Navigation:

The navigation can get very confusing. The forum and the site look the same, but the logo in the top right bring back to the site index/forum index . That is not what is expected. If it looks the same, it should probably be doing the same.

Especially since the forum index is in the breadcrumb.

On the forum, the link to the website is in fact in the left bar, as last position. It is probably out of screen on my laptop screen (15').

On the website, the forum is hidden in the community menu in the middle of the left bar called community. If it warrant its own domain name, it should probably not be hidden.

Generally, the importance of various items doesn't seems to make any logical sense. What is logo worthy somewhere is hidden in a menu somewhere else, or vice versa.

Both left bar kind of look the same but aren't. That's quite bizarre and looks amateurish. On the website, categories in the left bar, there are + and - sign that looks like button to open/close the category, but they aren't button. It breaks common expectations.

Search :

The same confusion can be found in the search. One can search the whole D website, including the forum, while the navigation clearly split the 2 as very different entities.

There is no way to search the spec.

HTTPS:

Forum widgets on the front page are broken in https.
Various links are still in http.
Some function prompt security warning :
 - Forum certification
 - Search Function

Home page:

This is a mess. There is way too much here. There is an attention budget and it is important to manage it well.

The usual for a programming language goes as follow :
 - Logo, color as per branding.
 - Language name, quick blurb about what it is, usually ending with a link to tutorial.
 - Big fat download button.
 - Some sample code. The one we have on the front page is way too big. It should be a piece of code that someone with 0 experience in the language can understand.
 - A menu with quick access to what more experienced users want : stdlib reference, code repository, wiki, forum, language spec, news, this kind of thing.

Some examples:
http://www.scala-lang.org/
https://nodejs.org/en/
https://developer.apple.com/swift/
https://golang.org/
https://www.rust-lang.org/

Our is just messed up. The download link is there, but just doesn't stand out (same presentation as this week in D, videos from DConf, as big as the changelog).

The code sample is so big that is doesn't fit on my laptop screen (15'). It uses all kind of feature that don't belong as a first exposure. When you learn English, you start with "Brian is in the kitchen" not Shakespeare.

All of this is quite damaging to D's brand.

Even even though I'm not a webdev, I've been working in growth for a long time and these things matter. I don't know DDoc, and I'm not sure this is a very smart move. That raise the barrier to contribute to the website. The intersection of people that know webdev and DDoc is just mostly existent.

The time I can spend on this is quite limited due to SDC, work and personal life. Learning DDoc is just too big of a barrier. Yet I can provide support to anyone that is willing to help.

Last but not least, it wouldn't hurt to hire a designer to have something slick.

On 2015-12-15 08:07, deadalnix wrote:

[snip]
> All of this is quite damaging to D's brand.
>
> Even even though I'm not a webdev, I've been working in growth for a
> long time and these things matter. I don't know DDoc, and I'm not sure
> this is a very smart move. That raise the barrier to contribute to the
> website. The intersection of people that know webdev and DDoc is just
> mostly existent.
>
> The time I can spend on this is quite limited due to SDC, work and
> personal life. Learning DDoc is just too big of a barrier. Yet I can
> provide support to anyone that is willing to help.
>
> Last but not least, it wouldn't hurt to hire a designer to have
> something slick.

I agree with all this, especially the last part about Ddoc.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On Tuesday, 15 December 2015 at 08:26:44 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> On 2015-12-15 08:07, deadalnix wrote:
>
> [snip]
>> All of this is quite damaging to D's brand.
>>
>> Even even though I'm not a webdev, I've been working in growth for a
>> long time and these things matter. I don't know DDoc, and I'm not sure
>> this is a very smart move. That raise the barrier to contribute to the
>> website. The intersection of people that know webdev and DDoc is just
>> mostly existent.
>>
>> The time I can spend on this is quite limited due to SDC, work and
>> personal life. Learning DDoc is just too big of a barrier. Yet I can
>> provide support to anyone that is willing to help.
>>
>> Last but not least, it wouldn't hurt to hire a designer to have
>> something slick.
>
> I agree with all this, especially the last part about Ddoc.

We've all said time and time again if ddoc wasn't used for the entire site more people would help with it. Ddoc makes sense for the documentation but not everything else.

I thought Sociomantic were re-designing and sorting the site out?

