Please help me with improving dlang.org
I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? I'd appreciate your help with reviewing and pulling this, and also with improving the colors (which I'm terrible at) and page tracking as mentioned in the pull request. Thanks, Andrei
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sat, 17 Jan 2015 18:18:17 -0800 Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d wrote: > I took the better part of today working on this: > https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo > at http://erdani.com/d/. > > What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? > > I'd appreciate your help with reviewing and pulling this, and also with > improving the colors (which I'm terrible at) and page tracking as > mentioned in the pull request. as you wrote "What do you all think?", i will tell you my impressions too. somehow it's not looking better at all. the new sidebar is looking like... like something that's alien to the site. it's very contrast, which distracts from the main container, and screams: "read me! read me! I TOLD YOU TO READ ME!" old sidebar was almost unnoticable, which is good for supporting site element. but new one looks like it's one of the main things on the site, maybe even the most important one. it's white background sends a signal "i'm The Content!" but maybe i'm just too old for today's modern sites. for me, most of them are designed for anything but presenting me the actual content and just get out of my way while i'm reading. i was never able to understand why current D site considered "old-fashioned" in the meaning of "being old-fashioned is bad". thank you for reading this old man's rant. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 02:18:16 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: What do you all think? colors feel very geocities-like :) I'm not a designer so I couldn't give any color tips, but I like the functionality of the new design.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/17/15 6:30 PM, weaselcat wrote: On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 02:18:16 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: What do you all think? colors feel very geocities-like :) I'm not a designer so I couldn't give any color tips, but I like the functionality of the new design. Thanks! Yah, that coral-red is a bit sudden. I want something more subdued, Mars soil-like. -- Andrei
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sat, Jan 17, 2015 at 06:18:17PM -0800, Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d wrote: > I took the better part of today working on this: > https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo > at http://erdani.com/d/. > > What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? Yes! > I'd appreciate your help with reviewing and pulling this, and also > with improving the colors (which I'm terrible at) and page tracking as > mentioned in the pull request. [...] Too busy with std.algorithm, sorry. I managed to split it into 5 parts, but having some trouble with some circular dependencies that's causing std.algorithm.mutation to not work properly... but this belongs in a different discussion. T -- Once the bikeshed is up for painting, the rainbow won't suffice. -- Andrei Alexandrescu
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 02:18:16 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? I'd appreciate your help with reviewing and pulling this, and also with improving the colors (which I'm terrible at) and page tracking as mentioned in the pull request. Thanks, Andrei The layout looks pretty bad on a mobile device you kind of expect it to be properly responsive these days. That might be one thing to get fixed.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 02:18:16 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? Nice but I changed a bit, so what do you think about this: http://i.imgur.com/AIvcoWl.png ? Matheus.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 02:55:40 UTC, MattCoder wrote: On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 02:18:16 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? Nice but I changed a bit, so what do you think about this: http://i.imgur.com/AIvcoWl.png ? Matheus. IMO this looks much better.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 02:18:16 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? I'd appreciate your help with reviewing and pulling this, and also with improving the colors (which I'm terrible at) and page tracking as mentioned in the pull request. Thanks, Andrei While I like the idea of it, and the new menus in general, those gradients are honestly really not nice. Very demanding and looks rather out of place. Something like plain grey or black would be better, not a gradient and not something so pop-out like that red.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 02:18:16 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? I'd appreciate your help with reviewing and pulling this, and also with improving the colors (which I'm terrible at) and page tracking as mentioned in the pull request. Thanks, Andrei Too much code, I know its what you want people to see but if the entire length of the website consists of giant blocks of code it just doesnt look as pleasing to the eyes... put all of that code and introduction to D into a subpage called "About"/"Intro to D". have it be the first subpage on the left column. The front page should be updated with new content like your tweets, forum posts, articles from other websites,reddit, etc. maybe under the documentation put a "Getting started" Tutorial?
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 04:32:02 UTC, Kapps wrote: On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 02:18:16 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? I'd appreciate your help with reviewing and pulling this, and also with improving the colors (which I'm terrible at) and page tracking as mentioned in the pull request. Thanks, Andrei While I like the idea of it, and the new menus in general, those gradients are honestly really not nice. Very demanding and looks rather out of place. Something like plain grey or black would be better, not a gradient and not something so pop-out like that red. Oh, looks like it's different in Chrome vs Firefox. In Chrome it's a subtle red tint at the bottom, in Firefox it's an extremely bright red covering most of the button.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 04:44:56 UTC, Israel wrote: On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 02:18:16 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? I'd appreciate your help with reviewing and pulling this, and also with improving the colors (which I'm terrible at) and page tracking as mentioned in the pull request. Thanks, Andrei Too much code, I know its what you want people to see but if the entire length of the website consists of giant blocks of code it just doesnt look as pleasing to the eyes... put all of that code and introduction to D into a subpage called "About"/"Intro to D". have it be the first subpage on the left column. The front page should be updated with new content like your tweets, forum posts, articles from other websites,reddit, etc. maybe under the documentation put a "Getting started" Tutorial? I would also highly recommend advertising the patootie out of dub. Seriously, Dub is like the bright shining sapphire gem of Ds crown. Dub literally makes any other language look like crap.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 04:57:26 UTC, Kapps wrote: On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 04:32:02 UTC, Kapps wrote: On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 02:18:16 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? I'd appreciate your help with reviewing and pulling this, and also with improving the colors (which I'm terrible at) and page tracking as mentioned in the pull request. Thanks, Andrei While I like the idea of it, and the new menus in general, those gradients are honestly really not nice. Very demanding and looks rather out of place. Something like plain grey or black would be better, not a gradient and not something so pop-out like that red. Oh, looks like it's different in Chrome vs Firefox. In Chrome it's a subtle red tint at the bottom, in Firefox it's an extremely bright red covering most of the button. Looked at it in a webkit browser and you're right, I take back my first comment Andrei. But it does seem messed up on Firefox. https://i.imgur.com/FVb2Q6y.png
