or glasses of wine being used to hold up a tray on which are bottles whose labels are the icons of the various popular windows programs? quake, quicken etc…

“Wine on linux/bsd/Solaris/MacOSX serves windows applications to you”

You’re right that a user who sees their own platform instead of “other operating systems” will gain some confidence, however we run into problems if we try to specify them all. We end up using a whole lot of words, many of them technical. And if the list isn’t exhaustive, then we risk someone incorrectly concluding it doesn’t work and not going any further. The way it is now we sort of invite them to the download page (although we probably should link it.

I agree with you about the slight awkwardness of Not every program works yet, however there are already — I think I might change this to Although not every program works yet, there are already… to eliminate the contrast issue altogether.

I for one love the idea of taking the “Developer,” out of the “About,” pages. It seems like a Linux noob that hears about this Wine-thingie would be all but fearing for their life after trying to get through the technical jargon.

(by the way, if you want help, just let me know, I love documentation)

As far as a picture, might I suggest a slogan/picture combination? See when I think of Wine, I think of a glass of wine. Many people may think of the barrel, the process, or the grapes; me, I’m thinking about getting off work and pouring a glass for myself. So, maybe a picture of a FULL glass of wine (not the half glass currently used), that reads, “Wine, now serving a full glass in Linux.” or “Wine, fixing the “glass half full,” in Linux. Something like that?

Good read, nice to know someone else cares about readability!

-Aj

For a pic, you could try a screenshot of something impressive (like Half-Life 2 or Portal) running on a Mac or Linux box?

Also, a few minor suggestions:

Not every program works yet, however there are already

This just doesn’t read right for some reason. I think that “however” isn’t a drag-and-drop replacement for “but.” I suggest changing it to “but” or changing the passage to read “yet; however, there are”. That punctuation is more cumbersome, but it seems to read better.

“especially Codeweavers who sell a”

Would you say “Codeweavers sell” or “Codeweavers sells?” I think it’s the latter since we’re talking about an organization, as opposed to a group of people called “code weavers.” Sort of like how you might say that the company called Wizards of the Coast “sells” or “makes” D&D.

Finally, burying the AppDB link in a statement about how “Wine is heavily reliant on its user community” doesn’t seem like the best idea, because the idea of “Check here to see if your app works” isn’t part of the subset of ideas “Check here to see what the community’s done.” Or it technically is, but that’s not the way that an outside viewer would see it, since it’s more important to her — as soon as she hears what Wine is — to see if she can use it for her programs.

Assuming she knows that Wine’s for the platform she uses … “other operating systems” is kind of vague! Not specifying technical things may be good to avoid being off-putting, but the hypothetical person who’d even be here to begin with is … okay, probably someone who had been pointed there. But still, confirming that it’d work with her platform of choice might help.

Sorry to be nitpicky like this; I hope that this comes across as the “Jump in and help wherever you can” thing I heard that people are supposed to do with Free / Open-Source projects. ^.^; It’s also sort of a “Now that you mention it … ” kinda thing. Either way, I’m glad someone is taking on the task of making WineHQ more readable, and I think you are doing a great job with it. Kudos!

One nit: the link for ‘free software’ is self-referential…

Maybe this doesn’t matter, as in a few months karmic will be out and it’ll be consistent anyway.