Subject: Today's transition for www.ietf.org

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 10:53:00 -0500

Hello,

As shared last month [1], the revamped www.ietf.org website will move to production today, 11 January 2018, at 1730 UTC.

I would like to again thank the many people who took time to provide input and feedback over the course of the project, Joe Hildebrand who was the initial project manager, Greg Wood who coordinated with the web site designers, and especially to those individuals from the IETF community who participated in the Community Review Committee to provide guidance and feedback as the new site was developed.

While the goal has been to anticipate and implement measures to ensure a smooth transition, the IETF Secretariat and the web development vendor are prepared to pay extra attention to quickly fixing any issues that arise in the next few weeks. Please submit any problems to:

	[email-masked]

For the time being the previous website will remain available via www6.ietf.org.

Sincerely,
Russ Housley
IETF Website Revamp Project Manager

[1] https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/bWzfuYGuBW0nYfaMMtNGikY2t9w

---

From: "Scott O. Bradner" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 12:43:22 -0500

I thought there was going to be an easily found link that took people who actually wanted to
work in  the IETF to a page of links

nothing stands out as being that link and poking at where is there does not yield anything

Scott

imo - a fine looking web site for people who do not want to actually participate in the IETF

> On Jan 11, 2018, at 10:53 AM, Russ Housley <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
>

---

From: "Scott O. Bradner" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 12:44:19 -0500

clicking on “find out more about the IETF standards process” gets a 404

---

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 12:46:34 -0500

Scott:

I think the page you are seeking is under the "tools" tab.  It takes you to https://beta.ietf.org/links/

Russ

> On Jan 11, 2018, at 12:43 PM, Scott O. Bradner <[email-masked]> wrote:
>

---

From: "Scott O. Bradner" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 12:50:37 -0500

the tools pulldown does not indicate anything like that

so if someone already knows that clicking on the tools item in the toolbar will 
take you to something that will make it possible to work its OK - but for everyone who 
does not have that magic information - so it goes

why not 
	1/ have a “links” entry in the topdown list
	or
	2/ lave a “links” item on the toolbar?

Scott

> On Jan 11, 2018, at 12:46 PM, Russ Housley <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Scott:
>

---

From: "Scott O. Bradner" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 12:53:03 -0500

ps - on most web sites I deal with if you click on a toolbar item you get a page that 
includes the items in the topdown list one gets by clicking & holding on the toolbar item

that is what does not happen here

Scott

> On Jan 11, 2018, at 12:50 PM, Scott O. Bradner <[email-masked]> wrote:
>

---

From: "Scott O. Bradner" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 12:56:36 -0500

how do you get to that page if you are on a smartphone?

I do not see a “tools” entry on the menu 

Scott

---

From: "Scott O. Bradner" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 13:03:03 -0500

I tried a number of links on the links page and get 404s

upcoming meetings
pact meetings

others worked (mission, iesg announcements) but VERY slowly

Scott

---

From: "Valery Smyslov" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 21:18:32 +0300

"Search" doesn't work at all from IE11. It works from Chrome,
but differently comparing to the old site - it doesn't search
throuth the IETF documents, just searches through the site.
That makes it useless.

Regards,
Valery.

-----Original Message----- 
From: Scott O. Bradner
Date: 11 января 2018 г. 21:03
To: Russ Housley
Cc: IETF
Subject: Re: Today's transition for www.ietf.org

upcoming meetings
pact meetings

Scott

>>> I would like to again thank the many people who took time to provide input and feedback over the course of the 
>>> project, Joe Hildebrand who was the initial project manager, Greg Wood who coordinated with the web site designers, 
>>> and especially to those individuals from the IETF community who participated in the Community Review Committee to 
>>> provide guidance and feedback as the new site was developed.
>>>
>>> While the goal has been to anticipate and implement measures to ensure a smooth transition, the IETF Secretariat and 
>>> the web development vendor are prepared to pay extra attention to quickly fixing any issues that arise in the next 
>>> few weeks. Please submit any problems to:
>>>
>>> [email-masked]
>>>

---

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 13:22:39 -0500

To second Scott's reaction, getting to that page was a completely 
non-obvious process.  Sure, it probably won't usually matter as I will 
bookmark the links page itself, and never visit www.ietf.org again.
But still, really strange.

(Admittedly, the modern aesthetic in web pages is completely alien to 
me, which is why I am not commenting on the general layout, and did not 
do so during the trial periods.)

Yours,
Joel

---

From: Pat Thaler <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 10:25:16 -0800

I don't know if it is because it is getting hammered with requests as we
all check it out, but I'm also finding pages take an age to load.

And I don't see any entry that goes to a list like the beta links page.

On-line tools under How We Work produces a very wordy page of explanation
with links interspersed.

There is a set of links under Tools  - WG chair resources but it doesn't
contain all the links on the other page.