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/17/15 9:05 PM, Israel wrote: I would also highly recommend advertising the patootie out of dub. Seriously, Dub is like the bright shining sapphire gem of Ds crown. Dub literally makes any other language look like crap. Good idea. Updated pull request and site. Thanks! -- Andrei
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/17/15 8:57 PM, Kapps wrote: Oh, looks like it's different in Chrome vs Firefox. In Chrome it's a subtle red tint at the bottom, in Firefox it's an extremely bright red covering most of the button. Ugh. No idea where that comes from, but the original http://cssmenumaker.com/menu/modern-jquery-accordion-menu (with different colors) looks the same in both browsers. Any experts in the house? Andrei
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 02:18:16 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? I'd appreciate your help with reviewing and pulling this, and also with improving the colors (which I'm terrible at) and page tracking as mentioned in the pull request. Thanks, Andrei Personally I don't like it, doesn't look like it matches with the rest of the site. But its totally awesome that something is getting done about the site because it does seem like its getting a little stale. Personally what needs more attention is not the side menu, which I think is fine how it is now IMO, but the front page. It has way more code than what it should. Needs to be a good landing pad that advertises things like dub and visualD, and have quick downloads. Also, what happened to the site redesign that was a big topic of talk a few months back? It seems to have faded out of talk and I haven't really seen any thing done about it.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 07:11:27 UTC, Tofu Ninja wrote: I think the color and theme of the sub-menus looks a lot better than the colors of the outer-menu. With the harsh red boarder, the outer-menu looks like a red tron grid to me.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/17/15 11:16 PM, Tofu Ninja wrote: On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 07:11:27 UTC, Tofu Ninja wrote: I think the color and theme of the sub-menus looks a lot better than the colors of the outer-menu. With the harsh red boarder, the outer-menu looks like a red tron grid to me. Yah, I took the design at http://cssmenumaker.com/menu/modern-jquery-accordion-menu and changed a couple of colors essentially at random. I noticed several others have mentioned that the colors could be improved. Who can please try to do something about them? Andrei
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 04:44:56 UTC, Israel wrote: On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 02:18:16 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? I'd appreciate your help with reviewing and pulling this, and also with improving the colors (which I'm terrible at) and page tracking as mentioned in the pull request. I'm no designer, but I do have some comments. Without consistency it just looks a bunch of parts rather than a singular thing. Some elements have gradients, some don't. Some elements have round corners, some don't. Elements with borders use different widths, some have none. In regards to borders, we engineering types (maybe it's just me) tend to put boxes around stuff to represent discrete units when basic design concepts, like proximity and contrast, may be better suited for the task. I just took a quick pass at it in the browser: Original: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/114394/D-site/current.png Cleanup: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/114394/D-site/001.png Cleanup w/o bg: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/114394/D-site/002.png Think "consistency and subtlety". Good design generally goes unnoticed. Too much code, I know its what you want people to see but if the entire length of the website consists of giant blocks of code it just doesnt look as pleasing to the eyes... put all of that code and introduction to D into a subpage called "About"/"Intro to D". have it be the first subpage on the left column. The front page should be updated with new content like your tweets, forum posts, articles from other websites,reddit, etc. maybe under the documentation put a "Getting started" Tutorial? I agree, from a new user perspective all the code might seem like a bit much. It might be a good to have short blurb about "Why D?" or "What is D?" or something. I also like the idea of highlighting some key projects, particularly ones with broad appeal (dub and VisualD come to mind). I would recommend keeping things like blog posts, tweets, etc. out of the the main content (on the side or bottom is fine). External sources usually make no sense to a new user, or are generic press pieces which are unnecessary because the person is already on the site. -Dave
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/17/15 11:42 PM, DaveG wrote: On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 04:44:56 UTC, Israel wrote: On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 02:18:16 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? I'd appreciate your help with reviewing and pulling this, and also with improving the colors (which I'm terrible at) and page tracking as mentioned in the pull request. I'm no designer, but I do have some comments. Without consistency it just looks a bunch of parts rather than a singular thing. Some elements have gradients, some don't. Some elements have round corners, some don't. Elements with borders use different widths, some have none. In regards to borders, we engineering types (maybe it's just me) tend to put boxes around stuff to represent discrete units when basic design concepts, like proximity and contrast, may be better suited for the task. I just took a quick pass at it in the browser: Original: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/114394/D-site/current.png Cleanup: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/114394/D-site/001.png Cleanup w/o bg: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/114394/D-site/002.png Think "consistency and subtlety". Good design generally goes unnoticed. Looking good. Could you please do a pull request after mine gets in? Thanks! -- Andrei
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
MattCoder via Digitalmars-d píše v Ne 18. 01. 2015 v 02:55 +: > On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 02:18:16 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu > wrote: > > I took the better part of today working on this: > > https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. > > See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. > > > > What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have > > now? > > Nice but I changed a bit, so what do you think about this: > http://i.imgur.com/AIvcoWl.png > > ? > > Matheus. http://imgur.com/s155ec2
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 02:18:16 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? I'd appreciate your help with reviewing and pulling this, and also with improving the colors (which I'm terrible at) and page tracking as mentioned in the pull request. Thanks, Andrei Not sure if it's related to any of this, but the main page now contains broken links to the Library Reference. Instead of going to /phobos/index.html, it's going to /phobos/index.html.html. Doesn't happen from forum.dlang.org, only dlang.org.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/17/2015 11:42 PM, DaveG wrote: Original: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/114394/D-site/current.png Cleanup: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/114394/D-site/001.png Cleanup w/o bg: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/114394/D-site/002.png Better, but I liked the spidery red lines!
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/17/2015 6:18 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? I'd appreciate your help with reviewing and pulling this, and also with improving the colors (which I'm terrible at) and page tracking as mentioned in the pull request. Thanks, Andrei Me like. And I do like the spidery red lines in particular.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 08:42:30 UTC, Walter Bright wrote: Me like. And I do like the spidery red lines in particular. The red lines were what I particularly disliked, looks old and unclean to me.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 18/01/2015 10:40 p.m., Tofu Ninja wrote: On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 08:42:30 UTC, Walter Bright wrote: Me like. And I do like the spidery red lines in particular. The red lines were what I particularly disliked, looks old and unclean to me. Also that contrast is awful on the eyes!
