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

I think that having vibe.d behind dlang.org would be great!

On Friday, 18 April 2014 at 15:55:57 UTC, Frustrated wrote:
>
> I like it too. A little cleaner/sharper. A little more balanced. (centered, colors, etc)
>
> Not a huge improvement in some ways, which is good and bad. The question is, would the change be worth it? If it's easy to do, yes, if it causes problems and takes too much time to get things right, no.

It's just first a mockup, but it's a direction in which I think we should go.

It would definitely take time to get both UI and (more importantly) UX right,
and I don't think that's a bad thing.

Current design is good enough so that redesigning it is not matter of urgency.

On Friday, 18 April 2014 at 16:10:03 UTC, Wyatt wrote:
> On Friday, 18 April 2014 at 14:04:04 UTC, Aleksandar Ruzicic wrote:
>>
>> So, what do you guys think?
>>
> I _strongly_ suggest any proposed redesign retain the left-justification seen in the current design.  It improves readability and gives opportunities for better information density.
>
> I know centred, fixed-width designs are in vogue, but for a documentation project, I would that the gutters instead be turned to more useful purposes.  Like documentation.
>
> -Wyatt

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!

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.

Current design has no limitation on line width which (at my resolution) results in ~300 characters wide lines, and it's really unreadable.

I would go for a maximum of 120 characters wide lines with content centered on larger monitors.



-- Aleksandar

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

I assume moving from DDoc to something like Vibe'd's Jade templates isn't on the table (for reasons such as losing the spec ebook generation and others). The only advantage I can think of with moving to vibe.d is if ddox were used for the entire site and would manage the regeneration of pages automatically, pulling from github itself. Then any pull request that a reviewer merges could trigger a site update.

With more frequent updates, D-P-L/dlang.org would need to properly use version branches to avoid having prerelease changes but that's a change that's been needed for a long time. I'm not sure if ddox was intended for something like this though (static pages, as opposed to just documentation generation). Sönke would probably have to weigh in and say if there is any real advantage here. Making stuff "Powered by D" is always a nice change though.

On Friday, 18 April 2014 at 16:25:10 UTC, Aleksandar Ruzicic wrote:
> On Friday, 18 April 2014 at 15:30:52 UTC, David Gileadi wrote:
>>
>> As the guy who was mostly responsible for the current look and feel of the website I can provide some insight into the effort required. The website is built using DDoc[1], and anyone who wants to change the look and feel will need to learn it. It's not difficult. 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).
>
> I know about DDoc usage, I already know it and using it, so that wouldn't be the issue.
> Regarding the dynamism, I would definitely go with some JavaScript for
> the search feature (I want to provide real-time filtering/suggestions something like DevDocs[1]) but I would make it optional (so that search is still usable with JS disabled/unavailable).

Phew...you narrowly avoided a Nick/Teoh JS rant there :P.

>> Also note that there's a movement to make at least part of the website (the Phobos docs) use a different documentation generator, so the new look would need to be ported to that too. I suspect that wouldn't be hard.
>
> I wasn't aware of that, do you by any chance have links to those threads?
>

Here's one (they are kind of hard to Google now that the preview is up on the site and "ddox" appears on every page):
http://forum.dlang.org/thread/lfjcfm$2frn$1@digitalmars.com

On Friday, 18 April 2014 at 14:04:04 UTC, Aleksandar Ruzicic wrote:
> <snip>
>
> 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?
>
>

Even if it weren't better looking, just different, I'd say it should be done. I'm of the opinion that every site, no matter how good it looks, should go through redesigns periodically in order to feel fresh and non-stagnant to repeat visitors. It's a form of marketing that reassures users that something is being actively developed.

That said, I also happen to think your design looks fantastic and should replace the current one just based on its appearance and big improvements to usability. It feels more professional. I'm all for this change.

On 4/18/14, 9:25 AM, Aleksandar Ruzicic wrote:
> On Friday, 18 April 2014 at 15:30:52 UTC, David Gileadi wrote:

[snip]

>> Also note that there's a movement to make at least part of the website
>> (the Phobos docs) use a different documentation generator, so the new
>> look would need to be ported to that too. I suspect that wouldn't be
>> hard.
>
> I wasn't aware of that, do you by any chance have links to those threads?

I'm having trouble finding the thread, but I think the idea was to use vibe.d's ddox[1]. There's a preview of it live at the "Preview new Layout" link at dlang.org. Folks, please correct me if I got this wrong and that preview is not powered by ddox.

[snip]

>> Finally I like your look; I think it would be worth refining and
>> pursuing. I make no claim to be a graphic designer and I'm certainly
>> not offended by any criticism of the current look; at the time I had
>> two goals; 1) look better than the previous site at digitalmars.com
>> and 2) tame the massive sidebar into something more reasonable. I
>> think they both succeeded but I'm very aware that things can look better.
>
> Thanks! It is just a mockup I made in an hour or so, I would like
> to have some real designer(s) involved in this to make it really better.

If you have access to real designers (as you mentioned in another message) that would be fantastic. I think the mockup you created is already a good direction but folks with experience in UX, typography, responsive design etc. could probably make dlang.org properly great.

> The current design is waaay better than what we had before and I thank you
> on that! That change was really refreshing.
> I just think that we should keep pushing forward. And I would also like if
> you could be able to join me in a new redesign (if it gets approval), at
> least
> in a consulting role. :)

I'd be happy to help. My time is more divided nowadays but I'm sure I can put some time into this. While we're at it some good mobile support would be awesome too.

> [1] http://devdocs.io/

[1] https://github.com/rejectedsoftware/ddox

On Friday, 18 April 2014 at 16:51:44 UTC, Brad Anderson wrote:
> Here's one (they are kind of hard to Google now that the preview is up on the site and "ddox" appears on every page):
> http://forum.dlang.org/thread/lfjcfm$2frn$1@digitalmars.com

Thanks! I haven't worked with ddox yet but I'm looking forward to try it out, it sure looks better than ddoc-based one.

On 18 April 2014 15:22, Steven Schveighoffer via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Apr 2014 10:04:03 -0400, Aleksandar Ruzicic <aleksandar@ruzicic.info> 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.
>
>
> Great!
>
>
>> 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?
>
>
> To be honest, it looks no "better" than the current website. Basically it's more windows-8-ish. But I don't think it's a significant improvement. BTW, I don't think you properly remember early 2000's web sites...
>

Really?  To me it looks like the OP is mimicking Github dccumentation pages.

eg: http://uwsgi-docs.readthedocs.org/en/latest/

On Fri, 18 Apr 2014 12:40:31 -0400, Aleksandar Ruzicic <aleksandar@ruzicic.info> wrote:

> On Friday, 18 April 2014 at 16:10:03 UTC, Wyatt wrote:
>> On Friday, 18 April 2014 at 14:04:04 UTC, Aleksandar Ruzicic wrote:
>>>
>>> So, what do you guys think?
>>>
>> I _strongly_ suggest any proposed redesign retain the left-justification seen in the current design.  It improves readability and gives opportunities for better information density.
>>
>> I know centred, fixed-width designs are in vogue, but for a documentation project, I would that the gutters instead be turned to more useful purposes.  Like documentation.
>>
>> -Wyatt
>
> 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/

-Steve