Website of the Month
The aim of this section is to find decent and relatively unknown websites that will help you with your daily Ubuntu needs (and general curiosity). I will sum up the good and the bad points of the website, and -- with any luck -- the website owner will read the article and then rectify any problems mentioned!
Written by Daniel Cohen
This site grabbed my interest straight away with its rather neat idea: video tutorials for Ubuntu. Very handy for those times when you are told on the Ubuntu IRC channel (or forums) to do this and that, when really you don't know what they are talking about or cannot find a particular option or button.
After searching the website for several moments, I found a few more video orientated websites for tutorials, but none of these other sites seemed to have the polish that Ubuntu Clips has.
It has a simple layout but without looking ugly, it's clear and the navigation is intuitive (although perhaps a little less white wouldn't hurt). Because of this minimalist approach, the site is very responsive and doesn't have you sitting round waiting for pages to load.
The tutorials are helpfully sorted into different categories which makes finding and discovering easier, along with a place to find the latest and greatest videos.
Every video on the site comes in four flavours – Ubuntu (ogg/Theora), Mac (mov), Windows (avi) and YouTube (Flash). While I'm sure that all you Ubuntu users have support for all three codecs, it ensures that Mac and Windows users can play the video natively without any extra set-up or having to watch a low-quality YouTube Flash video, although it's nice to have that as a last resort.
Instead of taking a one-way approach, the developers of the site have made a request form which allows people to request tutorials of certain actions in Ubuntu. Whether these are actually ever made, I don't know, but I hope they are taken into account when making new videos. You can also submit clips, which are quality checked, then put on to the site.
However, the website is missing some basic features which would make it a more complete site. There is nowhere to leave comments. There is also the inclusion of a captcha box for logging in which is a bit annoying. Finally, if you look through the tutorials, you will notice that many of them are on rather mundane and basic subjects. While this website is, at the moment, geared towards new users, it could start to have more advanced tutorials soon.
Those problems do not outweigh the many positives that this site has. Many new users would love to have visual help and that is where this site comes in most helpful. I just hope it will continue to grow.
