Does anyone else find it a bit challenging to browse through the project pages?
It’s great to see that so many people are uploading their designs for sale, but with 98 pages of 10 projects each, it’s getting more and more challenging to find stuff. Most projects don’t display much of a summary, and the project names are only helpful if you happen to be looking for a board that you already know about. If you’re browsing through, it takes a long time to flip through the stack of boards, and it’s hard to tell what some of these boards even do! This isn’t going to get any easier as the number of projects keeps on climbing…
I’m not wedded to any particular format, but I’d like to propose a new summary page format that:
- displays a lot more projects per pages -- a thinner horizontal format might be easier to read
- ditches the PCB picture (yeah, I know, many of us start salivating when we see a bare PCB but maybe the PCB icon can be ditched at the top level in favor of displaying more projects on a page. Perhaps a more detailed picture can go on the project page)
- has separate searchable fields for a project name, a one sentence summary, and a one paragraph project description
- displays only project name and summary, and displays project description when hovering mouse (this may not work on android devices or ipads, though)
- includes a user rating. perhaps a way that people who buy the boards can apply a rating (1 to 5 stars) for usefulness, documentation completeness and ease of assembly. (the ranking really needs to be applied by people who've bought and used it rather than by people simply browsing)
Finally, it might be helpful to have a few example "style guide"project pages that highlight what information is useful to include (e.g., rather than "Bike lamp" something like "able to drive a 10V to 15V string of LEDs at up to 200mA"). Many of the projects are described as being very application-specific, but with a bit more information, I suspect they could be used for other purposes.
Thanks. Again, always inspiring to see that so many people are building stuff.