> 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.

:-) I like rust-lang for being concise and outspoken about what they are all about, but not very verbose on the front page. It makes me curious and I want to visit another page for more information.

Maybe there is a little bit too much text on the front page of the current D-site.

rust-lang push the longer text to the second page, but is very focused on what makes rust stand out. Maybe that is a good idea, because when you click for one more page you maybe feel a bit more committed and are more likely to read it?

> dartlang.org is nice, cleanly designed website. It reminds me of a website of programming framework produced by some startup :)

Yeah, I agree, it is a bit bland. But both go and dart are google projects, and they try to "frame" the sites as community-oriented and avoid the "corporate taint"?

I also like the go-lang way of having a "live" tutorial as their front page.

Ola.

On Friday, 18 April 2014 at 16:40:32 UTC, Aleksandar Ruzicic 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!
>
> 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

Or just a little switch in a corner somewhere to change the justification, with a cookie.

On 4/18/2014 10:04 AM, Aleksandar Ruzicic wrote:
>
> 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?
>

I'm normally very skeptical and critical of "staying modern" (and regarding someone's mention of Win8 - I find Win8 downright UGLY) - However...I really like your design, quite a lot.

As long as it's:

- A normal reflowing layout (not a static fixed-width one or an auto-rescaling one)

- Doesn't require JS (optional JS enhancements are fine)

- Works reasonably well on mobile *including* a complete and total lack of that "no zooming allowed" abomination that seems so popular these days (As far as I'm concerned, full user-controlled scaling is *mandatory* for good usability on tiny hand-held devices, especially on these "modern" capacitive ones incapable of registering presses from anything more accurate than a blunt finger - or for anyone with less than 20/20 eyesight)

On 4/18/2014 6:07 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>
> As long as it's:
>
[...]
>

Meant to say: Nothing against the current design, but as long as yours is (those things), then I'd be very happy to see your design used.

On 4/18/14, 9:04, 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.
[snip]
> So, what do you guys think?
>
>
>
>
> -- Aleksandar


I REALLY like the new look.  I think it's about time to change the website up a little bit for the reasons listed above.

It looks 'clean'.  Go for it!

On Friday, 18 April 2014 at 14:04:04 UTC, Aleksandar Ruzicic wrote:
> So, what do you guys think?
> -- Aleksandar

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.

People who go directly to the homepage are likely coming to check out what D is or why they should use it (which the homepage shows), find a download button (which could still be improved upon), or search the documentation (which is still a few clicks away). I'd argue that most people are going for the third option since you don't need to download often and people just checking it out don't return frequently to check it out again. Having an immediate search field, ideally with autofocus, makes finding documentation a very easy task.

A prominent download button immediately visible on the home page rather than the top nav-bar would be an improvement as well. Practically every site with something to download does this, for good reason. It's one of the first things that should jump out at you when you view the site, making it as little effort as possible to commit to at least downloading the installer (see Dart, Python, Rust, Go, Ruby, etc). The longer / more effort it takes to do something, the less likely people are to try it unless they're already very convinced it's something they need.

On Friday, 18 April 2014 at 22:06:03 UTC, John Colvin wrote:
[snip]
> Or just a little switch in a corner somewhere to change the justification, with a cookie.

That can be easily done (although I wouldn't use cookies) but I would prefer centered layout to be default option.

On Friday, 18 April 2014 at 22:08:13 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> On 4/18/2014 10:04 AM, Aleksandar Ruzicic wrote:
>>
>> 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?
>>
>
> I'm normally very skeptical and critical of "staying modern" (and regarding someone's mention of Win8 - I find Win8 downright UGLY) - However...I really like your design, quite a lot.
>
> As long as it's:
>
> - A normal reflowing layout (not a static fixed-width one or an auto-rescaling one)

Of course.

>
> - Doesn't require JS (optional JS enhancements are fine)
>

I was told you would oppose usage of JavaScript. :)
But as I've said already I plan on using JavaScript to enhance things a bit only, site would function normally with JavaScript unavailable/disabled.

> - Works reasonably well on mobile *including* a complete and total lack of that "no zooming allowed" abomination that seems so popular these days (As far as I'm concerned, full user-controlled scaling is *mandatory* for good usability on tiny hand-held devices, especially on these "modern" capacitive ones incapable of registering presses from anything more accurate than a blunt finger - or for anyone with less than 20/20 eyesight)

Agreed. And it shouldn't just work reasonably well on mobile, it must work flawlessly well :)

On Friday, 18 April 2014 at 23:50:56 UTC, 1100110 wrote:
> On 4/18/14, 9:04, 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.
> [snip]
>> So, what do you guys think?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -- Aleksandar
>
>
> I REALLY like the new look.  I think it's about time to change the website up a little bit for the reasons listed above.
>
> It looks 'clean'.  Go for it!

Thanks! 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..

On Saturday, 19 April 2014 at 00:08:06 UTC, Kapps wrote:
> On Friday, 18 April 2014 at 14:04:04 UTC, Aleksandar Ruzicic wrote:
>> So, what do you guys think?
>> -- Aleksandar
>
> 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.

It sure looks like a button and it wouldn't be a button. It would be a regular text (search) input field (something that would be apparent as soon as you hover it and get that I-beam cursor over it) that would expand on click/focus (no JS needed there, don't worry Nick!).


> People who go directly to the homepage are likely coming to check out what D is or why they should use it (which the homepage shows), find a download button (which could still be improved upon), or search the documentation (which is still a few clicks away). I'd argue that most people are going for the third option since you don't need to download often and people just checking it out don't return frequently to check it out again. Having an immediate search field, ideally with autofocus, makes finding documentation a very easy task.


I'm slightly against autofocus on search field, as I am one of people who use Backspace to navigate to previous page and I'm always frustrated when I hit Backspace on Google search results page and it's not taking me to previous page.
But if majority thinks that autofocus on search is a good thing (I also think that not many people use Backspace as a means of navigation) than I would make it like that (and if there would be that little preferences page/popup this option is something that can go there together with justification settings).

> A prominent download button immediately visible on the home page rather than the top nav-bar would be an improvement as well. Practically every site with something to download does this, for good reason. It's one of the first things that should jump out at you when you view the site, making it as little effort as possible to commit to at least downloading the installer (see Dart, Python, Rust, Go, Ruby, etc). The longer / more effort it takes to do something, the less likely people are to try it unless they're already very convinced it's something they need.

Download sites do that, so does sites that sell software. I think that dlang.org should focus on promoting D as a language, and compiler implementations should not be in spotlight.
Also I think that having Download in top-nav as a first option is prominent enough. I've put what I think are the most important sections in top-nav bar (other navigation items should go to context-sensitive sidebar).