Understand - Inspiration

I looked around and found some interesting sites which are related in some way to the topic of finding libraries or applications to get some inspiration from their designs. They could be taken into account when coming up with a good set of designs for Inqlude. Following are some interesting features I examined.

Qt-Apps.org : Community portal for Qt applications software

• Provides an easy and interesting way to find Qt applications

• Comprises two types of categorization of the available Qt applications; one based on ‘Latest’, ‘Alphabetical’, ‘Highest rated’,‘Most downloaded’ and another based on the type of application

• List of applications along with a screenshot, name, type, version, number of comments, number of fans and a score representing the rating

• The details page includes important information like summary, description, version, changelog, license, download links for different platforms, screenshots, score and minimum required Qt version

The Ruby Toolbox : A comprehensive catalog of Ruby and Rails plugins, gems and projects

• This is a website that contains most of the features that we have been looking into, in fact it provides lots of inspiration
• The website is very clean and has a very organized layout, utilize very few colors (basically white, gray and black) and nice formatting
• The titles of the main pages and the search box at the top ribbon of the website are well noticeable
• Home page contains separate sections for announcements, recent comments, latest resources, most popular projects, recently added projects and recently added categories. All projects and resources listed under these separate sections are linked to their details pages.
• Mouse hover on a project name creates a popup box providing a brief description of the project
• Categories by group: provides a very broad classification with main categories branched into lots of subcategories
• Highlighting a row of the list on mouse hover makes it easier to find relevant information
• Categories by name: a separate page to display all the categories and subcategories grouped according to the different letters of the alphabet taken in alphabetical order
• Projects by name: a separate page to display the list of projects grouped according to the different letters of the alphabet taken in alphabetical order, selecting a letter filters the projects starting with that letter
• The entire website utilizes a consistent set of formatting (styles and graphics) which does not distract the user
• The details page of an item provides a brief summary and links to website, reference doc, wiki, source code, bug tracker and mailing list. Mouse hover on a particular link pops up the address of the link
• The details page also contains some other important information like number of releases, current version and date of the current release, date of the first release etc.
• Few small icons on top of the details page; icon of a heart provides an option to like that particular item and an icon of a comment displays the number of comments for that item.

Libraries.io : The open source discovery service

• Monitors open source libraries across different package managers
• A very big search box placed at the top of the website. The inner text of the search box explains user about what that really intends to do
• Short and sweet description of the website. More details provided via ‘What is Libraries.io?’ link
• List of applications along with name, logo and the number of projects that it has been used with
• Categorization of the available libraries using languages, licenses and keywords

cdnjs : Host all the popular libraries - JavaScript, CSS, SWF, images

• Has separate pages for About, Browse libraries, Support us, Source, Git stats, Network, Chat and Request a library linked from the home page
• A large search box with an inner text of 'Search from 2195 libraries...' is placed at the center of the home page
• Browse libraries page contains a table of libraries with two columns for library name and link. Every two consecutive rows has two different colors (white and gray) to display the details of each single row clearly
• The details page of a library contains important information like summary, version, links to the source code and tutorials and related tags

Qtsoftware : Web shop will ease your ordering of Qt software

• Provides an easy and interesting way to find Qt software, but more specifically designed for ordering purposes
• Implements a product search where user can either type the name, keyword or narrow down the product search by filtering using the product category and manufacturer
• Consists of categories and subcategories of Qt software
• Has an option to sort the list of software using title and price

manjaro.org : Latest news about package updates

• Consists of a nice categorization, all categories are listed in a drop down menu
• Elements under each category can be filtered under 'Latest' and 'Top' subcategories
• List of the search results are shown in a table with columns for specific attributes
• Search results are shown along with their tags
• A color scheme has been utilized for different categories

CPAN : Comprehensive Perl archive network

• Has separate pages for Home, Authors, Recent, News, Mirrors, FAQ and Feedback linked from the top ribbon of the home page
• Logo of the website and a search box placed at the center of the home page
• Search by 'Modules', 'Distributions', 'Authors', 'All'

Webstatsdomain : Analyzes data about domains and keywords

• Search by key phrases
• Search by ticking multiple options as required and narrowing down the list of search results
• Categorization as ‘All’, ‘Social’, ‘Search’ and ‘Advertisement’
• List of the filtered results are shown along with the domain, title, country, rank etc.