can that will make the announcement page more accessible:

• Add a high-contrast stylesheet and add a link in black text at top of the page that switches to it. (Remember to kill the drop-shadow effect in that stylesheet.)
• Add html-based controls to the video player. If you need help with that, I suggest you try hiring Everett Zufelt as a consultant. He can help you get it done right.

Those two changes in themselves will help make an impression that we care about accessibility. And if we need any terms translated, it should be only about a half-dozen words: "High-Contrast View," "Play," "Pause," "Stop." Am I forgetting something?

Even if this were done next week it would make an impression — but Bojhan gives me the distinct impression that that can't be considered at all.

I just don't understand that.

Let me point out one thing, Angie: I worked two solid days this holiday weekend on this project, and nothing I produced was accepted except for the transcript, and you actually already had that.

And you know what? The transcript was something anyone could have done. The statement and link were something it took my professional background and expertise to contribute.

But as if I'm a cub reporter submitting an article for the weekly news rag, I'm told, "We can't use it. The tone isn't right."

Balderdash. Out of simple respect for our effort, something we wrote should have been incorporated. Bojhan didn't even go with our version of the first two sentences, which should have been completely fine from any standpoint.

If you value the Accessibility Group, trust our judgment now and then.

And because Bojhan has consistently challenged our judgment up to now, from now on he in particular really needs to accept with respect what we say. If we say it's important, don't ask why; just do it! And don't change our wording unless we agree. I know that sounds extreme, but he's going to need to do that for a while to earn our trust.

And perhaps he needs to do it to build his own trust for us. I don't know what he is afraid will happen if he ever goes along with us. It would be nice if he would just let go some time and find out.

Cliff - I spent yesterday evening helping to finalize the text on this, and questioned several details, the accessibility blurb included. I can see you're frustrated, and yes, the text is not *perfect*, but it needed to be finalized, and there are always some concessions. This will surely not be the only write up about the launch (this really has only limited detail and leaves tons of information out), so there will be other opportunities to give more detail - why not provide the info in an updated Accessibility section in the online docs?

But what Angie said, "Without Bojhan, we wouldn't have this release announcement at all, and would just have pasted CHANGELOG.txt somewhere and said 'It's out. Read it.'"...this really isn't an exaggeration. Bojhan, Karschp, Mark Boulton and a few others jumped in very last minute to get this pulled together. As with many last minute "grunt work" type tasks, nobody speaks up until it is really too late. This issue was open 2 months before New Years when the Accessibility text/issues were given input, and everyone is busy actually *finishing* Drupal 7 at this point, so only so much time can go into the release post.

It's got fancy theming so, yes it looks like it does lack some accessibility, but otherwise with the time and resources available, it would have been a simple text + images post otherwise. You're not the only group who's sunk a lot of time into this, but the reality is that it needed to be finished, translated, and launched in a matter of days.

We now have one day left. Everyone has done the best they could with the small amount of time and energy left to push this out the door. Let's please not start taking things personally, that are really just a factor of time and resource constraints.

@203: Bojhan, I suggest you find a way to pay for an accessibility consultant and contact Everett Zufelt. He has the expertise to help you. I don't. I can tell you in broad terms what's wrong with the video player. I can't tell you how to fix it. Everett can.

As for fixing an alternate CSS, I assume the switching function is trivial. And my contribution toward our success is the thorough treatment of color and contrast I added to the Drupal documentation. Have someone follow those instructions to come up with color pairs that afford adequate contrast.

@205: Ariane, thanks for your explanation of the situation. But no one has yet explained why, with me asking for a script, they couldn't have at least told me whom to ask about it. And I'm sure other groups did a ton of work. Were any of their submissions rejected outright?

Part of the problem is that outright rejection has been a pattern with Bojhan whenever accessibility is involved: On any issue, whatever an accessibility expert has said needs to be done, Bojhan has said, "No."

And the reasons Bojhan has given in those instances are as flimsy as the reasons he gave in rejecting our wording and our link to the accessibility statement.

So with that history, a wasted weekend is more than frustrating.

I was away from Drupal for a few days but wanted to jump in and say that (overall) the text and design look great!

I see two grammatic mistakes in the latest version of the text that could use fixing. They aren't major so it's not the end of the world if translations don't pick them up, but they should be fixed in English:

1. As others have said (but may have gotten lost in later discussion?), the combination of dash and colon in the opening paragraph seems wrong.

   I would just replace the colon with a comma, i.e.

