Sources for the XQEMU website (xqemu.com)
Home Page: https://xqemu.com
XQEMU is an open-source emulator to play original Xbox games on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Please visit xqemu.com to learn more.
| Platform | Build Status |
|---|---|
| Windows | /badge.svg?branch=master){kind=icon} |
| macOS | /badge.svg?branch=master){kind=icon} |
| Ubuntu | /badge.svg?branch=master){kind=icon} |
In general I think that the website offers greater flexibility, better formatting, better organization, image hosting, static files, and other benefits that the GitHub wiki doesn't really offer, while at the same time being just as easy to work on via Markdown and PRs. That said, the wiki may still have value for some repository/project/GitHub meta information.
This is really dependent on the XQEMU project itself having a logo. Currently we are just using the gamepad icon and a graduation cap favicon.
If I scroll down, the top menu with "Welcome" and "Developers" will disappear.
When I scroll up, it never re-appears.
The only exception where it reappears is the first page "Welcome" (https://xqemu.com). It also disappears on the "Developers" page (https://xqemu.com/developers/) which makes it hard to switch back to the user portion of the website.
This is a proposal to move xqemu.com (com-mercial) to xqemu.org (org-anization).
I always found it odd that we use .com as our primary TLD.
As the website is now more useful than before, I suggest we do this change early, before it is linked too often.
It will be harder to migrate the more links refer to the .com-domain already.
Wether we'd keep xqemu.com is also up for discussion.
We should document who is responsible for the website related infrastructure.
We should also ensure that there's always at least 2 people with infrastructure access.
Citra had an issue where the person who runs the build server left, so we had 6 months without the ability to delete broken builds etc.
So incase someone disappears, we should know what might happen so we can discuss how to avoid these issues (and ideally have a fallback contact who shares responsibility).
This information should probably be documented in the README of this repository?
https://xqemu.com/getting-started/#building-on-gnulinux
When trying to follow the first instruction for building on GNU/Linux using the same distro (Ubuntu 18.04):
First enable deb-src via:
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
In this file, uncomment first deb-src line.
I can't find any line in the sources.list file that starts with "deb-src". We should probably rephrase this to at least say what the line is so that people can just add it in themselves if their linux install doesn't already have it commented out.
This is currently in Getting Started (which is aimed at users) https://xqemu.com/getting-started/#building-xqemu-from-source
In https://xqemu.com/getting-started/#building-on-gnulinux we use "GNU/Linux" (other instances might exist too). While "GNU/Linux" is probably the correct thing to do, it also doesn't match the "Linux" form we use pretty much anywhere else in the XQEMU ecosystem.
I prefer "Linux" for the simplicity.
I'm fine with using "GNU/Linux" if somebody is absolutely desperate about it, but otherwise I'd say we should stick to just using "Linux" and all existing instances of "GNU/Linux" should be changed.
We should have a compatibility list.
This issue is more about the user-facing side of things (for displaying the compatibility list);
we'll also need a backend eventually (including a frontend for data entry), but this will be more complicated to design, so it will be a separate discussion.
For now, we have some resources, like http://xboxdevwiki.net/XQEMU#Compatiblity_list (see linked Google Sheets), which can act as a backend.
There's also some (mostly outdated and broken) tools at https://github.com/JayFoxRox/xbox-game-databases which can be used to retrieve game information.
Ideally, we'll extend Wikipedia so it's compatible with our database, so we can also map between our entries, and Wikipedia articles MobyGame seems to be a good page with a lot of useful information, and we can find Wikipedia articles through MobyGame game-pages. Same for redump and other websites.
This also affects i386-softmmu/qemu-system-i386 which only exists after installation.
We should clarify that the user needs QEMU installed already. Ideally also refer to a download page for QEMU.
Alternatively we could package the qemu-img binary with our XQEMU CI release, and mention xqemu instead of i386-softmmu/qemu-system-i386 (and we'll have to make sure we don't break compatibility with these tools). We would also have to mention that XQEMU needs to be compiled first for users of the source-version.
The badge appears to display the status of the master branch, but it actually links to the last build (including PRs). This is confusing and might lead to people downloading wrong code / binaries.
The link and badge should both point at the master branch.
(I did not check if this is also an issue for Travis)
We had a couple of reports regarding USB forwarding. Also see xqemu/xqemu#63
That suggests our documentation is either wrong, or not user friendly - eitherway: it's an issue.
Please read that issue discussion, review our documentation and fix accordingly if necessary.
When typing "xqemu.com" into the Firefox addressbar, it will autocomplete to "www.xqemu.com" (added "www.").
However, going to "http://www.xqemu.com" or "https://www.xqemu.com" will fail (due to "www."):
"We can’t connect to the server at www.xqemu.com."
This message is very misleading.
If anyone wants to visit our website currently, they have to explicitly type "http://xqemu.com" or "https://xqemu.com" (without "www."). This should be fixed.
The CLI is quite technical. I believe we should focus exclusively on documenting XQEMU-Manager.
The CLI is currently documented on the user tab in Getting Started and the input page - I believe most of that is exposed in XQEMU-Manager already.