On Thu, Jan 11, 2018 at 10:03 AM, Scott O. Bradner <[email-masked]> wrote:

> >>> As shared last month [1], the revamped www.ietf.org website will move
> to production today, 11 January 2018, at 1730 UTC.
> >>>
> >>> I would like to again thank the many people who took time to provide
> input and feedback over the course of the project, Joe Hildebrand who was
> the initial project manager, Greg Wood who coordinated with the web site
> designers, and especially to those individuals from the IETF community who
> participated in the Community Review Committee to provide guidance and
> feedback as the new site was developed.
> >>>
> >>> While the goal has been to anticipate and implement measures to ensure
> a smooth transition, the IETF Secretariat and the web development vendor
> are prepared to pay extra attention to quickly fixing any issues that arise
> in the next few weeks. Please submit any problems to:
> >>>
> >>>     [email-masked]
> >>>

---

From: Rich Kulawiec <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 13:30:17 -0500

> others worked (mission, iesg announcements) but VERY slowly

Same here.  The home page is very bloated, slow to load, and has
a distracting, utterly useless "share this page" floating element
that should be immediately and permanently killed.

---rsk

---

From: Pat Thaler <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 10:32:38 -0800

Oh - finally found it - I thought "under the tools tab" meant one of the
things listed when you hover over the tab.
Didn't realize that you meant that it shows up when you click on the tools
tab.
It isn't at all obvious as on most sites clicking on the tab either doesn't
do anything or just brings you to a page with the list from the pull down
menu.

Agree with Scott that a links entry on the tool bar or a links entry in the
tools list would be more intuitive.

---

From: Pat Thaler <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 10:37:28 -0800

I also don't see it on my Android phone. When clicking on the menu symbol,
the menu that comes up stops at "Contact". Search is always at the top so
isn't on the menu that opens and tools is no where to be seen.

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2018 07:41:36 +1300

Russ, Scott,

https://www.ietf.org/links/ is the page replacing www6.ietf.org/content, but it still wastes space (5cm at the top) on pointless verbiage ("     

Links

This page provides quick links to commonly used resources.")

Regards
   Brian

On 12/01/2018 06:46, Russ Housley wrote:
> .

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2018 07:44:59 +1300

> throuth the IETF documents, just searches through the site.

I don't know about useless, but the old one is easy enough to do yourself,
since it was just Google with site:ietf.org

    Brian

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2018 07:47:22 +1300

> that should be immediately and permanently killed.

+100, and not just on the home page. We are not a social medium.

   Brian

---

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 18:47:57 +0000

I agree that clicking on the tools thing and not a submenu
isn't obvious and that the "share this" would be better off
gone. It still tries to load external JS (from typekit.net)
which my NoScript config blocks, but things otherwise seem
to render fine and not noticeably slowly - I wonder if not
loading that JS is helping;-) [I raised a github issue about
that and I'm told it's not being forgotten, which is fine.]

On my phone (Sailfish-X browser with JS and cookies off),
the page renders fine but I don't get any menus at all and
nor does the search do anything. I guess that won't affect
too many other people though but we could probably further
improve the no-JS setup.

I kinda like the irony that the IGF in formal assembly mode
(or whatever that shows) from the latest blog post is the
main image that we probably don't really want to present:-)

Cheers,
S.

-- 
PGP key change time for me.
New-ID 7B172BEA; old-ID 805F8DA2 expires Jan 24 2018.
NewWithOld sigs in keyservers.
Sorry if that mucks something up;-)

---

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 19:50:11 +0100

On Thu, Jan 11, 2018 at 12:44:19PM -0500,
 Scott O. Bradner <[email-masked]> wrote 

> clicking on “find out more about the IETF standards process” gets a 404

But the 404 page is nice, with link to RFC 7231 and to the IANA
registry of HTTP return codes :-)

https://www.ietf.org/ghgjghgj/

---

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 19:54:03 +0100

On Thu, Jan 11, 2018 at 10:53:00AM -0500,
 Russ Housley <[email-masked]> wrote 
 a message of 28 lines which said:

> As shared last month [1], the revamped www.ietf.org website will
> move to production today, 11 January 2018, at 1730 UTC.

Old links no longer work (for instance
<https://www.ietf.org/meeting/92/index.html>) which is a shame for a
Web site which is used for actual work and references, and is a
violation of the sacred principles
<https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI>

---

From: "Valery Smyslov" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 22:07:19 +0300

> since it was just Google with site:ietf.org

It's a new one :-)

It was a "search" box on the main page of old site,
that actually performed IETF document search
(as a "serach" box on datatracker page does).
Now on the main page the "search" performs only 
a literal search through the site (that can be done with Google).
Not a big deal actually - go to a datatracker page
and search for documents there. Just a small inconvinience.

Regards,
Valery.

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2018 05:22:50 +0900

first, i have no right to comment as i did not test during test phase,
but i gather from folk who did that classic advice was repeatedly
ignored.

it meets all three major requirements for a web site revamp done by a
clueless marketing department:

 o the front page is useless gl!tz obscuring all content with glossy
   garbage.  and i checked the igf web site front page.  they do no have
   a picture of an ietf meeting.  did the exchange deal go sour?

 o it takes more clicks to get to the functions folk use most, if they
   can find them at all.

 o it breaks links into the site from all over the planet.

amazing disaster.  this is embarrassing.

randy

---

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 21:28:15 +0100

On Fri, Jan 12, 2018 at 05:22:50AM +0900,
 Randy Bush <[email-masked]> wrote 
 a message of 19 lines which said:

> classic advice was repeatedly ignored.

The Number 1 thing to remember when revamping a Web site: nobody cares
about the revamping of your Web site.

People want the Web site to work for whatever task they have to do,
and preferably, they want it to work the same way as before. (This is
probably why many IETFers did not test the new site: they didn't want
to have a new site.)

>  o it breaks links into the site from all over the planet.

Indeed, this is by far the biggest problem.

