On Monday, 21 April 2014 at 11:42:54 UTC, Kagamin wrote:
> Autofocus breaks site navigation: instead of returning to where you were previously, you end up focused on search box, which is really annoying. It also breaks page navigation (similar mistake: floating top panel on dart site). Whether it's standard or not, I don't know, because when I see such disgusting UX, I leave the site and never return if possible.

I hate that too.  It also breaks in-page search with "/", which I use a lot.

In fact, I get seriously annoyed whenever a web site does *anything* to make my browser behave in an unexpected, non-standard way.  Like those sites that hijack the arrow keys for navigation between images or blog posts.  Or GitHub's keyboard shortcuts.  Grrrr...

When I want that stuff, I use a browser plug-in like Vimperator or Vimium.  I shouldn't have to install an add-on to *disable* it.

On Sunday, 20 April 2014 at 17:11:22 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 4/19/14, 1:02 AM, Aleksandar Ruzicic wrote:
>> I'm planning to start working on this as soon as I get approval
>> from Walter/Andrei, and as most of people who answered here are agreed
>> that redesign would be a good thing I hope they wouldn't oppose..
>
> Let's do it. Thank you very much! -- Andrei

Great! I'll start tonight! :)

On Monday, 21 April 2014 at 12:01:09 UTC, Kagamin wrote:
> On Friday, 18 April 2014 at 20:28:07 UTC, Aleksandar Ruzicic wrote:
>> I really like rust-lang.org, I was thinking of using it as a base for design but decided against it because I don't want dlang.org to be accused of ripping of rust-lang.org.
>
> This navigation layout was used for centuries in paper books. Recently it was used by gcc docs and w3c docs. I personally see no reason for the side bar: it's never used, just wastes space, which could be used even on 2500 display and maximized browser window: font can be zoomed too, then the side bar becomes a nuisance, while remaining useless (the case for forum.dlang.org).

Sidebar can be hidden by use of @media queries as the window width becomes smaller (this is something I plan to do with new design).


>> python.org is one of my favorite websites, they really did good job.
>
> Doesn't it use gradients and 3D effects to emphasize structural elements? You use some borders too, which qualify as non-content color effects, can be seen as 3D to some extent. True metro style is ultimate flatness and indiscernible structure, I work with such applications at work, hence my rage every time I hear about modern UI.

I've said few times that this is not metro style (I work with metro apps daily) it's just flat (no semi-3D effect like shadows and gradients).

On Monday, 21 April 2014 at 13:14:12 UTC, Lars T. Kyllingstad wrote:
> On Monday, 21 April 2014 at 11:42:54 UTC, Kagamin wrote:
>> Autofocus breaks site navigation: instead of returning to where you were previously, you end up focused on search box, which is really annoying. It also breaks page navigation (similar mistake: floating top panel on dart site). Whether it's standard or not, I don't know, because when I see such disgusting UX, I leave the site and never return if possible.
>
> I hate that too.  It also breaks in-page search with "/", which I use a lot.
>
> In fact, I get seriously annoyed whenever a web site does *anything* to make my browser behave in an unexpected, non-standard way.  Like those sites that hijack the arrow keys for navigation between images or blog posts.  Or GitHub's keyboard shortcuts.  Grrrr...
>
> When I want that stuff, I use a browser plug-in like Vimperator or Vimium.  I shouldn't have to install an add-on to *disable* it.

Agreed. But given that I'll be implementing "preferences page" where you can choose your UX settings there can be autofocus on/off option too (which I would gladly disable by default).

On 4/21/14, 5:01 AM, Kagamin wrote:
> On Friday, 18 April 2014 at 20:28:07 UTC, Aleksandar Ruzicic wrote:
>> I really like rust-lang.org, I was thinking of using it as a base for
>> design but decided against it because I don't want dlang.org to be
>> accused of ripping of rust-lang.org.
>
> This navigation layout was used for centuries in paper books. Recently
> it was used by gcc docs and w3c docs. I personally see no reason for the
> side bar: it's never used, just wastes space, which could be used even
> on 2500 display and maximized browser window: font can be zoomed too,
> then the side bar becomes a nuisance, while remaining useless (the case
> for forum.dlang.org).

Wait, are you advocating for text occupying the entire page width, like a telex band? Aren't text lines difficult to follow from the right side to the continuing left side? -- Andrei

On Monday, 21 April 2014 at 09:40:53 UTC, Wyatt wrote:
> On Friday, 18 April 2014 at 16:40:32 UTC, Aleksandar Ruzicic wrote:
>>
>> I have 27'' monitor with resolution of 2560x1440 and
>
> Yeah, me too...
>
>> left-aligned websites are really hard to read!
>>
> ...so I have no idea what you're even talking about with this statement.