On Tuesday, 15 December 2015 at 08:31:40 UTC, Gary Willoughby wrote:
> On Tuesday, 15 December 2015 at 08:26:44 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
>> On 2015-12-15 08:07, deadalnix wrote:
>>
>> [snip]
>>> All of this is quite damaging to D's brand.
>>>
>>> Even even though I'm not a webdev, I've been working in growth for a
>>> long time and these things matter. I don't know DDoc, and I'm not sure
>>> this is a very smart move. That raise the barrier to contribute to the
>>> website. The intersection of people that know webdev and DDoc is just
>>> mostly existent.
>>>
>>> The time I can spend on this is quite limited due to SDC, work and
>>> personal life. Learning DDoc is just too big of a barrier. Yet I can
>>> provide support to anyone that is willing to help.
>>>
>>> Last but not least, it wouldn't hurt to hire a designer to have
>>> something slick.
>>
>> I agree with all this, especially the last part about Ddoc.
>
> We've all said time and time again if ddoc wasn't used for the entire site more people would help with it. Ddoc makes sense for the documentation but not everything else.
>
> I thought Sociomantic were re-designing and sorting the site out?

The harder it is made for people to contribute the system for fixations, the lesser changes are seen.

It bothers me so much to report a bug on https://issues.dlang.org . The reason is that the password stops working for me. Firefox saves the username and password. I try to use it after 2 months, and whops, system says it isn't available.

Another issue is contributing the website's design. I reported a problem on the forum that is about the title problem of web page. http://forum.dlang.org/thread/pymfyjuckxbvjolxlczg@forum.dlang.org Still the problem will be fixed.

Now I am asking, IF I was to make some changes for web site's look, and post a picture of them (CSS changes mostly), would it be okay to discuss it here, and apply them in short notice? If a change would take 1 week, that doesn't work. I am
offering help here.

On 15.12.2015 08:07, deadalnix wrote:
> The navigation can get very confusing. The forum and the site look the
> same, but the logo in the top right bring back to the site index/forum
> index . That is not what is expected. If it looks the same, it should
> probably be doing the same.

Agreed. And the phobos pages have yet another navigation variant that looks similar but has different elements.

> On the website, the forum is hidden in the community menu in the middle
> of the left bar called community. If it warrant its own domain name, it
> should probably not be hidden.

The accordion menus have been introduced somewhat recently (early 2015 IIRC) to make the menu more structured, less crowded. Recently, a number of things have been suggested to be put at the top level. The problem is, if we put everything at the top level, we end up with an overcrowded menu again.

Not saying that the forum shouldn't be at the top. But if we move it up, we should probably move something else down.

> On the website, categories in the left bar, there are
> + and - sign that looks like button to open/close the category, but they
> aren't button. It breaks common expectations.

Not sure what you're asking for here. The +/- signs are part of a button that expands/collapses the sub menus. What behavior would you expect/prefer?

> There is no way to search the spec.

Is implemented and merged. The site just hasn't been updated yet.

https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/1162

> Home page:
[...]
> Our is just messed up. The download link is there, but just doesn't
> stand out (same presentation as this week in D, videos from DConf, as
> big as the changelog).

I agree, others don't. See discussion on <https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/1139> where I originally proposed this download button: <https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/9287500/10711239/4fb76968-7a75-11e5-8677-8a27eebdc952.png>.

Now, I don't want to complain about people not liking the design. And I pulled the design changes back rather quickly, because the functionality was supposed to be the subject of the PR. A big, flashy download button has not exactly been rejected.

On 12/15/15 3:31 AM, Gary Willoughby wrote:
> We've all said time and time again if ddoc wasn't used for the entire
> site more people would help with it. Ddoc makes sense for the
> documentation but not everything else.

I'm not sure about this. There are very very many potential improvements that are important, easy to do, not related to the use of ddoc, and don't get done.

> I thought Sociomantic were re-designing and sorting the site out?

Not for the time being.


Andrei

On 12/15/15 5:54 AM, tcak wrote:
> The harder it is made for people to contribute the system for fixations,
> the lesser changes are seen.

I don't think we've had many contributions via the "Improve this page" button.