---

From: Paul Wouters <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 15:44:17 -0500

> Indeed, this is by far the biggest problem.

It is. I searched for “IETF meetings” on google, clicked on London IETF 101 and got a 404.

Paul

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 12:53:07 -0800 (PST)

> but i gather from folk who did that classic advice was repeatedly

FWIW, I looked at it once and at the comments, and this aligns with
my observations.

>  o it takes more clicks to get to the functions folk use most, if they

I appear to be in the latter camp for the most part.

> amazing disaster.  this is embarrassing.

+1

				Ned

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 16:03:30 -0500

Dear colleagues,

Full disclosure: I was a member of the IAOC when some of this work was
approved, so to some extent I bear some responsibility.  

> about the revamping of your Web site.

It seems to me that this discussion was one we had during the last
round, and I think that many IETF participants seem not to have
absorbed the other part of what was going on with the website
alterations.  The reason for this was not to make work, but to solve a
problem.

> probably why many IETFers did not test the new site: they didn't want

It is certanly true that people want the site to work for their task,
and when they have a workflow they don't want that interrupted.  But
the previous discussion of this pointed out that there was a
significant constituency of potential users of the website to whom it
was not addressed at all; that was a problem.

People who don't know what an IETF is sometimes have occasion to need
to know, and what they will do is put "IETF" into their favourite way
of searching and end up at the front website page.  If that front page
is overwhelmingly arranged to meet the needs of those who already know
what an IETF is, then the new curious people will effectively be
turned away.  This has been a problem for the IETF in its relationship
with others: it makes it harder to persuade others that the IETF
really is offering useful, contemporary standards for how the Internet
does and should work.

Therefore, IETF participants are being asked to endure the
inconvenience of moving their most-used stuff to a different place, so
that the other audience can be addressed.

I think it reasonable to take issue with broken links (which I believe
are being rectified -- i.e. I think this must be a bug, since the
plans were always not to break any links).  I think it would be nice
if some of the participants in the discussion would take care to state
such issues without suggesting that people involved are clueless.

But I do not think it reasonable to claim that there was no reason to
undertake this effort: the reasoning was well documented and was put
before the community repeatedly.  I, at least, never heard an argument
that we should not explain ourselves to others in the world who might
be interested, and in terms they might have a hope of understanding.
So I think it was appropriate to redesign the front page, even though
that causes inconvenience for each of us (including me).

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked] (Martin Rex)
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 22:18:24 +0100 (CET)

Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]> wrote:
> to know

Oh great!  You seem to fully agree to quickly trash the new page
and resurrect the previous IETF home page -- because the previous
IETF home pages did spell out the IETF acronym directly,
while as the new pile of crap entirely lacks such a description.

-Martin

---

From: "HANSEN, TONY L" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 21:29:47 +0000

Wow, I found clicking on the tab header totally non-intuitive and unexpected.

	Tony Hansen

On 1/11/18, 12:49 PM, "ietf on behalf of Russ Housley" <[email-masked] on behalf of [email-masked]> wrote:

    Scott:
    
    I think the page you are seeking is under the "tools" tab.  ... 
    
    Russ

---

From: "Bernie Volz (volz)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 21:37:14 +0000

The new pages seem fine to me. Good job to the team.

Sure, it will take some getting used to the new look and where to click, but in a few weeks or months we'll all be used to the new layout.

- Bernie

-----Original Message-----
From: ietf [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Andrew Sullivan
Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2018 4:04 PM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Why the change? (was Re: Today's transition for www.ietf.org)

Dear colleagues,

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

---

From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 16:37:45 -0500

Hi.
There was enough traffic that I decided to look at the new website; I
did not test during the testing phase.

Things I like about the front page:

* It actually had a link to IETF 101 registration.

* It had better introductory material.

I agree that the front page is completely useless to current
participants, but I find that I never found the front page useful.  I
find the front page generally useless for any organization that I spend
significant time in: it's true  of Debian, true of  other projects I
contribute to, and amazingly true of my employer.
I think front pages should be judged on their value to newcomers.

I clicked on tools.
Things were looking good.
A lot of useful links were grouped conveniently.

I decided to push a bit further before saying that at least for me
things were positive.
And so I clicked on the important meeting dates page, only to fall off
the cliff and land in a swamp of the busiest, largest 404 page I've seen
in a while.

Oops.

---

From: Alia Atlas <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 16:39:13 -0500

Oh - I found it intuitive - but maybe we frequent different other web-sites
?
I do think it is significantly easier to find introductory material.

On Thu, Jan 11, 2018 at 4:29 PM, HANSEN, TONY L <[email-masked]> wrote:

> On 1/11/18, 12:49 PM, "ietf on behalf of Russ Housley" <
> [email-masked] on behalf of [email-masked]> wrote:
>
>     Scott:
>

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 16:43:08 -0500

--On Thursday, January 11, 2018 22:07 +0300 Valery Smyslov
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>...

First one needs to know that there is a datatracker page and
that document search is available there.   That is a big deal
and, to me, has been what the discussion has been all about.  

For those of us who have been around the IETF for some time and
are active in its work, this change is at best an annoyance.  As
others have pointed out, we will bookmark the "real" page (which
better work and be free of dead links) and then move on, perhaps
while muttering under our collective breath.  The new page
seems, as it has seemed all through this effort, to be optimized
for those who want to learn about what the IETF is about,
perhaps even those who know nothing more than how to spell
"IETF".  I think that is a legitimate audience although I
personally think they (and we) would be better served by a
single, prominent, "About the IETF" link from the home page
rather than being the home page.