I have by browser's window maximized and websites with lot of text that are left-aligned are (to me at least) hard to read as I need to move focus from center of the monitor to the left edge, and staring at the angle like that for some time makes my eyes hurt..


>> There is a reason why most editors have "zen mode" which centers your code on a screen. It's easier to read when it's centered and not too wide.
>>
> "most"? I have literally never seen this on any editor ever.  But that's beside the point.

Sublime Text has this, it's called distraction free mode, there was extension for Komodo IDE too, but I haven't used it for years.


>> Current design has no limitation on line width which (at my resolution) results in ~300 characters wide lines, and it's really unreadable.
>>
> To be clear, I'm not favouring unreadable CPL.  I'm specifically against the useless gutters to the left and right that, alone, are each too narrow to be particularly useful.  Never mind that they account for roughly half of my screen area.  I'm not inclined to support any design with that much wasted space.

I'll try to use as much space as possible. I've said in one of previous messages that extra screen space can (and will) be used for displaying additional content.

> Oddly enough, Wikipedia's main page gets this right: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page (Though I admit it doesn't degrade gracefully to more narrow dimensions).

Yeah, Wikipedia looks good on wide monitors but as you said it's multi-column layout doesn't scale well.

> If proper aspect ratios hadn't been killed by cheapskate panel manufacturers, we probably wouldn't even be having this discussion.
>
> -Wyatt

Agreed. :)

On Monday, 21 April 2014 at 15:05:57 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 4/21/14, 5:01 AM, Kagamin wrote:
>> On Friday, 18 April 2014 at 20:28:07 UTC, Aleksandar Ruzicic wrote:
>>> I really like rust-lang.org, I was thinking of using it as a base for
>>> design but decided against it because I don't want dlang.org to be
>>> accused of ripping of rust-lang.org.
>>
>> This navigation layout was used for centuries in paper books. Recently
>> it was used by gcc docs and w3c docs. I personally see no reason for the
>> side bar: it's never used, just wastes space, which could be used even
>> on 2500 display and maximized browser window: font can be zoomed too,
>> then the side bar becomes a nuisance, while remaining useless (the case
>> for forum.dlang.org).
>
> Wait, are you advocating for text occupying the entire page width, like a telex band? Aren't text lines difficult to follow from the right side to the continuing left side? -- Andrei

Yes, there were numerous studies about line length (I don't have any links to back this with but I'm sure that searching for "web typography line length" on google would provide some useful articles). And optimal line length is some 80-90 characters (including the whitespace), I'll try not to cross that boundary much.

On Sunday, 20 April 2014 at 17:11:22 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 4/19/14, 1:02 AM, Aleksandar Ruzicic wrote:
>> I'm planning to start working on this as soon as I get approval
>> from Walter/Andrei, and as most of people who answered here are agreed
>> that redesign would be a good thing I hope they wouldn't oppose..
>
> Let's do it. Thank you very much! -- Andrei

Just one question, would it be okay to depend on node.js/npm to manage dependencies (i.e. CSS/JS frameworks) and build CSS/JS files?

As I'd use Sass for styling, which must be translated to CSS (I'd use node-sass package witch doesn't require ruby), and browserify to have Common-JS modules..

On Friday, 18 April 2014 at 15:49:59 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 4/18/14, 8:30 AM, David Gileadi wrote:
>> It does mean that the site is static HTML, so any dynamism needs to be
>> JS-only (and I think any efforts to make the pages largely JS-driven
>> would meet resistance).
>
> We can (and probably should) integrate server-side scripting as well. http://dlang.org/bugstats uses PHP. Ideally we'd migrate the entire website to vibe.d.
>
> Andrei

Going the vibe.d route would be great for advertising D as an all encompassing language.

On 4/21/14, 8:48 AM, Aleksandar Ruzicic wrote:
> On Sunday, 20 April 2014 at 17:11:22 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> On 4/19/14, 1:02 AM, Aleksandar Ruzicic wrote:
>>> I'm planning to start working on this as soon as I get approval
>>> from Walter/Andrei, and as most of people who answered here are agreed
>>> that redesign would be a good thing I hope they wouldn't oppose..
>>
>> Let's do it. Thank you very much! -- Andrei
>
> Just one question, would it be okay to depend on node.js/npm to manage
> dependencies (i.e. CSS/JS frameworks) and build CSS/JS files?

Ionno. Not an expert, but I'd say the fewer dependencies the better. Add them only if it's onerously hard to get work done without and/or if their payoff is large.

> As I'd use Sass for styling, which must be translated to CSS (I'd use
> node-sass package witch doesn't require ruby), and browserify to have
> Common-JS modules..

I think you should be fine with ddoc macros instead of Sass.


Andrei