> It bothers me so much to report a bug on https://issues.dlang.org . The
> reason is that the password stops working for me. Firefox saves the
> username and password. I try to use it after 2 months, and whops, system
> says it isn't available.
>
> Another issue is contributing the website's design. I reported a problem
> on the forum that is about the title problem of web page.
> http://forum.dlang.org/thread/pymfyjuckxbvjolxlczg@forum.dlang.org Still
> the problem will be fixed.
>
> Now I am asking, IF I was to make some changes for web site's look, and
> post a picture of them (CSS changes mostly), would it be okay to discuss
> it here, and apply them in short notice? If a change would take 1 week,
> that doesn't work. I am
> offering help here.

Yes, the css has grown long in the teeth. Just replacing it with something else is needed, even if it's not an actual improvement.

A related idea is to investigate the use of http://sourcefoundry.org/hack/ for the code samples. Takers?


Andrei

On Tuesday, 15 December 2015 at 07:07:23 UTC, deadalnix wrote:
> Navigation:
>
> The navigation can get very confusing. The forum and the site look the same, but the logo in the top right bring back to the site index/forum index .

I thought that only I had saw this. Yes it's wrong. To go to homepage from the forum you need to look at the bottom (D Home link), for me this is very wrong and certainly not the standard for most sites.

I really think that D "heads" should hire a webdesigner!

Ron.

On Tuesday, 15 December 2015 at 07:07:23 UTC, deadalnix wrote:
>
> Home page:
>
> This is a mess. There is way too much here. There is an attention budget and it is important to manage it well.
>
I think you're overstating it: it's a bit busy, but I think it can be fixed.

> The usual for a programming language goes as follow :
>  - Logo, color as per branding.

Yeah, we should probably incorporate the red more.

>  - Language name, quick blurb about what it is, usually ending with a link to tutorial.

We have the language name twice!  Do we need a longer blurb?  None of your examples seem to link to an official tutorial at all, so we're ahead of the game there. (Sort of.  It's on a different domain and doesn't match "D style".)

>  - Big fat download button.

It's right in the middle of the page.  Should we wrap it in <blink> to make it more obvious? (Seriously: I agree it should be bigger.  Changelog link smaller and underneath instead.)

>  - Some sample code. The one we have on the front page is way too big. It should be a piece of code that someone with 0 experience in the language can understand.

The RPN example is too big.  The sort lines example is nice.  Is there some sort of rotation here?  Go kinda gets it right with the dropdown.  Scala's tiles are poorly telegraphed.

>  - A menu with quick access to what more experienced users want : stdlib reference, code repository, wiki, forum, language spec, news, this kind of thing.
>
So, the stuff on the sidebar?

> Some examples:
> http://www.scala-lang.org/

Well, I guess it's pretty?  Examples aren't obvious and the documentation uses a completely different colour scheme for Reasons(?).

> https://nodejs.org/en/

Thoroughly useless bootstrap placeholder.

> https://developer.apple.com/swift/

What on earth?  There's no download at all, no obvious doc link, way too much verticality, and they've overdone it on the whitespace.  I guess they only care about people with high-dollar Apple screens.

> https://golang.org/

Ugly but functional.  Decent layout, though I still don't get this fetish for top links.

> https://www.rust-lang.org/
>
Slightly better than Go.  Could we stop pretending 1024x768 is The Best Resolution?

> Last but not least, it wouldn't hurt to hire a designer to have something slick.

I think the biggest issues are the sidebar cleanliness and the main content having a single-column design.  I like the _idea_ of having the discussion boxouts in the right column, but it comes at the expense of the rest of the content and contributes to the fatigue.

-Wyatt

On Tuesday, 15 December 2015 at 07:07:23 UTC, deadalnix wrote:

> The usual for a programming language goes as follow :
>  - Logo, color as per branding.
>  - Language name, quick blurb about what it is, usually ending with a link to tutorial.
>  - Big fat download button.
>  - Some sample code. The one we have on the front page is way too big. It should be a piece of code that someone with 0 experience in the language can understand.
>  - A menu with quick access to what more experienced users want : stdlib reference, code repository, wiki, forum, language spec, news, this kind of thing.

1. https://www.python.org/
2. https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/

I think the above two websites do a better job of fitting your requirements than Scala's homepage etc., Let not the dynamic typed nature of the language(s) dissuade you from learning how to build a very popular language **community**.