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 2015-01-18 03:18, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? It looks absolutely horrible. It was way, way better before. -- /Jacob Carlborg
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 10:16:15 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote: On 2015-01-18 03:18, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? It looks absolutely horrible. It was way, way better before. Sorry Andrei, but +1 on Jacob! ;-O
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 10:16:15 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote: On 2015-01-18 03:18, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? It looks absolutely horrible. It was way, way better before On iPhone 6: D, Rust, Python, Ruby websites (Ruby being particularly gorgeous and D looking particularly ancient and out of place): http://imgur.com/7Vb2ynM http://imgur.com/SGKUd2q http://imgur.com/bXk1lf9 http://imgur.com/njSgbzW
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
I like it. It feels good to have code.dlang.org featured prominently. Nitpicks: - Main thing is see is that for the left button you reversed the natural flow of light. It will feel a _lot_ less alien if the bottom of nav button is darker than the top, rather than the current. Currrently such button brings much attention since this principle is reversed. - two different links to code.dlang.org - I'm a huge user of one-click-to-D-forums, the forums are always interesting to read and I've been doing just that for six years now. Maybe the Community panel should be expanded by default. On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 02:18:16 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? I'd appreciate your help with reviewing and pulling this, and also with improving the colors (which I'm terrible at) and page tracking as mentioned in the pull request. Thanks, Andrei
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 10:27:43 UTC, aldanor wrote: On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 10:16:15 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote: On 2015-01-18 03:18, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? It looks absolutely horrible. It was way, way better before On iPhone 6: D, Rust, Python, Ruby websites (Ruby being particularly gorgeous and D looking particularly ancient and out of place): http://imgur.com/7Vb2ynM http://imgur.com/SGKUd2q http://imgur.com/bXk1lf9 http://imgur.com/njSgbzW Looks like tweets occupy valuable screen estate on this device.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
I'll add: as a user I don't really wan't to see Acknoledgments, Appendices and Sitemap buttons. This doesn't seem as important as seeing Forums. On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 10:34:15 UTC, ponce wrote: I like it. It feels good to have code.dlang.org featured prominently. Nitpicks: - Main thing is see is that for the left button you reversed the natural flow of light. It will feel a _lot_ less alien if the bottom of nav button is darker than the top, rather than the current. Currrently such button brings much attention since this principle is reversed. - two different links to code.dlang.org - I'm a huge user of one-click-to-D-forums, the forums are always interesting to read and I've been doing just that for six years now. Maybe the Community panel should be expanded by default. On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 02:18:16 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? I'd appreciate your help with reviewing and pulling this, and also with improving the colors (which I'm terrible at) and page tracking as mentioned in the pull request. Thanks, Andrei
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 07:44:24 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: On 1/17/15 11:42 PM, DaveG wrote: On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 04:44:56 UTC, Israel wrote: On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 02:18:16 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? I'd appreciate your help with reviewing and pulling this, and also with improving the colors (which I'm terrible at) and page tracking as mentioned in the pull request. I'm no designer, but I do have some comments. Without consistency it just looks a bunch of parts rather than a singular thing. Some elements have gradients, some don't. Some elements have round corners, some don't. Elements with borders use different widths, some have none. In regards to borders, we engineering types (maybe it's just me) tend to put boxes around stuff to represent discrete units when basic design concepts, like proximity and contrast, may be better suited for the task. I just took a quick pass at it in the browser: Original: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/114394/D-site/current.png Cleanup: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/114394/D-site/001.png Cleanup w/o bg: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/114394/D-site/002.png Think "consistency and subtlety". Good design generally goes unnoticed. Looking good. Could you please do a pull request after mine gets in? Thanks! -- Andrei The thing with the red gradients looks incredibly horrible/ bad constrast actually makes it physically (eye strain) unpleasant. The cleanup looks better, but now the site has 3 columns with 3 different styles (not just colors, but e.g. flat vs gradient, edgy vs rounded, having that extra border on the bottom vs not having it) Dlang.org needs design by a designer, not by art-insensitive programmers. No, I'm not much of a designer either, unfortunately. But it should not be too hard to find a student with decent art sense who can do much better than this. Also, note that the collapsible menu can be done in pure CSS, no JS needed, which would allow it to work consistently even with NoScript.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
this one looks pretty good!
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/18/15 12:35 AM, Kapps wrote: On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 02:18:16 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? I'd appreciate your help with reviewing and pulling this, and also with improving the colors (which I'm terrible at) and page tracking as mentioned in the pull request. Thanks, Andrei Not sure if it's related to any of this, but the main page now contains broken links to the Library Reference. Instead of going to /phobos/index.html, it's going to /phobos/index.html.html. Doesn't happen from forum.dlang.org, only dlang.org. Ouch, a lot of links got björked. Fixed and uploaded: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/commit/13cc207be4635f4e1b847b439c7191e751e503d5 Andrei
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/18/15 2:46 AM, ponce wrote: I'll add: as a user I don't really wan't to see Acknoledgments, Appendices and Sitemap buttons. This doesn't seem as important as seeing Forums. Yah the actual content of the menu is subject to a different set of changes. Right now I'm focused on the styling. -- Andrei
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/18/15 2:24 AM, Paolo Invernizzi wrote: On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 10:16:15 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote: On 2015-01-18 03:18, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? It looks absolutely horrible. It was way, way better before. Sorry Andrei, but +1 on Jacob! ;-O Suggestions on how to make it better? -- Andrei
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/18/15 2:36 AM, ponce wrote: On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 10:27:43 UTC, aldanor wrote: On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 10:16:15 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote: On 2015-01-18 03:18, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? It looks absolutely horrible. It was way, way better before On iPhone 6: D, Rust, Python, Ruby websites (Ruby being particularly gorgeous and D looking particularly ancient and out of place): http://imgur.com/7Vb2ynM http://imgur.com/SGKUd2q http://imgur.com/bXk1lf9 http://imgur.com/njSgbzW Looks like tweets occupy valuable screen estate on this device. Can we ditch the twitter div on mobile? (Pull request would be nice, thanks.) -- Andrei
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/18/15 5:41 AM, Kiith-Sa wrote: The thing with the red gradients looks incredibly horrible/ bad constrast actually makes it physically (eye strain) unpleasant. The cleanup looks better, but now the site has 3 columns with 3 different styles (not just colors, but e.g. flat vs gradient, edgy vs rounded, having that extra border on the bottom vs not having it) I'll replace the gradient with flat colors today. Dlang.org needs design by a designer, not by art-insensitive programmers. No, I'm not much of a designer either, unfortunately. But it should not be too hard to find a student with decent art sense who can do much better than this. I agree. Note that the difficult part for me was (a) finding the right stuff online, (b) learning the stuff involved in getting it to work on our site and degrade nicely without javascript, (c) getting the mechanics integrated. In the process I changed ONE thing: the colors. EVERYBODY disliked the colors, but only ONE soul proposed others. Also, note that the collapsible menu can be done in pure CSS, no JS needed, which would allow it to work consistently even with NoScript. I searched for ways to do accordion menus without Javascript for maybe a couple of hours today, no avail. My conclusion was it can't be done, or at least not with what's available for free. But of course that's based on two hours' worth of accumulating expertise. I challenge you to make a pull request that achieves accordion menus without Javascript. Feel free to start from my branch and change the code from there. Andrei
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/18/15 8:33 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: On 1/18/15 5:41 AM, Kiith-Sa wrote: Also, note that the collapsible menu can be done in pure CSS, no JS needed, which would allow it to work consistently even with NoScript. I searched for ways to do accordion menus without Javascript for maybe a couple of hours today, no avail. I meant yesterday, not today. I'm emphasizing this because I was hoping for pure CSS menus _before_ I got the current ones. The challenge remains: do pure CSS menus and I'll offer you my awe. -- Andrei