But this particular example highlights the problem with the way
this change has been supported.  I believe that there are
statements and links all over the place that say things like "go
look at draft-ietf-foobar-bogon on the IETF page" or even "see
the IETF's RFC 92".  I don't know how many there are, or where
they are, but the count is certainly above zero.  One of the
logical things for someone who is trying to track down those
documents but doesn't know much about the IETF to do is to find
the IETF's home page and then search for the document name,
something that has worked for years.  Now it doesn't work any
more because "search" on the IETF home page no longer includes
"search documents" but only seems to mean "search the IETF's web
pages"  and, when used with a real, but expired, WG document now
returns a page that shows some tutorial material about creating
I-Ds, the IESG statement on removal of drafts, and some other
apparently-irrelevant material.  

This does not make the Internet better or serve the broader
Internet community at all well.

IMO, this version is a considerable improvement over its
predecessors.  If "Search the IETF email archive" were
supplemented by "Search the IETF document archive", it would
alleviate the specific problem mentioned above.   But the longer
this goes on and the more iterations it goes through, the more
I'm convinced that the effort is just on (and has been on) the
wrong track.  

    john

---

From: Pat Thaler <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 14:42:06 -0800

I'm not a fan of putting a big picture on top that takes up most of the
page so people have to scroll down to see any other content. A picture that
wasn't as tall would at least be better.

Also, given the stated intent, but the front page doesn't really say what
and who the IETF is - it plunges into talking what types of documents we
have without saying anything about what those documents are for. One still
has to click on About - Who we are to find the expansion of the name and a
one sentence description of what we do:
"The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a large open international
community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers
concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture and the smooth
operation of the Internet."

If the purpose is to make it easy for:
> of searching and end up at the front website page.
that sentence should probably be on the front page.

I think another important audience is people who are starting to get
involved in working in the IETF and we need to make it easy for them, not
just for casual visitors and for old hands who know an alternate page to
start at. That means not hiding the page with helpful links under a Tools
heading that you have to click on and that doesn't even show up at all on
some browsers (such as smart phones).

How about putting in a label like "Helpful Links" in the Tools menu and
fixing the Tools menu so that it isn't an afterthought that doesn't appear
on the mobile page?

On Thu, Jan 11, 2018 at 1:37 PM, Bernie Volz (volz) <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Sure, it will take some getting used to the new look and where to click,
> but in a few weeks or months we'll all be used to the new layout.
>
> - Bernie
>

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 23:44:44 +0100

> the cliff and land in a swamp of the busiest, largest 404 page I've seen

Seems to be working now (at least for me).

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2018 16:07:54 +1300

Hi Andrew,

On 12/01/2018 10:03, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
...
> that the other audience can be addressed.

My understanding was that human-intensive maintenance of the pages was
also an issue, so my attitude was that we have to tolerate some of the
undesirable side-effects of modern "web site design" to reduce the
maintenance OPEX. And we have to better accomodate smart phones, with
other undesirable side-effects. Not to mention accessibility issues.

I think the problem of new people finding themselves on the home page
could have easily been fixed on the old site by adding a prominent
"Who we are and what we do" link there. (There has been a link there for
newcomers for years, but that was aimed at new *participants*, not
random people.

> plans were always not to break any links).

I think it was not to break any *important* links, wasn't it?

There was a quite long list of "sacred" links that was available for
community comment. If your favourite link is not in there, you know who
to blame. If a link in that list is broken, the contractor is to blame.
I'm not sure if it's the final version, but a version is included in
https://iaoc.ietf.org/documents/IETF-Website-SOW-20140604-Final.pdf

Regards,

     Brian

---

From: Christian Huitema <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 21:01:03 -1000

On 1/11/2018 9:07 AM, Valery Smyslov wrote:

> Now on the main page the "search" performs only a literal search
> through the site (that can be done with Google).

I did a simple search for "IETF mailing list". Something that a newcomer
might want to do, since they are the stated target of the new site. I
get lots of links to stuff with "mailing list" in their title, but this
newcomer does not find how to subscribe to the IETF mailing list. And
"subscribe ietf mailing list" gets the same results. But if you want to
now about the IETF 62 attendees mailing list, that works...

-- Christian Huitema

---

From: "tom p." <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2018 10:09:00 -0000

----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin Rex" <[email-masked]>
Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2018 9:18 PM

> while as the new pile of crap entirely lacks such a description.

In this day and age, I would not trust an organisation to tell the truth
about itself so my first port of call for a new body that I wanted to
learn about would be Wikipedia, and only when I have got a view from
that as a point of reference would I venture into the website of the
body itself in order to refine my view.

Meanwhile, thank heavens for FTP, the simplest and most straightforward
source of current I-D.

Tom Petch

---

From: Rich Kulawiec <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2018 06:02:22 -0500

> but i gather from folk who did that classic advice was repeatedly

Correct.

> clueless marketing department:
[...]
> amazing disaster.  this is embarrassing.

I agree in full with Randy's remarks, included the ones I've elided
for brevity.  After spending most of the evening interacting with it
(using multiple browsers on multiple systems, including some text-only
ones), and taking time overnight to think about it: it's awful.  REALLY awful.

