On 2014-04-19 13:09, Aleksandar Ruzicic wrote:

> I have experience with ElasticSearch but I'm open to all suggestions, if
> Solr is better, then we'll use Solr.
> But this is something Walter must approve first, as it would mean
> ditching Google search in favor of our own search service.

They're quire similar. Both builds on Lucene.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

I just had a non-alcohol beer, so I think I'll rant some more while I'm at it:

WHY don't the community front the story of Walter Bright's D vision on the front-page? It is a wonderful selling point that appeals to geeks and make them interested:

1. Competent: Wrote a well known C++ compiler
2. Shared vision: Created D out of frustration with C++
3. Exciting: performance is key
4. Motives: Altruistic
5. A-political: open source, commercial friendly and international
6. Has a following: active community, community driven
7. Jump in: Open to participation

The current front page is too anonymous to make me interested. The original (long time ago) website was more personal and there was a sense of "personal drive" to it. It gave me a "Dang, that's cool. That Walter dude is brave enough to take on C++. Gotta see what this is all about." feeling.

A personal design with a personal vision is more attractive to me than a "professional design" (which actually is just a fashion statement) with longwinded descriptions that lacks focus (nobody actually read those, they want to see code samples).

Not to say that there is a right or wrong way to go about web site design, and a blend of the various approaches is probably the right thing.

As an example I'll point out that this norwegian site has a very good ranking at Google:

http://www.arngren.net/

It is not because it has wonderful design… ;-)

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

On Sunday, 20 April 2014 at 08:38:25 UTC, Iain Buclaw via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 19 Apr 2014 13:00, "Lars T. Kyllingstad via Digitalmars-d" <
> digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Friday, 18 April 2014 at 14:22:24 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>>>
>>> I don't share your opinion that the web site need to be "modern" to
> avoid warding off potential adopters. If they are turned off of using a
> system programming language by a bland (debatable) site look and feel, then
> I think there was really something else bothering them.
>>
>>
>> Case in point: http://gcc.gnu.org/
>
> What's wrong with that site? Everything is clear to find and readable.

There's nothing wrong with it at all!  I was agreeing with Steve, not arguing against him.  My point was that even though GCC is one of the most popular software development tools in the world, their site, like most of gnu.org, looks a bit... old school.  Which is just fine. :)

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.

> 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.

> 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.

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).

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

-Wyatt

On Saturday, 19 April 2014 at 00:08:06 UTC, Kapps wrote:
> I do agree that the design of the current site is rather dated. I rather like your new proposed design as well. One thing that could be nicer is the search bar being a button to click. It's standard now to just make it an input of type search with place-holder text now, which is faster and more useable. Even better, it could be automatically focused on when you load the (documentation) page so you can immediately start typing to look up an API / language feature.

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.
What you are talking about is what opensearch is for: you type request right in the browser without opening any site and get straight to the search results. I personally don't use search on the site and forcing it on me on every page transition would be undesirable.

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).

> 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.

On Sat, 19 Apr 2014 17:06:21 -0400, Nick Sabalausky <SeeWebsiteToContactMe@semitwist.com> wrote:

> On 4/18/2014 1:24 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> On Fri, 18 Apr 2014 12:40:31 -0400, Aleksandar Ruzicic
>> <aleksandar@ruzicic.info> wrote:
>>> I must respectfully disagree about retaining left justification.
>>> I have 27'' monitor with resolution of 2560x1440 and left-aligned
>>> websites are really hard to read!
>>
>> Making something that works like this would be excellent:
>>
>> http://forum.dlang.org/
>>
>
> God no. I like forum.dlang.org and all, but scaling the font size when the window resizes is horrible UX. Example: If I shrink the browser window, for *whatever* reason, I expect not to have an over-zealous CSS decide "Oh! He must want the text to become ridiculously small! Ok!"

I like how the side-bar goes away instead of making the text column uselessly small.

The font shrinking is slightly off-putting, but I think having the font grow when the window is expanded is somewhat useful. To be sure, the last level of font shrinkage could be done away with.

But I agree with Aleksandar, that having the text in a window expand as far as my very-wide monitor will go, is not helpful. Things are hard to read when they get too long.

-Steve

On Sun, 20 Apr 2014 03:33:46 -0400, Ola Fosheim Grøstad <ola.fosheim.grostad+dlang@gmail.com> wrote:

> It does not peek my interest

Sorry, don't take this the wrong way, it's my OCD, not your fault ;)

But it's "pique"

-Steve

On Monday, 21 April 2014 at 12:21:20 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> Sorry, don't take this the wrong way, it's my OCD, not your fault ;)

Of course it is my fault! I always thought it was "peak", thanks for extending my vocabulary. Now I have figure out not only when to use "peek" or "peak", but also have to consider "pique"… :-/

> But it's "pique"

In my own tounge it sounds like the norwegian word for male genitals… but I am liberal. I can say "pique":

P I Q U E !

(That's french…?)