Hi all, I've started redesigning dlang.org AGAIN (yea, I know...). The front page is mostly done aside from a several responsiveness and platform quirks, I will have the full landing page + a random sample page from the docs this weekend. On the technical side, rapid design + ddoc and working with pure css don't work well together, so it's going to be a static page or two and if/when everyone/anyone's happy with it, it can be pulled apart into those fugly ddoc macros. An easy example of why that's the case would be changing the color scheme or general styling of multiple components -- in sass/less you can just do a "@active-component: darken(@martian-red, 5%);" and that will fix all the inherited ones across the stylesheet. Same applies to reorganizing content in drastic ways. If using node as a dependency to compile assets is acceptable, this would sure the preferred way; otherwise, the compiled assets could be frozen/minified and checked back in. More about design-specific stuff later in another post.

There are several issues with structure and presentation that I think will have to be addressed. While compiling these, I also had several people that know nothing about D look at the website structrure and make independent comments. Please see my semi-organized collection of thoughts below.

Top-level link: APPENDICES

... what is that even supposed to mean? It looks more of an official D style guide. TODO: rename to D STYLE GUIDE. TODO: someone needs to go through it and update it to look more official-style-guide-ish. And then again, it may be moved into a learning/docs section and not be a top-level item.

Top-level link: FAQ

... looks like a collection of stuff that doesn't belong anywhere. The "FAQ" is almost as bad as naming it "MISC". Some of the points actually look like they belong to an FAQ ("why D?"), other ones belong to an official guide or examples; I wouldn't ever guess that the info on anonymous structs/unions would be in FAQ, that's just wrong. (there's also Books & Articles --> How-tos etc; which makes it even harder).

Top-level link: D1 HOME

... should be buried away somewhere deep as not to scare people away. Those who need to find it already know where it is.

Top-level-link: CHANGELOG

... is stale and rarely / randomly updated. This makes it look like there is no development on the backend/phobos/runtime going on whatsoever. There either needs to be an automated aggregator for github pull requests (in which case there will need to be a better policy on commit/pr descriptions so it's automatable), or a responsibility of whoever's merging it to spend 5 seconds of time to update the changelog (e.g. nasty ice bug fixed, bugzilla issue #123, github pr #456).

There should also be a friendly way to quickly see a list of releases with dates and summaries and navigate to release notes for each one without scrolling through 42km of text.

Top-level link: SITEMAP

... should be removed, it's not 1999 anymore. Plus, a well-structured website never needs a sitemap.

Top-level-link: VISUAL D

... should move under Downloads & Tools; having this at top-level has a Windows smell and may scare people away.

Top-level links: STANDARD LIBRARY, D REFERENCE

... I suggest they are moved back into Documentation section (as it is on the forum.dlang.org) which will contain these (Language Reference / Standard Library) plus other subsections e.g. D Style Guide.

Book->Tutorial link (on forum.dlang.org) and other external links:

This is one of many random external links: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1381876. It's just a really bad style for an official language website to link to an article obscure external website (that is 5 years old and probably outdated anyway). I suggest this is removed; and, in case any of the information in that tutorial is not duplicated in other guides, be manually moved/copied somewhere else (or be made a part of the official guide/tutorial).

REVIEW QUEUE:

... has this even changed at all in 6 months? If not, remove it from top-level. This gives an impression of stagnation if anyone were to follow that link and click "History" (I did).

On 2015-01-23 11:31, aldanor wrote:
> Hi all, I've started redesigning dlang.org AGAIN (yea, I know...). The
> front page is mostly done aside from a several responsiveness and
> platform quirks, I will have the full landing page + a random sample
> page from the docs this weekend. On the technical side, rapid design +
> ddoc and working with pure css don't work well together, so it's going
> to be a static page or two and if/when everyone/anyone's happy with it,
> it can be pulled apart into those fugly ddoc macros. An easy example of
> why that's the case would be changing the color scheme or general
> styling of multiple components -- in sass/less you can just do a
> "@active-component: darken(@martian-red, 5%);" and that will fix all the
> inherited ones across the stylesheet. Same applies to reorganizing
> content in drastic ways. If using node as a dependency to compile assets
> is acceptable, this would sure the preferred way; otherwise, the
> compiled assets could be frozen/minified and checked back in. More about
> design-specific stuff later in another post.

For Sass there's libsass [1] with bindings already available [2]. For running JavaScript (Less) there are a couple of alternatives:

* Google V8
* Mozilla Rhino
* Apple JavaScriptCore - Included with Mac OS X
* Microsoft Windows Script Host (JScript)
* DMDScript [3]

In the Ruby world there's a gem that automatically chooses the best scripting host depending on the platform.