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 16:23:35 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: On 1/18/15 2:36 AM, ponce wrote: On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 10:27:43 UTC, aldanor wrote: On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 10:16:15 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote: On 2015-01-18 03:18, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? It looks absolutely horrible. It was way, way better before On iPhone 6: D, Rust, Python, Ruby websites (Ruby being particularly gorgeous and D looking particularly ancient and out of place): http://imgur.com/7Vb2ynM http://imgur.com/SGKUd2q http://imgur.com/bXk1lf9 http://imgur.com/njSgbzW Looks like tweets occupy valuable screen estate on this device. Can we ditch the twitter div on mobile? (Pull request would be nice, thanks.) -- Andrei This is usually solved by media queries / responsive design / grid frameworks, sorry if I'm stating the obvious :) Try resizing the commonly used websites and see what happens, e.g. for ruby-lang you have at least 3 "versions" which are selected automatically based on the current viewport's settings which the browser provides: http://imgur.com/a/gE38d E.g. the menus on the left getting folded into one mobile "button" which expands them on demand and leaves more space for the actual content, or some elements disappearing in smaller viewports altogether (like the twitter feed div). This is quite a pain to manage manually without having an underlying grid framework.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/18/15 9:02 AM, aldanor wrote: This is usually solved by media queries / responsive design / grid frameworks, sorry if I'm stating the obvious :) Try resizing the commonly used websites and see what happens, e.g. for ruby-lang you have at least 3 "versions" which are selected automatically based on the current viewport's settings which the browser provides: http://imgur.com/a/gE38d E.g. the menus on the left getting folded into one mobile "button" which expands them on demand and leaves more space for the actual content, or some elements disappearing in smaller viewports altogether (like the twitter feed div). This is quite a pain to manage manually without having an underlying grid framework. My understanding is there are various simpler way to do this, e.g. separate styles for small screen devices, redirection to a different URL, setting "hidden" to certain DIVs dynamically etc. etc. As you saying there's no way to do this unless we use some grid framework I know nothing about and probably need to learn? -- Andrei
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
MattCoder via Digitalmars-d píše v Ne 18. 01. 2015 v 02:55 +: > On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 02:18:16 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu > wrote: > > I took the better part of today working on this: > > https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. > > See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. > > > > What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have > > now? > > Nice but I changed a bit, so what do you think about this: > http://i.imgur.com/AIvcoWl.png > > ? > > Matheus. Nice it is better, but still the orange is too much allien for my eyes. Maybe something like this would be better:
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 17:05:28 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: On 1/18/15 9:02 AM, aldanor wrote: This is usually solved by media queries / responsive design / grid frameworks, sorry if I'm stating the obvious :) Try resizing the commonly used websites and see what happens, e.g. for ruby-lang you have at least 3 "versions" which are selected automatically based on the current viewport's settings which the browser provides: http://imgur.com/a/gE38d E.g. the menus on the left getting folded into one mobile "button" which expands them on demand and leaves more space for the actual content, or some elements disappearing in smaller viewports altogether (like the twitter feed div). This is quite a pain to manage manually without having an underlying grid framework. My understanding is there are various simpler way to do this, e.g. separate styles for small screen devices, redirection to a different URL, setting "hidden" to certain DIVs dynamically etc. etc. As you saying there's no way to do this unless we use some grid framework I know nothing about and probably need to learn? -- Andrei The thing with frameworks is that some designers have put a considerable amount of time on putting them together, making them cross-browser compatible, working around various edge cases etc (and there are many...) -- so that you won't have to. Once you want something like responsiveness + automatic reflows, things start getting even more complicated... Not all frameworks are gigantic like bootstrap/foundation, there's some smaller ones that just do the grid thing (like 960). (that, or you can always pull just the bits you want from bootstrap or anything and minify it). Another point is that if you use the elements the framework provides (e.g. navbar menu), they would be already nicely compatible with the framework's grid system. As an example -- try resizing the width here and see what happens: http://getbootstrap.com/examples/grid/. There's also some minimalistic frameworks -- like PureCSS, just to give an example -- http://purecss.io and https://github.com/yahoo/pure, where the entire grid system is just 0.8KB.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 17:05:28 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: On 1/18/15 9:02 AM, aldanor wrote: This is usually solved by media queries / responsive design / grid frameworks, sorry if I'm stating the obvious :) Try resizing the commonly used websites and see what happens, e.g. for ruby-lang you have at least 3 "versions" which are selected automatically based on the current viewport's settings which the browser provides: http://imgur.com/a/gE38d E.g. the menus on the left getting folded into one mobile "button" which expands them on demand and leaves more space for the actual content, or some elements disappearing in smaller viewports altogether (like the twitter feed div). This is quite a pain to manage manually without having an underlying grid framework. My understanding is there are various simpler way to do this, e.g. separate styles for small screen devices, redirection to a different URL, setting "hidden" to certain DIVs dynamically etc. etc. As you saying there's no way to do this unless we use some grid framework I know nothing about and probably need to learn? -- Andrei when not using a css framework like this, then the app for the mobile will consist of css and javascript hacks. and mostly one would lack the designers' and frontend developers' experience :) if i may, i'll go and straightly ask a very great designer friend of mine to help us out. he'll either design a new interface for us or help us make this one better. let me know your call.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 17:05:28 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: On 1/18/15 9:02 AM, aldanor wrote: This is usually solved by media queries / responsive design / grid frameworks, sorry if I'm stating the obvious :) Try resizing the commonly used websites and see what happens, e.g. for ruby-lang you have at least 3 "versions" which are selected automatically based on the current viewport's settings which the browser provides: http://imgur.com/a/gE38d E.g. the menus on the left getting folded into one mobile "button" which expands them on demand and leaves more space for the actual content, or some elements disappearing in smaller viewports altogether (like the twitter feed div). This is quite a pain to manage manually without having an underlying grid framework. My understanding is there are various simpler way to do this, e.g. separate styles for small screen devices, redirection to a different URL, setting "hidden" to certain DIVs dynamically etc. etc. As you saying there's no way to do this unless we use some grid framework I know nothing about and probably need to learn? -- Andrei And yet another thing you gain with (most) frameworks is having access to the original SASS/LESS. This essentially provides you with features like inheritance, mixins and default values for CSS which reduces the boilerplate and makes the whole thing much more manageable.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/18/15 5:41 AM, Kiith-Sa wrote: Also, note that the collapsible menu can be done in pure CSS, no JS needed, which would allow it to work consistently even with NoScript. It is possible with CSS only (I think), but fancy features like animations require CSS3 transitions which has inconsistent support. Do we have a set of "supported" browsers? In this case we shouldn't have any problem degrading gracefully anyway, but it's good to know. On 1/18/15 9:02 AM, aldanor wrote: This is usually solved by media queries / responsive design / grid frameworks, sorry if I'm stating the obvious :) My understanding is there are various simpler way to do this, e.g. separate styles for small screen devices, redirection to a different URL, setting "hidden" to certain DIVs dynamically etc. etc. As you saying there's no way to do this unless we use some grid framework... We don't need to use a framework, although it might be a good idea if someone has experience with one they think is appropriate. I'll try to get to the menus and making primary layout responsive at some point today. -Dave
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 07:42:05 UTC, DaveG wrote: On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 04:44:56 UTC, Israel wrote: On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 02:18:16 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? I'd appreciate your help with reviewing and pulling this, and also with improving the colors (which I'm terrible at) and page tracking as mentioned in the pull request. I'm no designer, but I do have some comments. Without consistency it just looks a bunch of parts rather than a singular thing. Some elements have gradients, some don't. Some elements have round corners, some don't. Elements with borders use different widths, some have none. In regards to borders, we engineering types (maybe it's just me) tend to put boxes around stuff to represent discrete units when basic design concepts, like proximity and contrast, may be better suited for the task. I just took a quick pass at it in the browser: Original: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/114394/D-site/current.png Cleanup: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/114394/D-site/001.png Cleanup w/o bg: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/114394/D-site/002.png Think "consistency and subtlety". Good design generally goes unnoticed. Too much code, I know its what you want people to see but if the entire length of the website consists of giant blocks of code it just doesnt look as pleasing to the eyes... put all of that code and introduction to D into a subpage called "About"/"Intro to D". have it be the first subpage on the left column. The front page should be updated with new content like your tweets, forum posts, articles from other websites,reddit, etc. maybe under the documentation put a "Getting started" Tutorial? I agree, from a new user perspective all the code might seem like a bit much. It might be a good to have short blurb about "Why D?" or "What is D?" or something. I also like the idea of highlighting some key projects, particularly ones with broad appeal (dub and VisualD come to mind). I would recommend keeping things like blog posts, tweets, etc. out of the the main content (on the side or bottom is fine). External sources usually make no sense to a new user, or are generic press pieces which are unnecessary because the person is already on the site. -Dave This is very true. As a newcomer you've probably already found out about D through another website, friend, etc. Which proves your point 'unnecessary because the person is already on the site.'. however I'm thinking about people like is who are already here. We need to see how D is impacting the rest of the world so turning the front page to something like a blog would make traffic flow like crazy and grab more attention. Which is what D needs the most right now. If you just have a static page frozen the same way for 7 years. You kind of start to see why people think "D is dead".