The web site should be reverted immediately, and this version tossed in
the trash where it belongs.

---rsk

---

From: Stewart Bryant <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2018 11:10:31 +0000

If we voted, I would vote for a rollback to the old site.

- Stewart

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2018 14:07:40 +0100

And I would vote that we continue to improve the new site, bugs and all,
and just learn as we go.  This should not be a one-time effort but a
process.

---

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2018 13:11:26 +0000

On 12/01/18 13:07, Eliot Lear wrote:
> and just learn as we go.Â  This should not be a one-time effort but a
> process.

I agree with Eliot. And with the reasons for changing that Andrew
and Brian listed. There's stuff to fix, but I'm happy it'll get
fixed (or be complained about 'till fixed:-).

S.

---

From: Dick Franks <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2018 13:10:55 +0000

> If we voted, I would vote for a rollback to the old site.

Anyone else thinking that a good idea

Hum now

---

From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2018 14:19:39 +0100

> https://www.ietf.org/ghgjghgj/

Well.

1) "URL" is linked to RFC 1738 - should be RFC 3986

2) "IETF-related information about HTTP 404 Codes" mentions RFC 1945, 
not RFC 7231

Best regards, Julian

---

From: Tim Chown <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2018 14:04:18 +0000

> On 12 Jan 2018, at 13:11, Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 

Indeed. 

As much as I appreciate why some are sat like Canute trying to push back the inevitable "commercialisation" tide washing over the IETF web site, the most pragmatic approach now must be to improve what we have.  

The frustrating thing, as some have pointed out, is that a number of good constructive suggestions appear to have been ignored, so it's not clear what's still be to fixed/changed, and what whoever is in charge of the process (who is that?) thinks is either OK or still broken.  

As Eliot suggests, getting a transparent process in place for continuous improvement would be great.  At the moment, it just seems to be "email [email-masked]".  A more prominent button/link from which to suggest site improvements would be useful, and an open ticket view perhaps behind it for better transparency, so you can see what suggestions have already been made and acted on or discarded (and the reason for it).

The two new pages I'd be mostly using, and that I'd like to see improved are:
- https://www.ietf.org/links/ - remove the unnecessary header text (this has been suggested by many people), so you can more readily see all the info on one screen.
- https://www.ietf.org/how/meetings/101/ - again, a screenful of pointless banner before you find the useful links.  Even the "Key details" text is superfluous.  And default the expandable subsections to open, we shouldn't have to click on them.

Tim

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2018 09:25:02 -0500

On Fri, Jan 12, 2018 at 04:07:54PM +1300, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> "Who we are and what we do" link there.

My reading of the literature on user engagement with web sites --
particularly new users -- is that such a strategy does not work.  I'm
by no means an expert, though.

> I think it was not to break any *important* links, wasn't it?

Point taken.  Still,

> https://iaoc.ietf.org/documents/IETF-Website-SOW-20140604-Final.pdf

various meetings-related items are there, which appeared to be among
the notable complaints people have.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked] (Martin Rex)
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2018 15:31:54 +0100 (CET)

> fixed (or be complained about 'till fixed:-).

Well, except that I do not see *ANYTHING* at all, from what was
complained about when the new design was first aired as beta,
has acutally lead to an improvement.  Instead, the site was put into
production with additional new problems.

As far as mobile access in concerned,
the previous site was magnitudes better comprehensible and consumable
for mobile devices.

See screenshots from my own mobile for the beta site back from July 2017:

https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/XXcX-IIHxFylGlLWJa0mU-W8UNY

About the silly background monster photo -- could you *AT*LEAST*
use a picture name that is going to be eternally constant, so
that I at least opt-out of this climate killer easily with my
ad-blocker.  With uBlock, I chose the surrounding html element
instead, because of the non-generic picture name, and this
killed more than the picture.

-Martin

---

From: "John Dickinson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2018 15:10:36 +0000

> really is offering useful, contemporary standards for how the Internet

I agree and would like to thank all the people who put time and effort 
into this new site. It saddens me to see a bunch of complaints (and 
plain rudeness in some cases) as the immediate response to change.

The site is not perfect, I don’t really like long vertical scrolling 
pages but these are things that can be improved upon in the future.

John

John Dickinson

http://sinodun.com

Sinodun Internet Technologies Ltd.
Magdalen Centre
Oxford Science Park
Robert Robinson Avenue
Oxford OX4 4GA
U.K.

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2018 16:34:34 +0100

Hi Martin,

> production with additional new problems.

I would be frustrated as well were that my experience.  I'm going to
hazard a guess that the lesson has been learned, judging by the number
of messages.  I am inclined to have some patience to see if the team can
kink out the bigger issues.  As I wrote previously, it looks like broken
links were repaired, and so somebody is clearly doing stuff...

Eliot

---

From: Stewart Bryant <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2018 16:42:09 +0000

To be fair, a number of us did say that we did not like it when we were 
shown the prototype.

Of more immediate concern - does anyone know where is tools->links  
shows up on an the front page as displayed on an iphone?

- Stewart

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2018 11:57:10 -0500

On Fri, Jan 12, 2018 at 04:42:09PM +0000, Stewart Bryant wrote:
> Of more immediate concern - does anyone know where is tools->links  shows up
> on an the front page as displayed on an iphone?

There's a current bug open about that; it's a known issue that the
menu item doesn't show up.  

