Continuation of https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=23860
@AR795 was wondering if you’d have any interest in helping soup-up the Download page?
I took some stabs at it in the previous thread with the input of several community members. The issue is, mediawiki markup is a PITA 
If you were so inclined and inspired you could propose some ideas ? and attempt to wrestle the wiki markup to implement them ?
I did create a simple design for the downloads page when I worked on the homepage. My idea was to create an html page for the downloads section with similar design as the homepage. I didn’t post it before, because it was incomplete and needed adjustments.
That looks really nice!
Though, what about the wiki page?
Here were my attempts in the past: https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/index.php?title=Sandbox:Download&oldid=235855
I believe I misunderstood what you were referring to. About the downloads page in the wiki, yes, I think it is a very good idea to organize the list of platforms into a table format. Currently they are in vertical layout, but given that there is more horizontal space on most monitors, it could fit well horizontally too. One example of table layout that I can think of is https://builder.blender.org/download/ which lists downloads in the rows and platforms in the columns.
As for the mediawiki markup, unfortunately I am not well-informed about it. Could you tell what issue you are facing? Maybe I can look into it if I can get more information.
I like the proposal very much.
There is one thing which I do not like with the current situation and the proposal seems to cement it further: What we are pushing here is the Appimage; but I think that for the widely used Debian/Ubuntu based systems the PPA installation should be the default way to go.
Very nice!
I would add to the page also the developing release (0.18 atm)
very good!! Let’s do it!
I would maybe just add some link “Other download options” that would send to the wiki page or the github releases section…
Check out Krita’s download page: (link)
Nice proposal @AR795 and high level of consensus gathered fast as a result. 
In previous discussions it was mentioned, from time to time, we likely need to attract capable designers to FreeCAD project. To progress some areas further. I guess we could try out such HTML page (for FreeCAD 0.18 release). One potential problem i see is when the binaries get updated (backports). The links to the binaries will need to get updated. And that involves pushing the changed urls to GitHub and deploying that on the server. Compared to the Wiki. Where any Wiki editor can apply the changes. By editing the Wiki.
Anyway. If we will go after the HTML approach. Additional link(s) to dedicated Wiki page(s) for each platform, explaining all the available options, could make sense. But by default clicking on one of the 3 options/platforms button. On a nice looking home/downloads page. And getting a binary as a result. I guess hard to ask for more (from end user expectations and experience point of view).
This does indeed look very nice. But I agree with chrisb, on Ubuntu the best install method is the PPA, and it does not show in the Downloads page; but that’s basically because this method is not a download per se. I guess the link to the Install on Unix page is not obvious enough.
No, the issue is that the wiki is a wiki, and in a wiki you edit content, you do not try to style it.
Yeah, the mock-up is barebones at the moment and I need to add more info to the page. About the linux downloads, it is important to show distro-specific install methods and mention about the appimage, as well as the current development release. All of this information could better fit together in a table like the krita downloads page. I need to experiment with such a layout. Changing the download links using HTML could involve more work, I wonder if there are solutions with JavaScript/PHP to automatically get the latest version or the server itself provides the latest download links?
You may get some ideas from kicad’s download page:
http://kicad-pcb.org/download/
Platforms organized in a grid look good as well, I will test such a layout.
I personally like the barebones approach as seen here:
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=32277#p269222
As for listing all available and possible options. That likely is best suited to be provided as a link. Likely to a Wiki page. As a Wiki page is good at providing such content. IMHO currently AppImage offering is the most straightforward option. For Linux users wanting to try out FreeCAD stable version in some straightforward fashion. In the future it could be some other packaging format will get used. Once i guess all mayor Linux distributions provide support by default. And somebody will provide and maintain the FreeCAD package in such format.
You should not make the download page of the wiki too fancy. Like NormandC says, the wiki is meant to put information in a structured fashion, not make it look spectacular.
With that said, I don’t think you even need to deal with the wiki markup. As far as I get, you can use many standard HTML tags inside the wiki pages, so using
I tried converting the mock-up for the downloads page to an html version. At the moment it contains a few bugs and the layout does not fit appropriately on smaller screens but it can be tested here: https://ar795.github.io/FreeCAD-Homepage/downloads.html
For now I kept the download notes from the wiki, but if required it can also be replaced by a link to the wiki downloads page in the future.
This is beautiful 
Nice!
Two things i noticed:
And i guess as such page can get translated, it should provide rather straightforward end user download experience!
Excellent job! I vote for immediate inclusion!
@sgrogan
Thanks.
@triplus
Now that I think about it, the green-red colours looked more like a traffic signal. So I changed all button colours to red and separated adjacent buttons with a divider. For the development release, it makes sense to direct linux users to the GitHub release section, and I have made the necessary changes.
@yorik
Thanks.
As usual changes can be tested here: https://ar795.github.io/FreeCAD-Homepage/downloads.html