   We are proud to present to you our best work yet – Drupal 7, the friendly and powerful content management platform for building nearly any kind of website, from blogs and micro-sites to collaborative social communities.

2. Serial commas (i.e. the optional comma preceding the "and" in a list of items, "X, Y, and Z") are used inconsistently throughout the text. Some have the comma, and some don't. As @jhodgdon said above the style guide says we should have it.

****

The only other thing that jumped out at me is the screenshot. Is that intended to be a placeholder, or the final version? I have to say that if it's the final version, I don't think it's appropriate for a banner ad that says "Groupon shopping" to be the focus of the screenshot in the community announcement of Drupal 7's release. That does not look professional.

We should instead have a screenshot that uses "Lorem ipsum" or similar text so the content doesn't distract from the text on the rest of the page. And it should also use Bartik. It looks like using Bartik was rejected at some point above because it was thought to be too bland? However, that was actually an issue with the particular proposed screenshot, not with Bartik itself. From what I have seen, Bartik really starts to shine once you add lots of content to its different regions, and once the content has images. It would be nice if we could do that and show people what can be done with Drupal 7 out of the box. Plus, this would allow the screenshot to highlight some other D7 features (Toolbar/Shortcuts, and probably Contextual Links). The examiner.com site looks nice, but in terms of visible features there isn't anything particularly specific to D7 about it (the theme could presumably have been built in D6 also).

I am a bit swamped for time but will see if I can find time to help throw a candidate screenshot together. I know the deadline is really coming up, but I assume a screenshot can still be swapped since it doesn't affect translations?

@Cliff That's understandable. But, if you're having personal issues communicating with Bojhan, better to address that directly (outside of this issue) rather than berate him here and on behalf of the accessibility team. That's not going to help anything.

And on that note, thanks to everyone who worked so hard on this, it was really great seeing it come together so nicely in the end!

@209: Thanks for the advice, Ariane. But it isn't personal issues communicating with Bojhan. It's a pattern of behavior on his part that must change, or it will drive away many valuable volunteers and lead many would-be users of Drupal to pursue other options.

Talk to him about it? We have tried. Didn't work. :-(

Following up on #208, I played around with this a bit and how about something like the attached as a screenshot? We could spruce it up more, but I think it's a good start, and highlights actual features of Drupal 7.

This was made using point-and-click via Drupal 7 core only, with the exception of a couple lines of CSS to get the image to float left. I got the contextual links to show in the screenshot but without the mouse cursor (not sure an easy way to get both to appear) but I think it still gets the point across, and it would look very nice to show those in the release announcement.

The images used here are in the public domain (http://www.pdphoto.org/PictureDetail.php?pg=5872&mat=pdef and http://www.pdphoto.org/PictureDetail.php?mat=&pg=5536).

David: Well, the point leisa made up above is that the default Drupal admin interface is not a compelling thing to outsiders. Real sites using Drupal 7 are. I actually can see that point.

The Examiner.com screenshot is intended to be a slideshow of other D7 sites (DrupalGardens, etc.) but there's a rapidly shrinking window in which to implement it. That's happening over here: #1011850: Publish the Drupal 7 release announcement

@webchick, thanks. I agree a slideshow would be nice, and definitely fits well with the "nearly any kind of website" text in the intro paragraph. A single screenshot of one site is very different though, since people will focus (as I did) on details of that particular site.

So I'm not opposed to my screenshot becoming a backup in case a slideshow is not implemented.

I think we may be overestimating how important it is to communicate to outsiders that real sites are using Drupal 7. The text itself (ignoring the screenshot) clearly focuses on "Drupal 7 is new and has cool features" with the part about sites already using Drupal 7 only at the very bottom. That seems like how it should be. As an outsider reading about software that was just released yesterday I wouldn't expect that software to already be in active use - I would be more interested in its potential for future use. Just because some of us are crazy and have been running production sites off Drupal 7 for months doesn't mean it should be highlighted :)

... the default Drupal admin interface is not a compelling thing to outsiders ...

I deliberately focused the screenshot on the front-end of the site, with the admin interface only a small part of it. (We could certainly focus it more on the front-end by cropping the toolbar/shortcuts but leaving the contextual links.) I think the screenshot should be relevant for multiple audiences, though.

I am not sure if I should move this to #1011850: Publish the Drupal 7 release announcement. I think not, since that seems focused on the technical implementation whereas this issue is about general strategy.

Yeah, here is fine.