[1] http://libsass.org
[2] http://forum.dlang.org/thread/hdbsilimsxzhlruthign@forum.dlang.org
[3] http://code.dlang.org/packages/dmdscript

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On Friday, 23 January 2015 at 12:32:00 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> For Sass there's libsass [1] with bindings already available [2]. For running JavaScript (Less) there are a couple of alternatives:
Thanks, that would help. Could either use bootstrap-sass from git + d bindings to libsass from dub, or alternatively less via dmdscript -- but the first one would be easier, I guess.

On 2015-01-23 11:31, aldanor wrote:

> Top-level-link: CHANGELOG
>
> ... is stale and rarely / randomly updated. This makes it look like
> there is no development on the backend/phobos/runtime going on
> whatsoever. There either needs to be an automated aggregator for github
> pull requests (in which case there will need to be a better policy on
> commit/pr descriptions so it's automatable), or a responsibility of
> whoever's merging it to spend 5 seconds of time to update the changelog
> (e.g. nasty ice bug fixed, bugzilla issue #123, github pr #456).

It's updated when there's a new release.

> Top-level links: STANDARD LIBRARY, D REFERENCE
>
> ... I suggest they are moved back into Documentation section (as it is
> on the forum.dlang.org) which will contain these (Language Reference /
> Standard Library) plus other subsections e.g. D Style Guide.

I think they deserve being top-level links.

> REVIEW QUEUE:
>
> ... has this even changed at all in 6 months? If not, remove it from
> top-level. This gives an impression of stagnation if anyone were to
> follow that link and click "History" (I did).

Probably not. Nothing has happened in the review queue for quite a while.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On Friday, 23 January 2015 at 12:47:36 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
>> Top-level-link: CHANGELOG
> It's updated when there's a new release.

Not always -- e.g. there's several notes on 2.067 there already. I always thought that updating the changelog right after you fix something is easier than trying to recall whatever it was the hell you were working on half a year later and/or recover it from commits and pull requests, but to each his own, I guess. Plus, the changelog will have to be there anyway before the release so it's unavoidable. The question is whether it should be updated more frequently or in a more organized fashion. It's good publicity and it's nice to have a "sneak peek" of the next release to keep people excited, all I'm saying.

On Friday, 23 January 2015 at 12:47:36 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
>> Top-level links: STANDARD LIBRARY, D REFERENCE
> I think they deserve being top-level links.

I'd argue that the top links should be "Learn" (official D newcomer's guide which is not written yet, more about it on my next post / "D by example" which is not written yet either / gotchas and faqs / porting c/c++ / books and articles) and "Docs" (which would be: standard library / language reference / official style guide). These two are intertwined and scattered all over the place on D website. Examples: http://ocaml.org/ ("Learn" / "Documentation"),  http://www.rust-lang.org/ ("Book" / "Reference"), etc. This would be much more newbie-friendly. For D veterans, we could just add shortcuts to quickly jumping to stdlib or language reference.

On Friday, 23 January 2015 at 10:31:45 UTC, aldanor wrote:
> Hi all, I've started redesigning dlang.org AGAIN (yea, I know...). The front page is mostly done aside from a several responsiveness and platform quirks, I will have the full landing page + a random sample page from the docs this weekend. On the technical side, rapid design + ddoc and working with pure css don't work well together, so it's going to be a static page or two and if/when everyone/anyone's happy with it, it can be pulled apart into those fugly ddoc macros. An easy example of why that's the case would be changing the color scheme or general styling of multiple components -- in sass/less you can just do a "@active-component: darken(@martian-red, 5%);" and that will fix all the inherited ones across the stylesheet. Same applies to reorganizing content in drastic ways. If using node as a dependency to compile assets is acceptable, this would sure the preferred way; otherwise, the compiled assets could be frozen/minified and checked back in. More about design-specific stuff later in another post.
>
> There are several issues with structure and presentation that I think will have to be addressed. While compiling these, I also had several people that know nothing about D look at the website structrure and make independent comments. Please see my semi-organized collection of thoughts below.
>
> Top-level link: APPENDICES
>
> ... what is that even supposed to mean? It looks more of an official D style guide. TODO: rename to D STYLE GUIDE. TODO: someone needs to go through it and update it to look more official-style-guide-ish. And then again, it may be moved into a learning/docs section and not be a top-level item.
>
> Top-level link: FAQ
>
> ... looks like a collection of stuff that doesn't belong anywhere. The "FAQ" is almost as bad as naming it "MISC". Some of the points actually look like they belong to an FAQ ("why D?"), other ones belong to an official guide or examples; I wouldn't ever guess that the info on anonymous structs/unions would be in FAQ, that's just wrong. (there's also Books & Articles --> How-tos etc; which makes it even harder).
>
> Top-level link: D1 HOME
>
> ... should be buried away somewhere deep as not to scare people away. Those who need to find it already know where it is.
>
> Top-level-link: CHANGELOG
>
> ... is stale and rarely / randomly updated. This makes it look like there is no development on the backend/phobos/runtime going on whatsoever. There either needs to be an automated aggregator for github pull requests (in which case there will need to be a better policy on commit/pr descriptions so it's automatable), or a responsibility of whoever's merging it to spend 5 seconds of time to update the changelog (e.g. nasty ice bug fixed, bugzilla issue #123, github pr #456).
>
> There should also be a friendly way to quickly see a list of releases with dates and summaries and navigate to release notes for each one without scrolling through 42km of text.
>
> Top-level link: SITEMAP
>
> ... should be removed, it's not 1999 anymore. Plus, a well-structured website never needs a sitemap.
>
> Top-level-link: VISUAL D
>
> ... should move under Downloads & Tools; having this at top-level has a Windows smell and may scare people away.
>
> Top-level links: STANDARD LIBRARY, D REFERENCE
>
> ... I suggest they are moved back into Documentation section (as it is on the forum.dlang.org) which will contain these (Language Reference / Standard Library) plus other subsections e.g. D Style Guide.
>
> Book->Tutorial link (on forum.dlang.org) and other external links:
>
> This is one of many random external links: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1381876. It's just a really bad style for an official language website to link to an article obscure external website (that is 5 years old and probably outdated anyway). I suggest this is removed; and, in case any of the information in that tutorial is not duplicated in other guides, be manually moved/copied somewhere else (or be made a part of the official guide/tutorial).
>
> REVIEW QUEUE:
>
> ... has this even changed at all in 6 months? If not, remove it from top-level. This gives an impression of stagnation if anyone were to follow that link and click "History" (I did).