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]

---

From: "Kevin A. McGrail" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2018 08:20:07 -0500

On 1/12/2018 8:10 AM, Dick Franks wrote:
>
> On 12 January 2018 at 11:10, Stewart Bryant <[email-masked] 
> <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>

To me, I'm sorry I do not know but that depends largely if it was a 
project done by volunteers or people contracted.  As a lurker on-list it 
seems like a beta site has been available and people waited until it was 
launched to gripe.  Lead, follow or get out of the way.

If it was paid, the people should revert for a few days, work over the 
weekend to fix major issues and re-launch because there was plenty of 
time to way in on the design from the beta site.

If it was volunteer, leave the volunteers alone as you missed your 
opportunity to gripe and put the energy into constructive criticism.  Or 
put your skills where your mouth is and work on the issues yourself.

Just seems like some pretty vehement slams on the work going on to me 
that are unusual for the list so my $0.02.

Regards,

KAM

---

From: Rich Kulawiec <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2018 08:51:40 -0500

On Fri, Jan 12, 2018 at 03:31:54PM +0100, Martin Rex wrote:
> use a picture name that is going to be eternally constant [...]

A better course of action would be to remove it entirely.  It serves
no functional purpose.  We all know what a meeting room full of
people looks like and do not require a photo to remind us.

As long as I'm writing, let me note that one of the baseline
requirements for a web site like this [1] is that it should pass HTML
validation.  There are 10 errors and 67 warnings on the main page alone.
(Of course that number will vary a bit based on which validator is used.
Useful resources include "tidy", the W3C's validator
at https://validator.w3.org/ the "WAVE" accessibility tool at
http://wave.webaim.org/, and the WDG (Web Design Group)'s validator
at http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/ -- among others.)

Validating HTML is one of the best ways to minimize the problems with
different browsers on different operating systems on different platforms.
It's not a panacea of course, but it's part of core competency
for even minimally professional web designers.  I don't necessarily
expect that from people who dabble or volunteer, but I certainly do
expect it from anyone who's getting paid to do this kind of work:
every page should validate cleanly or darn close.  (Yes, I know
that there are edge cases/nebulous standards, and I have no problem
giving everyone a pass on those.)

There's also Javascript from third parties, which raises security
issues because it means that the security/integrity of this site is
dependent on the security/integrity of another site that's not under
the IETF's control.  It would be best to kill Javascript entirely,
given that it's the vector for a myriad of attacks and therefore that
it's become a best practice to disable it in browsers.  If there's a
need for it, and it's not clear that there is, then it should be
deployed on a strictly limited basis and any functionality requiring
it should explicitly say so on the page(s) which do so that visitors
are alerted to that requirement.

I still think the right course of action is to abandon this entirely
and revert to the old site, regroup, learn the appropriate lessons,
and try again.

---rsk

[1] That is: one with a global audience.  One which needs to prioritize
function over everything else.  One which needs to be minimized (in terms
of bytes) for efficiency and usefulness.  One which needs to work in
any web browser AND in any HTML-cognizant utility (e.g., wget, curl).
One which needs to be readily indexable by search engine spiders.
And so on.  This is not a web site promoting a product or showcasing
an artist or anything like that; this is a web site which provides
important information to the entire world, not all of which enjoys
the luxuries of cheap high-speed connections, high-powered computing devices,
perfect (or any) vision, etc.  Every byte must justify its presence.

---

From: Eric Rescorla <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2018 16:14:10 -0800

On Sat, Jan 13, 2018 at 5:51 AM, Rich Kulawiec <[email-masked]> wrote
> for even minimally professional web designers.

Well, maybe....
https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2F
https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com
https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.twitter.com
https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mozilla.org
https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org

 It would be best to kill Javascript entirely,
> it's become a best practice to disable it in browsers.

I would characterize this more as a minority view than a best practice.
Javascript
is ubiquitous throughout the Web.

I do agree that we should change the picture.

-Ekr

---

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2018 13:49:40 +0000

> is ubiquitous throughout the Web.

Lamentably true in general, yes.

I believe it's less true of the population of IETFers,
for example I use NoScript and while I'm willing to
allow a browser to run JS hosted by ietf.org, I'm not
happy to extend that further, which is called for by
the current web content. (And I'd prefer to not have
to add an exception for ietf.org were that possible.)

Anyway, the point of this mail is to suggest we measure
the proportion of IETFers who aren't ok with random JS
being run. The reason this isn't a ticket is that it
could be that someone already has some data, or that it
may be more feasible to measure this via tools.ietf.org
or otherwise.

And lastly - a bit of full disclosure - I had a chat
with Henrik about this while I was on the IESG and said
I'd try figure out what could be measured and how, and
then promptly dropped that ball;-(

Cheers,
S.

PS: IETFer preferences in this space remain relevant even
if the ietf.org site is mainly targeted at non IETFers.

---

From: Loa Andersson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2018 22:08:07 +0800

All,

I looked at the Area parts of the new web page, and the folks listed
there. t turns out that for example:

Alissa Cooper under the General Area is listed as "Chair", which in her 
case might be fine, but I thought that with respect to the Area she is
Area Director.

For the Routing Area:
Alia Atlas is listed as "Area Director"
Deborah Brungard is listed as "Secretary"
Alvaro Retana is listed as "Chair"

For the Int Area:
Suresh Krishnan is listed as "Chair"
Terry Manderson is listed as "Area Director"

Haven't checked the other areas, but aren't all the ADs "Area
Directors"?