There's further user documentation in https://xqemu.com/networking/ and https://xqemu.com/tips/ (which are not exposed in XQEMU-Manager yet)
However, I believe we should only document / explain the CLI for developers (on the developer-tab) who know what everything means and who understand the restrictions (RAM amount, CPU type, internal USB hubs, ...).
The developers tab should provide info how to reach us and how to get started with development. Related to xqemu/xqemu#46 (and possibly linked issues).
I know that we have a GitHub link in the header, but I think we should still provide it again, for visibility.
Builds are a big deal as they attract users. We should display them more prominently on the website.
The artifacts are currently available here: https://ci.appveyor.com/project/mborgerson/xqemu-c5j6o/build/artifacts
Basically when you open the website, there should probably be a "Download" button with a short rundown of the files the user needs (with links to Getting Started) and a warning that this is a development version, not a full release.
Our entire website, so far, feels like it's primarily aimed at very experienced users, with a lot of CLI, hex-editing, long command lines, ...
I think the developers page should contain a link to the XboxDev README / Ecosystem and explain that it is the source for knowlegde, but that we always need help with research.
There's also a lot of activity on XboxDev, so directing people there can show how active the project members are behind the scenes (even if it doesn't directly result in emulation code at this point).
I've written a pinned post for our #help channel to cover some basic information about images and how to deal with some errors.
That post is based on user mistakes in the past.
This should be moved to the user portion of the website, possibly restructured and improved.
Interacts with #18 as XQEMU-Manager is recommended.
Once done, someone has to inform me (ideally highlight on Discord), so I can update the pinned post with links to our website.
The artifact on the Getting Started page results in a 404 (not found) HTTP error.
It is probably older than what GitHub allows, or the URL changed.
Need to update DNS configuration apparently. See here for the GitHub page on the matter. Specifically, it looks like the A records needs to be changed to one of these:
Then I guess GitHub will automatically get us a Let's Encrypt cert.
According to the documentation we are not correctly using edit_uri. Currently we set this config to a full path (https://github.com/xqemu/xqemu.com/blob/master/docs/) because our docs live in a separate repo from the project we are documenting (https://github.com/xqemu/xqemu/).
This is incorrect, as edit_uri is only meant to be a path that is appended to the repo_url, not a separate route entirely. Our current use of this property is not expected by the documentation and may break in the future.
We should ideally fix this problem, depending on the end result of #41.
No GitHub link on top-right of the page:
repo_url to point to this project (https://github.com/xqemu/xqemu.com/)Keep GitHub link on the top-right of the page:
repo_url and edit_uri to allow greater customization. See relevant plugin hook hereWhat's supported, what isn't, and how to create a compatible game disc using extract-xiso.
This is a usability and security issue.
Also see xqemu/xqemu-manager#45 (comment).
This should be fixed as soon as possible.
The order of the sections is always changing. Sometimes it's macOS, Windows, Linux and other times it's Linux, Windows.
We should avoid such inconsistency and list them in order of importance:
I'd also suggest to add some <spoiler>-like tags or identification icons so users can find their OS more quickly (See my experiments with this on OpenSWE1R).
On https://xqemu.com/input/ we explain how the Xbox ports are arranged.
However, in https://xqemu.com/getting-started/#using-the-command-line-interface we only use -usb -device usb-xbox-gamepad without specifying a port.
This can lead to input being unresponsive in some titles.
We should use a proper configuration for input.
(Note that the above URLs for the CLI might move, as suggested in #54)
I totally forgot we had this album on Imgur: https://xqemu.imgur.com/
We should link to it on the screenshots page. Although, it needs some updating. Rendering in some games has improved dramatically (THPS2X for instance).
Currently the recommended modified debug bios (as people have reported) will fail to boot ISOs. We should not recommend it so plainly on the Getting Started page until that issue is fixed. We should instead recommend a retail version. In general it's probably best to recommend retail anyway since only a select group of people will need the features provided by a debug kernel.
Currently the networking page only describes the possible use cases, and some instructions for setting up tap networking. I think users would benefit from having some extra details added to this page before being directed to the official QEMU docs (which could be overwhelming for newcomers), e.g.:
We added a log in xqemu/xqemu-manager#48 which is not shown in the screenshot.
I suggest the following changes to the websites developer Welcome page:
"Community":
"Repository info":
"Building From Source Code":
"Debugging Guest Code":
"Debugging XQEMU Itself":
Currently, the GitHub icon is always shown in the upper right.
I don't think this is a good idea, as users are not the target audience for that.
I think it's fine to just remove the button from all pages. Our developer page refers to GitHub in the first sentence anyway. If we can figure it out, we can also display it on the Developers tab, but showing it everywhere is probably not good.
Currently, the "Get Involved" contains developer information which shouldn't be relevant to users.
Those end-users who are willing to learn will probably appear in support channels (when we have them) or read developer info anyway, because they'll be highly motivated.
Therefore, I believe that we should only refer users to the developers tab, with a big-fat disclaimer, who the target audience is.
On the developers tab we can then refer to XboxDev and IRC (also see #26).
Currently, the website only shows macOS screenshots.
We should have at very least 1 Windows screenshot.
1 Linux screenshot would also be nice, although there's so few Linux users, that it's not too important.
The motivation is to attract Windows developers (which we clearly lack right now, despite being a large resource).
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