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
Half year ago there was attempted to rewrite site to vibed. I even see demo sites with fresh design. What happened thous projected was abandoned?
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 2015-01-18 06:14, weaselcat wrote: Looked at it in a webkit browser and you're right, I take back my first comment Andrei. But it does seem messed up on Firefox. https://i.imgur.com/FVb2Q6y.png Looks like the colors are inverted. -- /Jacob Carlborg
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
"DaveG" wrote: >> On 1/18/15 5:41 AM, Kiith-Sa wrote: >>> Also, note that the collapsible menu can be done in pure CSS, >> no JS >>> needed, which would allow it to work consistently even with >> NoScript. > It is possible with CSS only (I think), but fancy features like > animations require CSS3 transitions which has inconsistent support. Do we > have a set of "supported" browsers? In this case we shouldn't have any > problem degrading gracefully anyway, but it's good to know. > >> On 1/18/15 9:02 AM, aldanor wrote: >>> This is usually solved by media queries / responsive design / >> grid >>> frameworks, sorry if I'm stating the obvious :) >> >> My understanding is there are various simpler way to do this, > e.g. >> separate styles for small screen devices, redirection to a > different >> URL, setting "hidden" to certain DIVs dynamically > etc. etc. As you >> saying there's no way to do this unless we use > some grid framework... > We don't need to use a framework, although it might be a good idea if > someone has experience with one they think is appropriate. I'll try to > get to the menus and making primary layout responsive at some point today. > > -Dave Thanks!!
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
"Mengu" wrote: > On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 17:05:28 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: >> On 1/18/15 9:02 AM, aldanor wrote: >>> This is usually solved by media queries / responsive design / >> grid >>> frameworks, sorry if I'm stating the obvious :) Try resizing >> the >>> commonly used websites and see what happens, e.g. for >> ruby-lang you have >>> at least 3 "versions" which are selected automatically based >> on the >>> current viewport's settings which the browser provides: >>> http://imgur.com/a/gE38d >>> >>> E.g. the menus on the left getting folded into one mobile >> "button" which >>> expands them on demand and leaves more space for the actual >> content, or >>> some elements disappearing in smaller viewports altogether >> (like the >>> twitter feed div). This is quite a pain to manage manually >> without >>> having an underlying grid framework. >> >> My understanding is there are various simpler way to do this, > e.g. >> separate styles for small screen devices, redirection to a > different >> URL, setting "hidden" to certain DIVs dynamically > etc. etc. As you >> saying there's no way to do this unless we use > some grid framework I >> know nothing about and probably need to > learn? -- Andrei > > when not using a css framework like this, then the app for the mobile > will consist of css and javascript hacks. and mostly one would lack the > designers' and frontend developers' experience :) > > if i may, i'll go and straightly ask a very great designer friend of mine > to help us out. he'll either design a new interface for us or help us > make this one better. let me know your call. Give it a couple more weeks until I migrate more stuff to CSS, then ask what it would take to improve the css. Thanks!
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
Jacob Carlborg wrote: > On 2015-01-18 06:14, weaselcat wrote: > >> Looked at it in a webkit browser and you're right, I take back my first >> comment Andrei. >> But it does seem messed up on Firefox. >> https://i.imgur.com/FVb2Q6y.png > > Looks like the colors are inverted. I know what happened (but am afk for a while). I only changed colors in one place in the css, the one specific to WebKit. That can be easily seen in cssmenu.css in my pull request.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 17:03:00 UTC, aldanor wrote: This is usually solved by media queries / responsive design / grid frameworks, sorry if I'm stating the obvious :) Yeah, and it is really REALLY easy. https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/779 Jacob makes a few good points that could improve it a bit but just hiding it on a certain size is better than it is now.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 17:56:41 UTC, aldanor wrote: And yet another thing you gain with (most) frameworks is having access to the original SASS/LESS. I think that's a con, actually. My biggest problem with contributing to the dlang website is that I have to do it blind - it won't make on my computer. The last thing we need is to make that process even more complicated with even more dependencies.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 17:58:57 UTC, Mengu wrote: if i may, i'll go and straightly ask a very great designer friend of mine to help us out. he'll either design a new interface for us or help us make this one better. let me know your call. BTW I'll write the css myself if some designer wants to send me a .png file of what they want the site to look like. (I shouldn't be promising this given the million other things I have to do, but writing css isn't really that hard compared to coming up with the visual design) Tough I think the site is basically ok looking right now and just a few minor tweaks would be nice... which is why I wrote them myself. I encourage others to do the same, just open a pull request and we can hash it out over some concrete code.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 2015-01-18 17:21, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: Suggestions on how to make it better? -- Andrei Something flat (i.e. no gradient) or with less difference between the colors in the gradient. -- /Jacob Carlborg
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 2015-01-18 17:23, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: Can we ditch the twitter div on mobile? (Pull request would be nice, thanks.) -- Andrei Adam has already created that: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/779 -- /Jacob Carlborg
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 02:18:16 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? I'd appreciate your help with reviewing and pulling this, and also with improving the colors (which I'm terrible at) and page tracking as mentioned in the pull request. Thanks, Andrei The sidebar colors does look... I liked the old menus better. It was a bit old school but it still looked good (like the reddit menus). The only bad thing about the old menus is that there is to many links Responsive design is missing. I think we could get some of it for free if we used a framework like bootstrap (rust uses it). Many different styles on different sections. It feels like I'm redirected all around the web. E.x code.dlang.org vs. dlang.org. Shouldn't all this be under the same site? Maybe we should give some indication that some links are not part of dlang.org. Googles pagespeed also gives some nice guidelines: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=dlang.org Best regards, NVolcz
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
I like the buttons with the dark red gradients on the left. Although the button titles don't seem professional to me, the buttons do. I'm personally interested in seeing the "story" of D told better. I have more of a conscious opinion of the words of the front page than I do of the look-and-feel. Are the words up for discussion here, or just the look-and-feel for now?