/Loa
-- 

Loa Andersson                        email: [email-masked]
Senior MPLS Expert
Huawei Technologies (consultant)     phone: +46 739 81 21 64

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2018 12:21:49 -0500

On 01/13/2018 07:14 PM, Eric Rescorla wrote:

> I would characterize this more as a minority view than a best 
> practice. Javascript

I would characterize it as both best practice and a minority view. We 
should never assume that best practice is synonymous with widespread 
practice, especially where security is concerned.

Keith

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2018 20:18:31 +0100

> practice, especially where security is concerned.

Ok, I'll say publicly what I've said privately:

JS serves a purpose.  Most forms require some amount of
application-level knowledge to provide the user a good experience, for
instance.  Cramming all of that onto the server means delay and less
interactivity, which users hate.  Now I would agree with anyone who said
that JS represents a kitchen sink approach, but passing some of the
processing to the browser somehow is to me appropriate.  And remember,
this isn't the first attempt at this.  We started with Java.  Want to
talk about pain?

Eliot

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2018 14:38:40 -0500

> this isn't the first attempt at this.  We started with Java.  Want to
Not that I disagree; I've certainly written some JS code.  And yet, if 
its purpose was to allow some improvement on user experience without 
compromising the user's security, it has clearly failed. And by now 
there is so much market demand for compromising the user's security that 
it's far too late to fix JS.  It needs to be eradicated.

Keith

---

From: Eric Rescorla <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2018 12:49:29 -0800

> practice, especially where security is concerned.

Well, IETF typically measures best practice by consensus. What community do
you believe this represents the consensus view of. I doubt, for instance,
the Web security community.

-Ekr

---

From: Eric Rescorla <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2018 12:52:47 -0800

> then promptly dropped that ball;-(

Well, it's trivial to measure what fraction of visits to ietf.org have JS
off. I'm not sure how you propose to measure what fraction of IETFers
do. You might start by proposing an operational definition of "IETFer"

-Ekr

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2018 15:54:41 -0500

On 01/14/2018 03:49 PM, Eric Rescorla wrote:

>
>
> On Sun, Jan 14, 2018 at 9:21 AM, Keith Moore 
> <[email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>
>     I would characterize it as both best practice and a minority
>     view.   We should never assume that best practice is synonymous
>     with widespread practice, especially where security is concerned.
>
>
> Well, IETF typically measures best practice by consensus. What 
> community do you believe this represents the consensus view of. I 
> doubt, for instance, the Web security community.

I was using "best practice" in the literal sense, not the IETF sense.   
I understand why IETF makes decisions by consensus, but don't feel that 
consensus reliably results in best practice in the general case.   OTOH, 
in circumstances where having general agreement on practice is better 
than not having such agreement, consensus-based decision making can be a 
good way to choose that practice.

I also doubt that JavaScript as it currently exists in browsers would be 
able to win IETF consensus if it were proposed today.

Keith

---

From: Eric Rescorla <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2018 13:12:59 -0800

On Sun, Jan 14, 2018 at 12:54 PM, Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
wrote:

> Well, IETF typically measures best practice by consensus. What community
> do you believe this represents the consensus view of. I doubt, for
> instance, the Web security community.
>
>
> I was using "best practice" in the literal sense, not the IETF sense.   I
> understand why IETF makes decisions by consensus, but don't feel that
> consensus reliably results in best practice in the general case.   OTOH, in
> circumstances where having general agreement on practice is better than not
> having such agreement, consensus-based decision making can be a good way to
> choose that practice.
>

OK, well, absent some consensus or other decision-making mechanism, we're
kind of left with this just being a matter of opinion.

> able to win IETF consensus if it were proposed today.

As you're no doubt aware, the IETF is not responsible for standardizing
this portion of the Web stack, so this doesn't seem very relevant.

-Ekr

---

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2018 10:10:11 +0100

On Fri, Jan 12, 2018 at 04:34:34PM +0100,
 Eliot Lear <[email-masked]> wrote 
 a message of 76 lines which said:

>  As I wrote previously, it looks like broken links were repaired

No. For instance, all the links to blog articles trigger a 404.

> and so somebody is clearly doing

But only when told, while it would be faster and more proactive to
grep the 404 in the logs. For instance, I reported that the link to
the IETF 92 page was broken, it was fixed... but all the old links to
IETF 9x pages were broken and not fixed.

Is it rude to say that it does not seem it was handled very
professionally?

---

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2018 10:16:35 +0100

On Fri, Jan 12, 2018 at 08:20:07AM -0500,
 Kevin A. McGrail <[email-masked]> wrote 
 a message of 99 lines which said:

> As a lurker on-list it seems like a beta site has been available and
> people waited until it was launched to gripe.  Lead, follow or get
> out of the way.

It is not a good reason. I did not tested the old links still work,
because 1) it was a beta, after all, we did not expect everything to
work 2) it seemed obvious that they would still work in the new site
(may be after a redirection). Yet, it is probably the biggest problem
with the new Web site: many old links no longer work.

> opportunity to gripe and put the energy into constructive
> criticism.  Or put your skills where your mouth is and work on the
> issues yourself.

Again, not a good reason. The old site had no obvious problem, there
was no compelling reason to change. If "it was done by volunteers,
work or shup up" is the rule, I will start to submit random patches to
the Linux kernel and reply to all criticisms by "I'm a volunteer, shut
up".

