novoselt
commented
1 month ago Regarding the message in the box, it could be "Use filters above to find the right template, then modify it..." BUT - I am pretty sure that I would not even read it as a new user, even if it was a bit darker, because overall it is lost on the page.
Instead I would put "Template\n Filters" in big bold font on the left of them, and make several good samples visible in a non-collapsible list. Templates that would be nice to see right away:
- some nice "development" machine like 4vCPUs, 16GB RAM, maybe spot, with Sage or Julia image
- basic GPU machine on Hyperstack, like L4 with Colab image
- H100 on Hyperstack (maybe even multiple GPUs?) - with Ollama image
- HPC machine on Google
The point is to illustrate that we have great option for mere mortals as well as high end resources, and demonstrate different images too. Since I really don't want to eliminate any of these 4 options, the scrollable list should be 4 items tall ;-)
By the way - another option for tag filters could be dropdowns for GPU type (confusingly including CPU-only), image, and cloud provider. Each selector can come with a title and it would be pretty obvious how to use it. This would make interface less busy. The advantage of tags is that users get a sense with a single glance of the range of options available to them. This is the advantage of an open list of templates that shows multiple choices right away.
Our goal is to make users start exploring templates and spin off servers, not read the rest of the page. So it makes total sense to me that the most important item will be bigger and more noticeable.
I think our store front page looks great and it nicely features compute servers. But when I click on them, I go to https://cocalc.com/features/compute-server and see
With all due respect for templates, it is not at all obvious to me how to do anything on this page, even scrolling it, apart from clicking "Your CoCalc Projects..." on the top or on the bottom. Doing so does exactly what it says, which has nothing to do with compute servers.
The template selector with filters is completely zoned out for me, because it looks like a part of a busy header with other links.
I still would really like to have big bold "Filters:" on the left of all the tags, because it is not at all obvious that I can click on them, they look just like advertisement of what is available.
AND, since I came here after clicking a link at the store, I would very much prefer to see a list of several servers with their prices, that I can "click and buy", where it is obvious that I can scroll through them to see more. Without that list overlapping other content of the page, so not just opened dropdown.
I also would have it after the big picture, so that tags do not blend with the header.