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 21:27:25 UTC, NVolcz wrote: Googles pagespeed also gives some nice guidelines: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=dlang.org Nice and for image processing/compression I'd like to recommend this free tool (Win/Linux/Mac): http://advsys.net/ken/utils.htm#pngoutkziplicense Matheus.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sun, 18 Jan 2015 23:47:30 + MattCoder via Digitalmars-d wrote: > On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 21:27:25 UTC, NVolcz wrote: > > Googles pagespeed also gives some nice guidelines: > > https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=dlang.org > > Nice and for image processing/compression I'd like to recommend > this free tool (Win/Linux/Mac): > > http://advsys.net/ken/utils.htm#pngoutkziplicense there are also "optipng" and "advpng". the last comes with MAME, i believe, and using google's zopfli library to squeeze out even more bytes in exchange of big processing times. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 02:18:16 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? I'd appreciate your help with reviewing and pulling this, and also with improving the colors (which I'm terrible at) and page tracking as mentioned in the pull request. What are your primary concerns with the website? I think it would help to know what you are trying to achieve. Personally, although dlang.org isn't particularly pretty, I think its fine. It's the unmaintained and unfinished content that's the real problem, not the aesthetics. I've made a number of PRs to move "unofficial" content to the wiki so it could be better maintained there, and if not maintained, at least appear less official. I believe dlang.org's lack of maintenance is partially due to the issues mentioned below. I've tried to do some improvements on dlang.org, and its a PITA. If it were made more convenient, there would be greater participation from me, and likely others. So, I offer the following suggestion: 1) Modify the build scripts and the instructions on dlang.org so that it's abundantly clear how to fork, modify, build, verify, submit PRs without having read verbose instructions and without having to clone and build dmd, druntime, phobos, and other repositories just to get an html page to verify an edit. I would do this myself, but an important prerequisite to updating build scripts and documentation is knowledge, which I have yet to possess. But someone in this community knows. 2) Aside from the documentation generated from the source code, why does the website need to be "built"? IMO a static website like dlang.org shouldn't need any additional tools other than a browser and an image editor. I may explore some options later, but only after 1) is done. Mike
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/18/2015 1:41 AM, Rikki Cattermole wrote: On 18/01/2015 10:40 p.m., Tofu Ninja wrote: On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 08:42:30 UTC, Walter Bright wrote: Me like. And I do like the spidery red lines in particular. The red lines were what I particularly disliked, looks old and unclean to me. Also that contrast is awful on the eyes! How can a 1 pixel wide line be awful on the eyes?
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/18/15 3:36 PM, Zach the Mystic wrote: I like the buttons with the dark red gradients on the left. Although the button titles don't seem professional to me, the buttons do. I'm personally interested in seeing the "story" of D told better. I have more of a conscious opinion of the words of the front page than I do of the look-and-feel. Are the words up for discussion here, or just the look-and-feel for now? Content discussion to follow soon. -- Andrei
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/18/15 4:57 PM, Mike wrote: On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 02:18:16 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/. What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now? I'd appreciate your help with reviewing and pulling this, and also with improving the colors (which I'm terrible at) and page tracking as mentioned in the pull request. What are your primary concerns with the website? I think it would help to know what you are trying to achieve. Good point. 1. The site design/styling is old. Simply changing it is now necessary just as a refresher. 2. Of course, we'd also like things to be better. The chaotic navigation menu on the left was something I long wished to replace with a more modern on. 3. Part of my effort is to replace all manual html ad-hoc styles with styles in the css. That is invisible right now but will become very useful when we pass the site for improvement to a specialist. Personally, although dlang.org isn't particularly pretty, I think its fine. It's the unmaintained and unfinished content that's the real problem, not the aesthetics. I've made a number of PRs to move "unofficial" content to the wiki so it could be better maintained there, and if not maintained, at least appear less official. Thanks! I believe dlang.org's lack of maintenance is partially due to the issues mentioned below. I've tried to do some improvements on dlang.org, and its a PITA. If it were made more convenient, there would be greater participation from me, and likely others. So, I offer the following suggestion: 1) Modify the build scripts and the instructions on dlang.org so that it's abundantly clear how to fork, modify, build, verify, submit PRs without having read verbose instructions and without having to clone and build dmd, druntime, phobos, and other repositories just to get an html page to verify an edit. I would do this myself, but an important prerequisite to updating build scripts and documentation is knowledge, which I have yet to possess. But someone in this community knows. We definitely need to get that working. There are a couple of blocking issues (like the interference of local configuration files on the site build) but I trust we'll get over them soon. 2) Aside from the documentation generated from the source code, why does the website need to be "built"? IMO a static website like dlang.org shouldn't need any additional tools other than a browser and an image editor. I may explore some options later, but only after 1) is done. The short answer is because there's no robust inclusion and code reuse solution at HTML level. Andrei
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Monday, 19 January 2015 at 01:41:04 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: Content discussion to follow soon. -- Andrei As I asked in another Topic without any answer, I wasn't able to find (or at least is not easily visible) anything related to "CONTRIBUTE" even on sitemap. I think there should be a button for this on the main site. Matheus.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 19/01/2015 2:07 p.m., Walter Bright wrote: On 1/18/2015 1:41 AM, Rikki Cattermole wrote: On 18/01/2015 10:40 p.m., Tofu Ninja wrote: On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 08:42:30 UTC, Walter Bright wrote: Me like. And I do like the spidery red lines in particular. The red lines were what I particularly disliked, looks old and unclean to me. Also that contrast is awful on the eyes! How can a 1 pixel wide line be awful on the eyes? When you have a headache and not in a really good head space it can hurt.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Monday, 19 January 2015 at 02:00:52 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: 2) Aside from the documentation generated from the source code, why does the website need to be "built"? IMO a static website like dlang.org shouldn't need any additional tools other than a browser and an image editor. I may explore some options later, but only after 1) is done. The short answer is because there's no robust inclusion and code reuse solution at HTML level. Would it be a horrible idea to render DDoc in javascript? Mike
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/18/15 6:09 PM, MattCoder wrote: On Monday, 19 January 2015 at 01:41:04 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: Content discussion to follow soon. -- Andrei As I asked in another Topic without any answer, I wasn't able to find (or at least is not easily visible) anything related to "CONTRIBUTE" even on sitemap. I think there should be a button for this on the main site. Great idea. Could you please put that in bugzilla, it's important and shouldn't be forgotten. -- Andrei