---

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2018 03:50:27 -0800

Hi Stephane,
>the Linux kernel and reply to all criticisms by "I'm a volunteer, shut

The text which you quoted might be the rule for the work done by some 
"groups".  If a person is doing some work for free and does not 
derive any direct or indirect benefit from that work, how would that 
person react if he/she received a flood of extremely unpleasant 
comments?  That does not mean that there cannot be any criticism.

The design brief from Torchbox Ltd states that "The site's aesthetic 
will draw inspiration from" www.gov.uk.  In my opinion, the new 
website does not come even close to that.  I clicked on a few links 
and I got a few 404s.  I can think of a few ways to try and avoid 
such an issue before a site goes into production.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

---

From: Tim Chown <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2018 12:11:03 +0000

> On 15 Jan 2018, at 11:50, S Moonesamy <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Hi Stephane,
> The text which you quoted might be the rule for the work done by some "groups".  If a person is doing some work for free and does not derive any direct or indirect benefit from that work, how would that person react if he/she received a flood of extremely unpleasant comments?  That does not mean that there cannot be any criticism.
> 
> The design brief from Torchbox Ltd states that "The site's aesthetic will draw inspiration from" www.gov.uk.  In my opinion, the new website does not come even close to that.  I clicked on a few links and I got a few 404s.  I can think of a few ways to try and avoid such an issue before a site goes into production.

It would be nice if it did look like www.gov.uk; lots of easy to see and read links readily available without scrolling.

The gov.uk site is underpinned by some great work on open data.

Tim

---

From: Stewart Bryant <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2018 12:36:37 +0000

> The gov.uk site is underpinned by some great work on open data.

Normally people go to www.gov.uk to do a task. The assumption is that 
you sort of understand what the UK government is and want to use its 
services for some reason. The site provides a list of links to more 
detailed areas to allow you do do something you need to do, for example 
tax your car. So if we replaced the top level page at www.ietf.org with 
www.ietf.org/links then we would get the look and feel of www.gov.uk 
together with its practicality.

- Stewart

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2018 06:21:26 -0800 (PST)

> > "groups".  If a person is doing some work for free and does not derive any
> > direct or indirect benefit from that work, how would that person react if
> > he/she received a flood of extremely unpleasant comments?  That does not mean
> > that there cannot be any criticism.

50+ years ot experience with volunteer organizations says that what people want
most is fair treatment. Good work needs to be rewarded and bad work needs to be
called out, kindly but firmly, for being bad.

The usual problem in volunteer organizations is making sure that good work is
rewarded. It's all too easy to get into the habit of taking someone who quietly
does something important with no muss and no fuss for granted.

But failing to call out, or worse, rewarding, bad work, is incredibly
corrosive. It's not the effect on the people who did that work that's at issue
- although it's not good - it's the effect on everyone else.

> > The design brief from Torchbox Ltd states that "The site's aesthetic will
> > draw inspiration from" www.gov.uk.  In my opinion, the new website does not
> > come even close to that.

Agreed. www.gov.uk is a clean and well designed task-oriented site - someone
clearly put some real thought into what likely visitors were going to want to
do, and then came up with some sensible groupings to make the various workflows
easy to find.

But it's hardly unique. The California Department of Motor Vehicle's site,
www.dmv.ca, does something comparable, and speaking from personal experience,
is very easy to use for a variety of tasks.

> I clicked on a few links and I got a few 404s.  I can think of a few ways to
> try and avoid such an issue before a site goes into production.

> It would be nice if it did look like www.gov.uk; lots of easy to see and read
> links readily available without scrolling.

Exactly.

> The gov.uk site is underpinned by some great work on open data.

Indeed. Figuring out the right top-level entries and groupings for a range of
target demographics can be challenging. But it's totally doable, and more to
the point, nothing about the design of the IETF site would appear to present
comparable difficulty.

				Ned

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2018 07:18:33 -0800 (PST)

> together with its practicality.

It would be a considerable improvement, but it still would fall short.

As the name implies, www.ietf.org/links is a list of links. Some of
those links are task-oriented, others aren't. And the groupings are
by internal IETF taxonomy, not by task or participant type.

I note in passing that learning about the IETF is at its core a task
some newcomers - but not all - arrive at the IETF main page wanting to
perform.

				Ned

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2018 08:04:09 +1300

On 16/01/2018 04:18, [email-masked] wrote:
...
> some newcomers - but not all - arrive at the IETF main page wanting to

Right. So the *first* link at https://www6.ietf.org/ is that one.

   Brian

---

From: "tom p." <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2018 17:17:00 -0000

--- Original Message -----
From: "Rich Kulawiec" <[email-masked]>
Sent: Saturday, January 13, 2018 1:51 PM

> people looks like and do not require a photo to remind us.

Agreed; it makes us look like social media.

On the other hand, I always thought that what I was assisting was the
development of standards, that the IETF was a Standards Development
Organisation; I find it strange that there is no mention of doing this.

Yes I know that there is verbiage about making the Internet work better
but that always seem like management speak, designed to create a warm
and fuzzy feeling as opposed to providing something concrete.  If
someone lands there with no prior knowledge, they will probably expect
us to speeding up the rendering of their web pages - after all, to most
people, the web and Internet/internet are indistinguishable

Tom Petch