Critique on front page image

[RexEastbourne]

Hello all,

I'm working on an open-source, non-commercial software project called Lyx. It is a free word processor used especially by academics and mathematicians. We recently re-designed our website, and are trying to pick an image to put on our front page. I have read through many posts here and people seem to give extremely useful feedback. I would truly value people's opinions on which of the following images looks nicer, as well as critiques on what could be improved.

http://www.lyx.org/images/intro.png

http://wiki.lyx.org/uploads/LyX/Screencasts/homepage%20graphic.gif

Thank you so much!

Rex

Moderator edit: links removed

[urstwile]

Rex, welcome to the forum.

We have a policy against advertising here on the forum, so I removed the links to your product page, even though I realize you were probably just trying to put things in context.

[DesignStudio]

The top image looks much nicer. The screen shot on the left could be improved or replaced. But the size, placement, and even drop shadow of the logo and download button are much better on the top image. I think the outer glow around the arrow is probably one effect too many though.

[Oldat29]

link is still there

[Red Kittie Kat]

got it ;)

[DesignStudio]

He was asking a legit design question, he can't have the link subtely in the product name? Personally I thought it was relevent to the layout of the site and the question he was asking. This didn't really feel like one of the blatent attempts to drive traffic that we sometimes get on the forum. Maybe that's why I'm not a moderator though? That and I'm tens of thousands of posts shy.

RKK I was just getting used to the new look!

[RexEastbourne]

Rex, welcome to the forum.

We have a policy against advertising here on the forum, so I removed the links to your product page, even though I realize you were probably just trying to put things in context.

Hi urstwile,

That's right; I just wanted to link so that people could see how those images fit in with the rest of the home page (e.g. we tried to make the color theme consistent). LyX is just a hobby project I do in my spare time, and is open source and noncommercial, like Inkscape or GIMP; I have no reason to advertise it.

Thanks for the feedback on the design so far; I would value any further input. One thing that's on my mind is that I think it's important for a front-page image to convey the features and capabilities of the software. One advantage I see in the second image is that it shows the visitor cool things that can be done with LyX. The first image, on the other hand, seems a bit bland and doesn't portray anything special about the software.

Any thoughts?

Rex

[urstwile]

Understood, Rex, and I had to think a minute before removing it. There's a lot of potential for grey areas of course in the policy, but in general, particularly when someone's a new member, we usually make the call to remove the link.

Perhaps you could post a screenshot of the site to show the context instead?