On Sun, 18 Jan 2015 23:47:30 +0000
MattCoder via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:

> On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 21:27:25 UTC, NVolcz wrote:
> > Googles pagespeed also gives some nice guidelines: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=dlang.org
> 
> Nice and for image processing/compression I'd like to recommend this free tool (Win/Linux/Mac):
> 
> http://advsys.net/ken/utils.htm#pngoutkziplicense
there are also "optipng" and "advpng". the last comes with MAME, i believe, and using google's zopfli library to squeeze out even more bytes in exchange of big processing times.

On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 02:18:16 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> I took the better part of today working on this: https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo at http://erdani.com/d/.
>
> What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now?
>
> I'd appreciate your help with reviewing and pulling this, and also with improving the colors (which I'm terrible at) and page tracking as mentioned in the pull request.
>

What are your primary concerns with the website?  I think it would help to know what you are trying to achieve.

Personally, although dlang.org isn't particularly pretty, I think its fine.  It's the unmaintained and unfinished content that's the real problem, not the aesthetics.  I've made a number of PRs to move "unofficial" content to the wiki so it could be better maintained there, and if not maintained, at least appear less official.  I believe dlang.org's lack of maintenance is partially due to the issues mentioned below.

I've tried to do some improvements on dlang.org, and its a PITA.  If it were made more convenient, there would be greater participation from me, and likely others.  So, I offer the following suggestion:

1) Modify the build scripts and the instructions on dlang.org so that it's abundantly clear how to fork, modify, build, verify, submit PRs without having read verbose instructions and without having to clone and build dmd, druntime, phobos, and other repositories just to get an html page to verify an edit.  I would do this myself, but an important prerequisite to updating build scripts and documentation is knowledge, which I have yet to possess.  But someone in this community knows.

2) Aside from the documentation generated from the source code, why does the website need to be "built"?  IMO a static website like dlang.org shouldn't need any additional tools other than a browser and an image editor.  I may explore some options later, but only after 1) is done.

Mike

On 1/18/2015 1:41 AM, Rikki Cattermole wrote:
> On 18/01/2015 10:40 p.m., Tofu Ninja wrote:
>> On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 08:42:30 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>>
>>> Me like. And I do like the spidery red lines in particular.
>>
>> The red lines were what I particularly disliked, looks old and unclean
>> to me.
>
> Also that contrast is awful on the eyes!

How can a 1 pixel wide line be awful on the eyes?

On 1/18/15 3:36 PM, Zach the Mystic wrote:
> I like the buttons with the dark red gradients on the left. Although the
> button titles don't seem professional to me, the buttons do.
>
> I'm personally interested in seeing the "story" of D told better. I have
> more of a conscious opinion of the words of the front page than I do of
> the look-and-feel. Are the words up for discussion here, or just the
> look-and-feel for now?

Content discussion to follow soon. -- Andrei

On 1/18/15 4:57 PM, Mike wrote:
> On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 02:18:16 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> I took the better part of today working on this:
>> https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. See demo
>> at http://erdani.com/d/.
>>
>> What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we have now?
>>
>> I'd appreciate your help with reviewing and pulling this, and also
>> with improving the colors (which I'm terrible at) and page tracking as
>> mentioned in the pull request.
>>
>
> What are your primary concerns with the website?  I think it would help
> to know what you are trying to achieve.

Good point.

1. The site design/styling is old. Simply changing it is now necessary just as a refresher.

2. Of course, we'd also like things to be better. The chaotic navigation menu on the left was something I long wished to replace with a more modern on.

3. Part of my effort is to replace all manual html ad-hoc styles with styles in the css. That is invisible right now but will become very useful when we pass the site for improvement to a specialist.

> Personally, although dlang.org isn't particularly pretty, I think its
> fine.  It's the unmaintained and unfinished content that's the real
> problem, not the aesthetics.  I've made a number of PRs to move
> "unofficial" content to the wiki so it could be better maintained there,
> and if not maintained, at least appear less official.

Thanks!

> I believe
> dlang.org's lack of maintenance is partially due to the issues mentioned
> below. I've tried to do some improvements on dlang.org, and its a PITA. If it
> were made more convenient, there would be greater participation from me,
> and likely others.  So, I offer the following suggestion:
>
> 1) Modify the build scripts and the instructions on dlang.org so that
> it's abundantly clear how to fork, modify, build, verify, submit PRs
> without having read verbose instructions and without having to clone and
> build dmd, druntime, phobos, and other repositories just to get an html
> page to verify an edit.  I would do this myself, but an important
> prerequisite to updating build scripts and documentation is knowledge,
> which I have yet to possess.  But someone in this community knows.

We definitely need to get that working. There are a couple of blocking issues (like the interference of local configuration files on the site build) but I trust we'll get over them soon.

> 2) Aside from the documentation generated from the source code, why does
> the website need to be "built"?  IMO a static website like dlang.org
> shouldn't need any additional tools other than a browser and an image
> editor.  I may explore some options later, but only after 1) is done.

The short answer is because there's no robust inclusion and code reuse solution at HTML level.


Andrei

On 19/01/2015 2:07 p.m., Walter Bright wrote:
> On 1/18/2015 1:41 AM, Rikki Cattermole wrote:
>> On 18/01/2015 10:40 p.m., Tofu Ninja wrote:
>>> On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 08:42:30 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>>>
>>>> Me like. And I do like the spidery red lines in particular.
>>>
>>> The red lines were what I particularly disliked, looks old and unclean
>>> to me.
>>
>> Also that contrast is awful on the eyes!
>
> How can a 1 pixel wide line be awful on the eyes?

When you have a headache and not in a really good head space it can hurt.

On Monday, 19 January 2015 at 01:41:04 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Content discussion to follow soon. -- Andrei

As I asked in another Topic without any answer, I wasn't able to find (or at least is not easily visible) anything related to "CONTRIBUTE" even on sitemap.

I think there should be a button for this on the main site.

Matheus.

On Monday, 19 January 2015 at 02:00:52 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

>> 2) Aside from the documentation generated from the source code, why does
>> the website need to be "built"?  IMO a static website like dlang.org
>> shouldn't need any additional tools other than a browser and an image
>> editor.  I may explore some options later, but only after 1) is done.
>
> The short answer is because there's no robust inclusion and code reuse solution at HTML level.

Would it be a horrible idea to render DDoc in javascript?

Mike

On 1/18/15 6:09 PM, MattCoder wrote:
> On Monday, 19 January 2015 at 01:41:04 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> Content discussion to follow soon. -- Andrei
>
> As I asked in another Topic without any answer, I wasn't able to find
> (or at least is not easily visible) anything related to "CONTRIBUTE"
> even on sitemap.
>
> I think there should be a button for this on the main site.

Great idea. Could you please put that in bugzilla, it's important and shouldn't be forgotten. -- Andrei

On 1/18/15 11:15 AM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
> On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 17:56:41 UTC, aldanor wrote:
>> And yet another thing you gain with (most) frameworks is having access
>> to the original SASS/LESS.
>
> I think that's a con, actually. My biggest problem with contributing to
> the dlang website is that I have to do it blind - it won't make on my
> computer.

This has been a continuous source of annoyance for me. Seems like whenever I turn my back the site build gets broken.

Right now I have it working smoothly, but I know of a few potential issues. Could you please reply here with your problem(s) and I'll get a robust solution in place?


Thanks,

Andrei