No, it looks much better. The drop-shadows are a bit cringey but again, the colors make sense and for what it's worth it's an honest design. This is clearly the homepage of a free software project.
- The front page needs some short code samples and their output. Also, maybe showcase some libraries or projects the Octave community has created.
- Make 'Documentation' a top-level menu entry.
- Provide some 'Getting Started' documentation. I know there's a section in the manual for that, but I don't dive into the manual when I'm just trying to get a feel for what something is.
- The download page should have distro-specific installation instructions (e.g., apt-get install octave, pacman -S octave). For Windows, link directly to the exe. For OS X, link directly to the dmg.
Other than that I think it's fine. The design on the navigation menu looks a little dated, but it's not a big deal.
Isn't it really rather pointless to show distro-specific installation instructions. Someone who can program in scheme or octave really doesn't need help on using apt-get. There's many options if you want to cover a good range of distributions. Someone that clueless will probably not realise the commands need running as root, either. It only makes sense for Windows and OS X.
I disagree. As someone who knows how to use my system's package manager, it saves me from having to figure out the name of the package and whether or not I need to enable a 3rd party repository. Also, I know at least two people who use Octave that aren't comfortable with their system's package manager. Both of them use Ubuntu for their research because it's easier to get compilers (Fortran and C++) working properly, but they use Windows for general (non-research) computing. One of them is a biophysics graduate student and the other is a chemistry undergraduate.
Probably most Octave users (including me) prefer to use the command line client, but I don't think the new GUI is so terrible to not show it in the front page.
Minor UX issue: Your side nav `buttons` should be able to be clicked from the sides. Not just the text. Similar to the `continue` button in the donate section.
http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/