I’ve put up a preview of the refreshed website for the 2.0 launch. I’m keen for any feedback on the animations, and if you feel they do a reasonable job of highlighting some of Sublime Text’s features. Please also let me know if it’s not working for you 
Next build shouldn’t be too far away.
“Sublime Text is available for OS X, Windows and Linux.”
On the icons for the supported platforms, I would suggest adding links to the different builds for those platforms.
Sounds good. Also, it’s worth noting that I’m planning on making the Download button actually start a download, rather than just linking to the /2 page.
I surely don’t hate it, but i don’t like it either. Is way too simple.
I don’t think someone will prefer to watch all animation rather than read the text. Sure, a picture makes more than a thousands of words, but still…
So what I’m saying is that a combination of Textmate homepage and Coda page, even ultraedit with several written features would be better.
The current homepage is way more informative than this mockup.
The Coda homepage only work in a couple browsers. It works in Safari and mostly works in Chrome. This being a cross platform editor it should work on all platforms. I think the video/slides displaying Sublime Text 2 are good. I do think having a features list in text is important. A lot of people scan pages looking for those details and expect to see them.
@BestGreek: i guess you make some confusion in „works in a couple of browsers” and „look the same in a couple of browser”.
Coda site is perfectly usable even in IE8 
I don’t know if you are planning on releasing a visual refresh of the design in addition to the content changes, but I think for version 2.0 it would be well worth it. Now, I’m not saying you need to completely change the branding of Sublime, but the I feel some fairly quick tweaks and changes could make a big difference.
Here is some content feedback on what you have so far:
Move the download link up above the folder, perhaps to the right of the intro text
Change “code, html and prose” to “code, markup and prose”
Add content to the intro sentence about speed/performance: (e.g. Sublime Text is a sophisticated text editor for code, markup and prose. You’ll love the slick user interface, extraordinary features and amazing performance.)
Increase the contrast of the selections at least in the multi-select example (1/6). The light gray is hard to notice what is changing in the graphic.
**Additionally, I think it would be wise to add some more in depth content at the bottom of the page talking more in depth about other features and functionality. ** Your homepage is the only place you really talk about what the editor can do, so it would be nice to take more of the long-form approach that has become popular on the web over the past few years. Basically start with what you have and then get more detailed the farther down the page someone scrolls. This allows users to just download right away if they want to, or if they are more inquisitive, they can read some more and learn why they should try it out.
If you aren’t currently planning on doing a visual refresh, I do have some comments about the current design that I think may be useful. I’d also be happy to follow up via email.
[quote=“iamntz”]@BestGreek: i guess you make some confusion in „works in a couple of browsers” and „look the same in a couple of browser”.
Coda site is perfectly usable even in IE8 [/quote]
I think what I was thinking of is when I checked the site in IE7 (Work computer) and it looked pretty bad. I’m not sure but since launch day they might have touched up some of the browsers to look better then they had. For panic it makes sense to not worry about non-mac browsers since their product is only for the Mac.
The animation is too slow, and the progress bar is distracting. My eyes are drawn to it, and I miss the subtle text editing animation.
I don’t think you need to animate the features, just a carousel of the features would be better.
Here’s a good, simple app site: http://macrabbit.com/espresso/
Well, I guess using a 6+ years old browser come with it’s downsides. You don’t expect sites looks perfectly in older browser, no? Because i can bet coda side is looking awful in safari 2
Ok, enough rambling about browsers
The animation looks great. Piggybacking off @wbond’s great suggestions, I have a few ideas of my own.
The animation paginator thing should be more friendly. Instead of just having 1 of 6, why not take up more space and give a small thumbnail and title to each of the highlighted features. That way, people aren’t just blindly stalled watching the animation and instead can see the content they’re interested in.
People have become lazier when it comes to websites. They want the homepage to tell them everything they need to know. Don’t be so reluctant to talk about all your work. Exaggerate. Be more grandiose. Talk about every feature as if it’s a work of art. Mention the “super intelligent autocompletion” and the "incredibly powerful and flexible API)
People love colors. The coda website is bombarded with colors and gradients. Obviously you’re not trying to attract the same crowd, but the same ideas apply. People are like cats; they are attracted to bright and shiny things. It’s not just OSX applications that have taken this approach. Git recently redesigned their website: git-scm.com/
Where’s the icon? You shelled out for a brand new icon but I don’t see it anywhere. Even the favicon is the old icon.
Update the navigation bar and lose the grey gradient background. It feels old-fashioned.
Sorry if I was ripping apart your work. I just really like giving constructive criticism. Hopefully you’ll consider my suggestions. Keep up the great work!
I see where you’re going with it, but I’m with wbond. It could really do with a proper refresh. I don’t know if it’s just me, but the grey to white gradient is ageing and kind of “dirty”.
And carrying on from the above, the slider isn’t working (not literally) I was stuck watching it repeat four times before I actually realised I can change slide. You really should make a more “Web 2.0” website, fresh, clean, new, exciting.
Most app websites now feature the homepage as the place to go to know EVERYTHING about the product. You should do this.
Btw, You could also list some plugins there, like Package Control, SFTP (even if is a paid plugin), Zen, Git, SVN etc.
[quote=“iamntz”]Well, I guess using a 6+ years old browser come with it’s downsides. You don’t expect sites looks perfectly in older browser, no? Because i can bet coda side is looking awful in safari 2
Ok, enough rambling about browsers [/quote]
I was only mentioning IE7 (work computer) because its an example of what some people are stuck with. Luckily I use a Macbook Pro at work (if you want a good computer buy it your self) My point was your web site should support the browsers of your target audience. If your product is cross platform then it makes sense your website works correctly on the same platforms.
I would bet a good number of Sublime Text 2 installs are still on Windows XP so at the least it would make sense to support IE8. Doing a graceful degradation is fine like if video tag isn’t supported falling back to flash etc… I was only trying to point out on launch day the new Coda 2 site didn’t work on all browsers so its not the best example of how to display a product that is cross platform. For Panic its totally fine they are Mac only.
IMO the feature animation should autocycle, I didn’t realize there were more features to watch at first.
Also I didn’t know that you could type “file@func” as a single step, that’s awesome!
I think the features playing twice is important - its hard to understand what’s happening at first.
In fact, what I think would really benefit this is for someone to create some hand made animations to REALLY illustrate what the editor can do. We can all watch those animations and understand what’s happening because we’re familiar with it already. I’ve had people here at my desk watch me show off some features, even while I explain it, and they don’t immediately grasp what’s happening.
I’m not proposing the simplicity of a cartoon - but there should be a better way of showing off what’s going on to someone who’s never used ST before.
ST2 being such a keyboard paradigm I think demo should show key presses as they occur.
Perhaps something like Screenkey: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GqCu0wI-hc)
I would make them mini-screencasts rather than just visual animations. i.e. have a voice-over that quickly notes what will be shown before showing it. As it is just now, people will have to read the bar at the bottom while other stuff is happening and it’s a bit “help! flashing things… what’s going on?”.
Glad to see you’re closing in on the launch. You’ve got a great product on your hands!