On Tuesday, 1 July 2014 at 11:25:49 UTC, Shammah Chancellor wrote:
> On 2014-06-29 22:15:47 +0000, w0rp said:
>
>> I just finished translating all of the pages I have worked on so far from diet templates to Markdown files. Now there is only one diet layout loaded, and the rest is all Markdown files. This has dramatically reduced the amount of memory consumed at build time. You can see the results at the usual place at http://w0rp.com:8010 and view the source on GitHub. I'll keep at it and convert more pages from the main site.
>
> This looks awesome.  I like the new logo also.   Keep up the good work.
>
> -Shammah

It is not about liking it or not...

I just brought the Twitter module back. I decided to run with looking for '.sidebar.md' files as an easy way of dropping in different sidebar content for particular pages, so the index uses this now. I also brought the paragraph markers for the headings back. That should bring Markdown stuff to a level where I can drop in a bunch of pages now.

I put the logo my co-worker contributed in place there, which looks a bit more familiar. I'll leave the logo like that for now.

I think it's better to remove mention about D1 on main page. It's not actual and present time. But now it's took to many space...

On Wednesday, 2 July 2014 at 23:32:36 UTC, w0rp wrote:
> I just brought the Twitter module back.

:( it was so much better with this ugly widget gone and replaced with something actually useful.

On Thursday, 3 July 2014 at 09:42:05 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
> On Wednesday, 2 July 2014 at 23:32:36 UTC, w0rp wrote:
>> I just brought the Twitter module back.
>
> :( it was so much better with this ugly widget gone and replaced with something actually useful.

I actually didn't intend to remove it before, but if we want to replace it with something else I could do that. I don't feel strongly either way about it.

On 03/07/2014 12:35 PM, w0rp wrote:
> On Thursday, 3 July 2014 at 09:42:05 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
>> On Wednesday, 2 July 2014 at 23:32:36 UTC, w0rp wrote:
>>> I just brought the Twitter module back.
>>
>> :( it was so much better with this ugly widget gone and replaced with
>> something actually useful.
>
> I actually didn't intend to remove it before, but if we want to replace
> it with something else I could do that. I don't feel strongly either way
> about it.

The twitter feed on D currently fulfils the role that in other places is performed by an internal news ticker that summarises the most recent news stories. D for some reason does not seem to generate that much internal news, at least not in a form that would be apt for consumption on the dlang.org landing page.

Maybe if the forum front end produced an RSS feed of top level posts to d.announce that could be fed into the buzz box. Then all we'd need is a steady stream of exciting announcements.

A...

On Thursday, 3 July 2014 at 11:35:36 UTC, w0rp wrote:
> On Thursday, 3 July 2014 at 09:42:05 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
>> On Wednesday, 2 July 2014 at 23:32:36 UTC, w0rp wrote:
>>> I just brought the Twitter module back.
>>
>> :( it was so much better with this ugly widget gone and replaced with something actually useful.
>
> I actually didn't intend to remove it before, but if we want to replace it with something else I could do that. I don't feel strongly either way about it.

I'd prefer to see it removed but pretty sure many will be against it. Even if we keep it as replacement for proper newsfeed, I'd love to see it formatted the same way as main content and not as side block widget (== no scrollbars, light background, no repeating logos, no "follow" button etc)

On Friday, 18 April 2014 at 14:04:04 UTC, Aleksandar Ruzicic wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I've been D enthusiast for couple of years now (but I do not participate much in discussions here, although I read forums almost daily), and I keep telling people about D and how awesome it is.
>
> But, all this time D's official website somehow archaic look kept troubling me. It reminds me of early 2000's design and I really cannot associate this design with "modern" or "elegant", what D really is.
> I think that we must invest time and energy improving the website's look and feel as that is what people first coming to D will see. We need to strive for "wow" and not "meh" as a first impression.
>
> So I have started this thread to see if there is a chance for complete redesign of dlang.org.
>
> I have also tried to design something myself (although I'm not a designer) and this is what I came up with:
>
> http://krcko.net/dlang.org/dlang-home-draft1.png
>
> I'm not entirely satisfied with it but I believe that it looks better (or at least more modern) than the current design.
>
>
> So, what do you guys think?
>
>
>
>
> -- Aleksandar

[I haven't had time to follow the entire thread, but] I like the design, it's a good starting point. Especially the integration of the logo. Nice and clean. (The current logo is just too bulky and clumsy, imo*)

However, my experience tells me that we should wait with redesigning it until the technical issues/problems have been solved, e.g. the migration to vibe.d, which I'm in favor of (I've had good experiences with vibe.d so far), and the doc generation issue etc etc. Once that is out of the way, we can think about new designs. Yours is very nice and "modern". However, we also have to take mobile devices (tablets, smartphones) into account and see how we can adapt to these (different layouts or one for all?).

Another issue is that we don't have to jump on any bandwagon (every time the "fashion" changes), we can roll our own design, one that fits the community's and the language's needs, regardless of what is trendy or "modern" at any given time (don't imitate, innovate!).

My two cents anyway ...

*(D is already a bulky letter, so there shouldn't be much else on the logo)

On Thursday, 3 July 2014 at 13:16:34 UTC, Chris wrote:
> [I haven't had time to follow the entire thread, but] I like the design, it's a good starting point. Especially the integration of the logo. Nice and clean. (The current logo is just too bulky and clumsy, imo*)
>
> However, my experience tells me that we should wait with redesigning it until the technical issues/problems have been solved, e.g. the migration to vibe.d, which I'm in favor of (I've had good experiences with vibe.d so far), and the doc generation issue etc etc. Once that is out of the way, we can think about new designs.

I've been focusing on getting a working site with vibe.d. Integrating the ddox document generator is a high priority for me right now, especially since I've finished a lot of work for formatting the changelog pages.

> Yours is very nice and "modern". However, we also have to take mobile devices (tablets, smartphones) into account and see how we can adapt to these (different layouts or one for all?).

I used the Bootstrap framework, which I have also used in my day job. Bootstrap makes producing a responsive design pretty easy. I've been periodically testing pages on smaller screens. Firefox's 'reponsive design mode' helps a lot with this.

> Another issue is that we don't have to jump on any bandwagon (every time the "fashion" changes), we can roll our own design, one that fits the community's and the language's needs, regardless of what is trendy or "modern" at any given time (don't imitate, innovate!).

There are many different designs you could produce. Many design choices are subjective, though not all of them. I think my goals for the work I've been doing are as follows.

* Improve site navigation.
* Improve display across different devices.
* Improve the quality of text to make it easier to read.
* Make it easier for newcomers to edit, to encourage contribution.
* Run it all with D to tick a "official D site made in D" checkbox.

There are others, but those are the important ones.

On 03/07/2014 6:38 PM, w0rp wrote:

> * Run it all with D to tick a "official D site made in D" checkbox.

The "powered by Python" banner gave me an idea...

In a nod to Walter's self confessed petrol-headedness, I thought we could incorporate the logo into a "D under the hood" or "D in the tank" banner for sites and software that utilise or run on D.

Might be a bit over the top for dlang.org though ^^

A...