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/18/15 11:43 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote: On 2015-01-18 17:21, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: Suggestions on how to make it better? -- Andrei Something flat (i.e. no gradient) or with less difference between the colors in the gradient. OK, the current attempt has no gradient at all. Probably too flat? -- Andrei
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/18/15 11:15 AM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote: On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 17:56:41 UTC, aldanor wrote: And yet another thing you gain with (most) frameworks is having access to the original SASS/LESS. I think that's a con, actually. My biggest problem with contributing to the dlang website is that I have to do it blind - it won't make on my computer. This has been a continuous source of annoyance for me. Seems like whenever I turn my back the site build gets broken. Right now I have it working smoothly, but I know of a few potential issues. Could you please reply here with your problem(s) and I'll get a robust solution in place? Thanks, Andrei
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Monday, 19 January 2015 at 02:19:30 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: On 1/18/15 6:09 PM, MattCoder wrote: On Monday, 19 January 2015 at 01:41:04 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: Content discussion to follow soon. -- Andrei As I asked in another Topic without any answer, I wasn't able to find (or at least is not easily visible) anything related to "CONTRIBUTE" even on sitemap. I think there should be a button for this on the main site. Great idea. Could you please put that in bugzilla, it's important and shouldn't be forgotten. -- Andrei My first time using bugzilla: https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14006 Please could anyone tell if I did right? Matheus.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/18/15 6:37 PM, MattCoder wrote: On Monday, 19 January 2015 at 02:19:30 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: On 1/18/15 6:09 PM, MattCoder wrote: On Monday, 19 January 2015 at 01:41:04 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: Content discussion to follow soon. -- Andrei As I asked in another Topic without any answer, I wasn't able to find (or at least is not easily visible) anything related to "CONTRIBUTE" even on sitemap. I think there should be a button for this on the main site. Great idea. Could you please put that in bugzilla, it's important and shouldn't be forgotten. -- Andrei My first time using bugzilla: https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14006 Please could anyone tell if I did right? Yes. Next step: fix it! :o) -- Andrei
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Monday, 19 January 2015 at 02:21:41 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: On 1/18/15 11:15 AM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote: On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 17:56:41 UTC, aldanor wrote: And yet another thing you gain with (most) frameworks is having access to the original SASS/LESS. I think that's a con, actually. My biggest problem with contributing to the dlang website is that I have to do it blind - it won't make on my computer. I agree about SASS and other tools. There are so many now you have to learn all of them (or none, in my case). Many years ago I wrote primitive script to do what SASS eventually did for CSS. The added features were nice, but barley justified the added complexity and build process. As soon as I joined a team I abandoned it completely. They can be useful particularly for larger/long-term projects, but it's a steep upfront cost and is particularly frustrating for people who just need to make minor changes. This has been a continuous source of annoyance for me. Seems like whenever I turn my back the site build gets broken. I was worried about that, but I actually had no problem. I'm on Windows. I cloned your better-menus, had dub build dpl-docs.exe, and ran the win32 makefile. Here's where I'm at. The menus don't use javascript (except when the screen gets so small it needs a button to open the navigation, the button uses js). It scales with screen size and should work on mobile (untested) - I changed doctype to html5 and added metatags for mobile. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/114394/D-site/redesign/index.html
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Monday, 19 January 2015 at 02:10:06 UTC, Mike wrote: On Monday, 19 January 2015 at 02:00:52 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: 2) Aside from the documentation generated from the source code, why does the website need to be "built"? IMO a static website like dlang.org shouldn't need any additional tools other than a browser and an image editor. I may explore some options later, but only after 1) is done. The short answer is because there's no robust inclusion and code reuse solution at HTML level. Would it be a horrible idea to render DDoc in javascript? Answer, yes! vibe.d is where it's at. Mike
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Monday, 19 January 2015 at 02:22:33 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: On 1/18/15 11:43 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote: On 2015-01-18 17:21, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: Suggestions on how to make it better? -- Andrei Something flat (i.e. no gradient) or with less difference between the colors in the gradient. OK, the current attempt has no gradient at all. Probably too flat? -- Andrei Much better in my opinion.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/18/15 6:50 PM, DaveG wrote: Here's where I'm at. The menus don't use javascript (except when the screen gets so small it needs a button to open the navigation, the button uses js). It scales with screen size and should work on mobile (untested) - I changed doctype to html5 and added metatags for mobile. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/114394/D-site/redesign/index.html I think I know why no javascript. Currently the *.js files are loaded from /js/, i.e. absolute path. Change that to relative path and it'll work. All - what do you think of dropping the background image and use the DaveG's telluric background for menu? Andrei
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Monday, 19 January 2015 at 03:06:35 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: On 1/18/15 6:50 PM, DaveG wrote: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/114394/D-site/redesign/index.html All - what do you think of dropping the background image and use the DaveG's telluric background for menu? I like it, and also the resizing stuff covers what I did so if his changes go through, I can close my PR too. That's a win.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/18/2015 6:07 PM, Rikki Cattermole wrote: When you have a headache and not in a really good head space it can hurt. Hope you feel better soon.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 19/01/2015 4:49 p.m., Walter Bright wrote: On 1/18/2015 6:07 PM, Rikki Cattermole wrote: When you have a headache and not in a really good head space it can hurt. Hope you feel better soon. I am slowly, thanks. Really I just need to start working getting Cmsed and friends back into good shape for GSOC.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/18/15 7:18 PM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote: On Monday, 19 January 2015 at 03:06:35 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: On 1/18/15 6:50 PM, DaveG wrote: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/114394/D-site/redesign/index.html All - what do you think of dropping the background image and use the DaveG's telluric background for menu? I like it, and also the resizing stuff covers what I did so if his changes go through, I can close my PR too. That's a win. Wati, what resizing stuff? -- Andrei
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Monday, 19 January 2015 at 04:18:02 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: Wati, what resizing stuff? -- Andrei Resize the browser and the sidebars disappear when there's no longer enough room to reasonably fit them. It is important for readability on mobile so a really good thing to have (for the people who use the mobile browsers).