The screenshot you posted is great because it showcases a number of the new improvements in one spot. It would also break up SO MUCH BLUE in the header. However, I don't feel really feel qualified to override the previous thoughts that went into the current screenshot selection, since I'm the very definition of an insider here. :D

Not sure if Leisa is still following here, but if so, thoughts? Because I agree that getting a slideshow wrangled together by Wed. morning seems very unlikely at this point, especially an accessible one.

@213, @214: As the epitome of an outsider, let me say that the screenshot David Rothstein produced would be far better than any random shot of a Drupal-using site (this from a content strategist who abhors Lorem ipsum in any permutation).

In the video there are at least 19 examples of sites that use Drupal.

Just remember to add "alt" text to the screenshot — perhaps "Mockup of a typical site open for editing in Drupal 7"

@Cliff Again, if you feel any negative vibe coming from me just talk to me on IRC or Skype.

We have over 20 links in the wiki, I think it was designed as a slideshow - let me see if I can get a JS expert to get it done before Wed. morning.

Before we start making a slideshow - have we considered using that video at the top?

It would require a redesign of the top section (I'll see if I can blackmail Mark some more) but I think it would add a whole lot more value than one or twenty screenshots.

It's a good video. We should work it harder.

@leisa I am not sure, but I think its a bit to late to do that. The change has to happen without adding extra text, because translations have gone underway and someone has to code it today.

The video now is a good separator between the top row of strengths and bottom two rows of features, it seems like a good balance.

There is something that may help the discussion: while the text and content is finalized and will not be touched anymore, I guess it is perfectly possible to iron out some CSS, Video and other issues even after the release. Should be better before, but definitely can be fixed until a day or two later.

This is not to reduce the importance, but to reassure Cliff his concerns can be adressed and this does not have to be done with the totally hot needle and gives a less hectic timeline.

Improved database support

A new database layer provides out-of-the-box support for SQLite, MySQL/MariaDB, and PostgreSQL. Install contributed modules to use MS SQL Server, Oracle, and more.

This needs to be edited. Drupal 7.0 will only support MySQL/MariaDB, because of the critical bug in the implementation of PostgreSQL and SQLite that makes them totally unusable (#1008128: Do not use a single underscore as table and index separator on PostgreSQL and SQLite). This can be fixed later (for 7.1), but currently we have to strongly discourage people from using Drupal 7 on anything that is not MySQL/MariaDB.

This release announcement is going to be up for a long time, including well after 7.1 comes out. So there's no reason we need to do this. The upgrade path for that fix will need to account for the pre-7.0 installs, anyway.

On the contrary. We *need* to *actively discourage* people from ever installing or upgrading Drupal on PostgreSQL and SQLite. Drupal 7.0 will be completely and utterly broken on those platforms, we need to make that crystal clear.

We can always fix the announcement page when we release 7.1, which will hopefully be working correctly on those platforms.

Oh, and the video should probably be changed too :) [I understand that this is not possible, but the text still definitely can be changed]

I don't understand. Drupal 7 installs just fine on Pgsql right now. Same with SQLite. I can create content, I can install modules, etc.

I understand that certain contrib modules such as Drupal Commerce will run into weird errors with these index names, but that's absolutely no reason to lie to people and say they can't use D7 on these database systems.

And finally, this release announcement is talking about capabilities here of Drupal 7. I'm sure the MongoDB stuff that NoSQL links to isn't totally solid for certain sites out there, or a number of contributed modules. But the fact that fields can save to NoSQL is a capability of Drupal 7, and so we mention it in the release announcement.

I'm also sure there are bugs with field API/UI and the menu system and the upgrade path and 1000 other things we haven't caught yet. We're not changing the text to mention those either.

Finally, want those PostgreSQL and SQLite limitations fixed faster? Then widely advertise Drupal 7's capabilities in these areas, to help get some new contributors to test and help improve them.

So this is back to RTBC. We're now at something like 45 translations, and can't change the text at this point.

Lets make sure we add the caption too, cliff mentioned http://universalsubtitles.org/ .

That's just lying. Do we really want to go there?

Yes, PostgreSQL and SQLite are completely and utterly broken. Not in the very specific use case of Drupal core, but they are broken nonetheless. Saying otherwise is just lying.

The Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 upgrade path for PostgreSQL is also very broken and we need to actively discourage people from relying on it.

This is not Beta or RC anymore. We need to be honest about what is broken in that release, especially when we know that some dark corners are very very broken.

