Re: [PHP-DOC] Fixing the layout/style for man pages

[Pierrick Charron]

I'm not a huge fan of the new design. Like you said I think it's less
readable than the current version or than the sphinx version.

There's a lot of lost space on the left and on the right. The
prototype in the example (even if it's not a function with a lot of
params) is not on one line which I think make it really harder to read
on the first view.

I understand that we don't want to restart everything from scratch so
here is what I would do to make it better (from my point of view):

- Use 100% of the screen width (instead of the current 75%) move the
navigation (layout-menu) on the left of the screen, remove the
floating (#quicktoc) to get more space to display usefull content.
- Remove margin/padding in a lot of spaces to make it a little bit
more compact (and display more data on one screen)
- Add the next/previous/up buttons (I don't think there are on the
prototype or I can't find them)

In my point of view, the current status of the beta site is not usable
enough to replace definitivly the current version. One of the good
thing about PHP is its documentation and I think it replacing the
current one with the prototype will make it less usable and then less
enjoyable to read.

My 2 cents :)
Pierrick

On 28 December 2012 16:46, Philip Olson phi...@roshambo.org wrote:
 Hello everyone,

 What do people think about the PHP manual layout? Let's compare three 
 versions:

   1. Current site:

 http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.json-decode.php

   2. Current prototype (which may launch January 2013):

 http://prototype.php.net/manual/en/function.json-decode.php

   3. An old example based on sphinx (via Python):

 http://moacirdeoliveira.com/phd/sphinx/function.json-decode.html

 Please sift through these three examples (and maybe others, for other 
 projects)
 and determine how we should proceed. The beta/prototype site will go live 
 within
 a month or two so let's be ready. Let's improve the prototype.

 For me, when evaluating the prototype, this means:

   1. Improving contrast. The current site hurts my eyeballs. This is why
  the sphinx (3) example above is so nice.

   2. Tighter (less) whitespace, especially for code highlighting.

 Mainly it's the lack of contrast. If given the choice (as a user preference
 on the site) I'd use the sphinx version for this reason, although I don't
 believe this is a real choice.

 What say you?

 Regards,
 Philip

Re: [PHP-DOC] Fixing the layout/style for man pages

[Levi Morrison]

Funny you should ask about these things.  I was working on
prototype.php.net site a lot about a year ago, but then got caught up
with my work.

Things I believe should be finished before launch:

  1.  The documentation pages need to be full-page width.  They are
far too narrow in their current state. They also need more gutter
room.
  2.  Kill the Quick TOC in the documentation. This frees up a lot of
space, but means we need to find a new home for the language switcher
and how to report an error.
  3.  Replace the mega drop-down navigation with simple links that
lead to landing pages. The landing pages are more effective at what
they do than the drop-down menu. Look at the community portion: it
would change every time the news changed. That doesn't sound like a
good primary navigation idea to me, but would be a great landing page.

Re: [PHP-DOC] Fixing the layout/style for man pages

[Adam Harvey]

On 29 December 2012 07:04, Levi Morrison morrison.l...@gmail.com wrote:
   1.  The documentation pages need to be full-page width.  They are
 far too narrow in their current state. They also need more gutter
 room.

Weirdly, I think they're more readable in their current state than
full width. I seem to be outnumbered here, though. :)

   2.  Kill the Quick TOC in the documentation. This frees up a lot of
 space, but means we need to find a new home for the language switcher
 and how to report an error.

We have a pull request on GitHub to deal with this:
https://github.com/php/web-php/pull/8. I'm not crazy about the styling
of it at the moment, but the functionality in terms of switching to a
sticky TOC box might be worth pursuing.

Here's how it looks when you haven't scrolled: http://d.pr/i/gTlC

And how it looks when you have: http://d.pr/i/K8se

Adam