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/18/15 8:57 PM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote: On Monday, 19 January 2015 at 04:18:02 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: Wati, what resizing stuff? -- Andrei Resize the browser and the sidebars disappear when there's no longer enough room to reasonably fit them. It is important for readability on mobile so a really good thing to have (for the people who use the mobile browsers). Where is that implemented? Is there a pull request? -- Andrei
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 2015-01-19 03:22, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: OK, the current attempt has no gradient at all. Probably too flat? -- No, not really. But now the top menu item looks out of place. And the bottom border of the menu ... doesn't look right. I would guess you can just remove it. Although I still like the old design better. But the collapsible menu might be a good idea. -- /Jacob Carlborg
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 2015-01-19 03:50, DaveG wrote: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/114394/D-site/redesign/index.html It would be better if the menu could become some kind of drop down. Look at how Bootstrap is doing it [1]. The menu doesn't take up any more horizontal space when it's expanded. [1] http://getbootstrap.com -- /Jacob Carlborg
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 2015-01-19 03:44, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: Yes. Next step: fix it! :o) -- Andrei A couple of years ago I started on writing a contribution document [1] but never finished it. It might be a bit outdated now but it's mostly correct and could be used as a starting point. [1] https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18386187/contribute.html -- /Jacob Carlborg
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/19/15 12:09 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote: On 2015-01-19 03:44, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: Yes. Next step: fix it! :o) -- Andrei A couple of years ago I started on writing a contribution document [1] but never finished it. It might be a bit outdated now but it's mostly correct and could be used as a starting point. [1] https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18386187/contribute.html Great, thanks! -- Andrei
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/18/15 6:50 PM, DaveG wrote: Here's where I'm at. The menus don't use javascript (except when the screen gets so small it needs a button to open the navigation, the button uses js). It scales with screen size and should work on mobile (untested) - I changed doctype to html5 and added metatags for mobile. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/114394/D-site/redesign/index.html Could you please submit a PR to my better-menus fork on github? Thanks! -- Andrei
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Monday, 19 January 2015 at 07:56:39 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote: On 2015-01-19 03:50, DaveG wrote: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/114394/D-site/redesign/index.html It would be better if the menu could become some kind of drop down. Look at how Bootstrap is doing it [1]. The menu doesn't take up any more horizontal space when it's expanded. [1] http://getbootstrap.com The vertical menu expanded from the top works well with relatively few items (in the case of bootstrap, eight). Personally, I don't think that method works well with many items (we currently show 13, and up to 26 when expanded). It is particularly weird when the menu takes up more than the height of the screen and you loose the context of where you are. Maybe I'm in the minority, what do other people think? -Dave
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Monday, 19 January 2015 at 17:00:19 UTC, DaveG wrote: On Monday, 19 January 2015 at 07:56:39 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote: On 2015-01-19 03:50, DaveG wrote: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/114394/D-site/redesign/index.html It would be better if the menu could become some kind of drop down. Look at how Bootstrap is doing it [1]. The menu doesn't take up any more horizontal space when it's expanded. [1] http://getbootstrap.com The vertical menu expanded from the top works well with relatively few items (in the case of bootstrap, eight). Personally, I don't think that method works well with many items (we currently show 13, and up to 26 when expanded). It is particularly weird when the menu takes up more than the height of the screen and you loose the context of where you are. Maybe I'm in the minority, what do other people think? -Dave +1 The menus are too long for it.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Monday, 19 January 2015 at 16:44:04 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: On 1/18/15 6:50 PM, DaveG wrote: Here's where I'm at. The menus don't use javascript (except when the screen gets so small it needs a button to open the navigation, the button uses js). It scales with screen size and should work on mobile (untested) - I changed doctype to html5 and added metatags for mobile. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/114394/D-site/redesign/index.html Could you please submit a PR to my better-menus fork on github? Thanks! -- Andrei I need to fix a few things tonight. Also, is there some way to know what the current page is when generating the html? It would be nice to know what page you are currently on. Actually now that I think of it, with sub-navigation I also need to know the parent so it can be expanded when on a sub-page. I can do it in javascript, but that's not ideal.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/19/15 9:37 AM, DaveG wrote: I need to fix a few things tonight. Also, is there some way to know what the current page is when generating the html? It would be nice to know what page you are currently on. Actually now that I think of it, with sub-navigation I also need to know the parent so it can be expanded when on a sub-page. I can do it in javascript, but that's not ideal. Sadly no. You have the title of the current page as $(TITLE) which is by default the extensionless filename but many pages are setting differently. I think javascript is the way to go. Should we pull my stuff so the others come on top of it? Andrei
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 2015-01-19 18:00, DaveG wrote: The vertical menu expanded from the top works well with relatively few items (in the case of bootstrap, eight). Personally, I don't think that method works well with many items (we currently show 13, and up to 26 when expanded). It is particularly weird when the menu takes up more than the height of the screen and you loose the context of where you are. Maybe I'm in the minority, what do other people think? I think we already have do many items in the menu, this would be a good opportunity to reorganize the menu a bit. -- /Jacob Carlborg
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Monday, 19 January 2015 at 19:47:25 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote: On 2015-01-19 18:00, DaveG wrote: The vertical menu expanded from the top works well with relatively few items (in the case of bootstrap, eight). Personally, I don't think that method works well with many items (we currently show 13, and up to 26 when expanded). It is particularly weird when the menu takes up more than the height of the screen and you loose the context of where you are. Maybe I'm in the minority, what do other people think? I think we already have do many items in the menu, this would be a good opportunity to reorganize the menu a bit. Agreed. FWIW, dub is listed twice on Andrei's update - it's under "Get D libraries" and "Community->Third Party Packages" The documentation drop-down is also very cluttered.
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Monday, 19 January 2015 at 18:46:24 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: Should we pull my stuff so the others come on top of it? I'm new to git (and github) so I don't know the process. I just cloned your branch locally and have been working off that. I assume I can fork master and push my changes to that and then do a pull request. Is this correct? If that's the case you shouldn't have to pull your changes (although you may want to just for the history and to close the request, I don't know). -Dave
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On 1/20/2015 5:21 AM, DaveG wrote: On Monday, 19 January 2015 at 18:46:24 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: Should we pull my stuff so the others come on top of it? I'm new to git (and github) so I don't know the process. I just cloned your branch locally and have been working off that. I assume I can fork master and push my changes to that and then do a pull request. Is this correct? If that's the case you shouldn't have to pull your changes (although you may want to just for the history and to close the request, I don't know). -Dave Fork first, clone your fork, create a new branch, make changes, push to your fork, create a PR from the new branch [1]. As I learned on my first PR, you'll want to create separate branches for each unrelated change. Once you submit a PR, further changes pushed to that branch will be added to it. [1] https://help.github.com/articles/creating-a-pull-request/
Re: Please help me with improving dlang.org
On Tuesday, 20 January 2015 at 01:49:45 UTC, Mike Parker wrote: Fork first, clone your fork, create a new branch, make changes, push to your fork, create a PR from the new branch [1]. As I learned on my first PR, you'll want to create separate branches for each unrelated change. Once you submit a PR, further changes pushed to that branch will be added to it. Thanks Mike. Got stuck at the office, didn't get home until around 11 which didn't leave much time to work on it. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.