i think it'd be great if you and sebastiaan koppe worked together. you guys can get together and combine your efforts so one of the work would not go in vain.

"aldanor" <i.s.smirnov@gmail.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:didzczqdggjchqgtgvti@forum.dlang.org...
> Hi all, I've started redesigning dlang.org AGAIN (yea, I

Very sensible considerations. I think your way is the right
way to go: first think about structure, then presentation
and finally style.

On Friday, 23 January 2015 at 10:31:45 UTC, aldanor wrote:
> Hi all, I've started redesigning dlang.org AGAIN (yea, I know...).
>
> There are several issues with structure and presentation that I think will have to be addressed. While compiling these, I also had several people that know nothing about D look at the website structrure and make independent comments. Please see my semi-organized collection of thoughts below.

My own thought:

http://forum.dlang.org/post/pywtsfqqrqigxynfakdx@forum.dlang.org

Basically, I suggest consciously addressing these four demographics in designing the site:

1. Experienced programmers, new to D.

2. Beginning programmers.

3. Experienced D users.

4. The community. Publications, social events, news chatter.

On Friday, 23 January 2015 at 17:41:21 UTC, Zach the Mystic wrote:
> Basically, I suggest consciously addressing these four demographics in designing the site:
>
> 1. Experienced programmers, new to D.
>
> 2. Beginning programmers.
>
> 3. Experienced D users.
>
> 4. The community. Publications, social events, news chatter.
Agreed.

I personally think #1 is the most troublesome (although all four points will need to be addressed). E.g., Ali's book is more aimed at #2, whereas most other resources are more aimed at #3. There has to be a "I know how to code, give me some D already, now!" sort of a brief guide which would introduce you to the COOL parts that are different in D or that make it stand out. An experienced programmer could just jump into metaprogramming part right away because it's FUN... but that usually doesn't come until page 500 of the book...

Regarding #4, I don't think anyone would support my highly subjective opinion because everyone's used to how things are, but here goes anyway: (1) mailing lists are too 90s, there exist many modern platforms that are better suitable for modern web and mobile, the current forum is actually a heroic attempt to make something usable out of a mailing list but that's that. No syntax highlighting, no editing? Come on... (2) bugzilla is too unfriendly; using github issues for review queues, milestone tracking, bug tracking, issue tracking and referencing would be easier than scattering all that across 4 different websites (that aren't updated anyway). I have found a good amount of bugs in my D experience but I'm guilty of not submitting a single one because I don't feel like making an account on bugzilla -- and I'm not planning too, it instantly repulses me as soon as I open the page; plus it's unintuitive to browse, contains outdated issues and just feels foreign in general.

On Friday, 23 January 2015 at 13:39:23 UTC, Christof Schardt wrote:
> "aldanor" <i.s.smirnov@gmail.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:didzczqdggjchqgtgvti@forum.dlang.org...
>> Hi all, I've started redesigning dlang.org AGAIN (yea, I
>
> Very sensible considerations. I think your way is the right
> way to go: first think about structure, then presentation
> and finally style.

Yep. And please: accessibility. We wouldn't want to put off visually impaired users. JS gives them pain.