I'm sorry, but I completely disagree. I have a D7 site right now on SQLite and have installed Pathauto, Views, CTools, and more. With Update Manager. I'm using Drush to turn things on and off. Drupal 7 works right now on these alternative databases, for a great many use cases.

Will people using SQlite run into problems when they try and install certain contrib modules? Yes, absolutely. But that's no justification for removing those from the release announcement. "Out of the box support" is completely accurate. It works, out of the box. If you venture outside the box, you might get a few black eyes, but that's probably true of a lot of things in D7.

Can we please, please drop this? I really wanted the last few hours before Drupal 7.0 to be a time of excitement. Not a time of playing status ping-pong and having to defend myself.

*sigh*

Do we at least will have a proper announcement node on which we can state those truths you don't want to spoil the main release announcement with?

Ok transcript in, but it could use a few improvements http://universalsubtitles.org/videos/NOfZXGeyeP1G/info/ anyone who can help run it sync, please jump in.

Bojhan, that's great! Amazing to see that there's already a Russian translation up there. I wonder how many other translations of the video we can get made & synced? It's great to see how an enhancement made for the deaf can also be beneficial for other communities too.

It is also wonderful to jump in to say that it's great that you took Cliff's suggesting & link & ran with it. I was hoping I might have time, but it's gotten really busy for me lately. I've been skimming this issue and trying to find ways to jump in but haven't had much more time than to quickly skim the many issues that have been raised & debated here.

It's been a long process. For those of us who have been in the trenches of D7 development over the last two years it's probably less than we had hoped and more than we had imagined. As I set up my first few production sites i keep turning around finding things I'm amazed with that i hadn't known about.

I find this process amazing too! Not perfect, but very transparent. I think that for most project's this detail would probably be an afterthought that someone would hastily put together. The D7 process would make the subject of a few very interesting research papers.

Anyways, thanks for adding the captioning. It's a very useful and helps demonstrate this community's commitment to accessibility!

Re-synched the English-captioned video. Bojhan had it pretty good, and now it's better — good enough to embed or link to, in my opinion.

If someone wants to tweek the synching again, go for it, but be warned:

• For the Deaf, it's more important for a subtitle to appear when the corresponding content is on screen.
• For people with cognitive disabilities, it might be better for the subtitles to synch with the narration. (Not an easy choice; I tended to synchronize with content rather than the narration when there was a significant difference.)
• Either way, the delay (even with a 4G wireless connection) can eat you up, making you think it's perfectly synched when everything is off just a bit.
• And the interface doesn't give you a high degree of fine control.

Before you make any changes, watch it with the sound off.

If you find it annoyingly out of synch, probably the best thing to do is to fix the timing of no more than four or five captions without closing and starting over. Then, of course, tweek the next four or five captions.

In these captions, I removed the information that had been inside square brackets in the transcript. That information — for example, names of websites shown — is helpful for anyone who has only the text, but isn't helpful in the caption. (It duplicates the information in the image, so it's just taking up room.)

Translators, you might do the same unless you are convinced that your audience will need to see the translations (or transliterations) of the names of the websites shown in the video.

And note that we have two different items here for accessibility:

• For Deaf, the captioned videos.
• For people who use screen readers, the text transcript, which includes the names of the websites shown and other information that is otherwise available only by seeing the images.

Bojhan, good job on getting the captioned video begun!

DONE! :D http://drupal.org/drupal-7.0

GREAT work on this, all!!!

Can someone add a

<span style="whitespace: nowrap; font-weight: bold">Drupal 7</span>

to the Drupal 7 in the very title of the release announcement page?
there can be awkward linebreaks... http://drupal.org/drupal-7.0/de

Also e.g. on the dutch page, there is a line break. For all those languages the Get started button gets pushed down in an ugly way, too close to the dark gray/black box. http://drupal.org/drupal-7.0/nl

.link-button {
    margin-top: 35px;
}

helps these languages without making the english one worse.

Great work! One comment: for someone new to Drupal who is just scrolling through the release announcement, the "available languages" section really looks like these are the only languages in which Drupal 7 itself is available (which makes a bad impression because the list is short). Maybe the title should be changed to something like "This webpage is also available in: "...

Why not this way?

#header-feature h1 {
    font-size: 2.2em;
    font-weight: normal;
    letter-spacing: 0.02em;
    margin-bottom: 0.8em;
}

for the Linebreak on http://drupal.org/drupal-7.0/de

This task was finished months ago.

It always feels good to close a critical ;-)