On Wednesday, 21 January 2015 at 17:34:46 UTC, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 05:27:09PM +0000, anonymous via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> On Wednesday, 21 January 2015 at 14:46:22 UTC, Sebastiaan Koppe wrote:
>> >Just for fun and proof-of-concept I went ahead and forked the dlang.org
>> >site. I basically took the `do-what-everybody-else-is-doing` approach:
>> >
>> >http://dlang.skoppe.eu
>> 
>> I must have been taking crazy pills, because everyone else seems to
>> love it, but I don't like the homepage. I
>> have
>> to
>> scroll
>> down
>> way
>> too
>> much
>> to
>> actually
>> see
>> some
>> content.
>> Also, I can't make sense of the order of things.
>> 
>> I know this is what-everybody-else-is-doing, and I don't like on other
>> sites either.
> [...]
>
> +1. I didn't like it either. But then again, the majority of people
> rarely agree with me, so I didn't say anything. But obviously I'm not
> alone in disliking this spaced-out layout.

I don't like the front page either, but the doc view isn't so bad.

Then again, I'm biased because any major redesign means I'll have to implement it a second time for the forum :)

On Wednesday, 21 January 2015 at 17:52:56 UTC, Kiith-Sa wrote:
> Suggested improvement:
>
> http://imgur.com/a/zgSJa

Or: http://i.imgur.com/ciSn8vM.png

Matheus.

On Wednesday, 21 January 2015 at 18:01:14 UTC, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> Then again, I'm biased because any major redesign means I'll have to implement it a second time for the forum :)

And also fix CHM generation. Let's not forget CHM generation.

On Wednesday, 21 January 2015 at 14:46:22 UTC, Sebastiaan Koppe wrote:
> Just for fun and proof-of-concept I went ahead and forked the dlang.org site. I basically took the `do-what-everybody-else-is-doing` approach:
>
> http://dlang.skoppe.eu
>
> It is still a wip, but the landing page and the language reference (see Docs menu-item) is working.
>
> Doing the ddoc was a maze of macro's at first. But spending a couple of hours untangling the mess, I finally found the ones I needed to change. After that things went pretty smooth. So ddoc ain't that bad. It is just that I didn't have syntax highlighting - nor goto-definition - and I hate that.
>
> Still, it is cool in a way that I can just change some macro's, tweak the index.dd, the doc.ddoc and don't have to worry about all the other pages.
>
> BTW, the build process on windows was way easier than linux. In fact, I could not get the makefile to run on linux at all. Looking into posix.mak, I see a blur of path's, all misconfigured, and I bet I am supposed to set those manually. I don't get it, doesn't everything has its own place? Isn't dmd always installed in /usr/bin, /usr/include/dmd and that stuff? I suppose not everyone is using the same distro. Or they are, except me :)

And it only took me 20 minutes to get to the bottom of the page. Sorry, not a fan of that design, though I'm apparently the only one.

On 1/21/15 10:47 AM, bachmeier wrote:
> And it only took me 20 minutes to get to the bottom of the page. Sorry,
> not a fan of that design, though I'm apparently the only one.

There are a few others (including myself) who are not fans of this sparse homepage. IMHO the sparse design requiring a lot of scrolling must be the very point to be impactful.

I remember I saw a few sites where scrolling would effect some cool animation at the top, or would gradually (or suddenly) change the visual experience entirely, or would display fragments of a really really long rocket, etc.

As things are now I see the sparse intro and I go - interesting. But I also see a fragment of the stuff below it, so I'm like - this wasn't designed for my resolution. So let me scroll down. Then I see those bands alternating with code snippets, and am like, why do I need to scroll through all that crap for three clickable things of interest.

I do like the idea of a simple intro homepage with a big invite to download, but if at all it should be wholesome, not the beginning of an arduous scrolling workout.

I also like the pages with the menu on the right, they're clean and luminous. They should have collapsible menus.


Andrei

On Wednesday, 21 January 2015 at 17:52:07 UTC, MattCoder wrote:
> Well, of course it needs some polishing, for example: I think the top menu should be visible on screen while you scroll down, because imagine that you are at bottom of the page and want to go somewhere else (Forums, Documentation etc).

Actually, I wouldn't like that. I have more often been annoyed by menues I don't need than by having to scroll up.

It may be nice for the 'Docs' menu on the left. Because there it's more likely that one tries different pages when searching for something. That menu also takes up horizontal space, which I find more tolerable on the big screen.

[...]
> Yes the font size needs a scale up.

It's at 100% of the user/browser-defined size, isn't it? That's fine with me. On the the current site the font is actually smaller than what I set in the browser. I'm not a fan of that.

On 1/21/2015 6:46 AM, Sebastiaan Koppe wrote:
> Just for fun and proof-of-concept I went ahead and forked the dlang.org site. I
> basically took the `do-what-everybody-else-is-doing` approach:

Thank you very much for doing this! I very much appreciate the hard work you put into it.

For comparison, here are some other language front doors:

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

Go: https://golang.org/

Rust: http://www.rust-lang.org/

C++: http://www.cplusplus.com/

C#: doesn't seem to have one!

Java: http://java.com/en/

Haskell: https://www.haskell.org/

Python: https://www.python.org/

Php: http://php.net/

Objective C: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/ProgrammingWithObjectiveC/Introduction/Introduction.html

Typescript: http://www.typescriptlang.org/

Perl: https://www.perl.org/

Ruby: https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/

Fortran: http://www.fortran.com/

Dart: https://www.dartlang.org/

The Dart one is probably most similar to this proposal. But there definitely is a trend among these sites - a menu across the top, lots of white space, lots of scrolling. I can't say I'm a fan, but it's undeniable what people consider modern. (I like the older style, as it is denser and easier to navigate.)

On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 05:52:06PM +0000, MattCoder via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Wednesday, 21 January 2015 at 17:34:46 UTC, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d
> wrote:
> z
> >+1. I didn't like it either. But then again, the majority of people rarely agree with me, so I didn't say anything. But obviously I'm not alone in disliking this spaced-out layout.
> 
> Well, of course it needs some polishing, for example: I think the top menu should be visible on screen while you scroll down, because imagine that you are at bottom of the page and want to go somewhere else (Forums, Documentation etc).

I'm not talking about polishing. I'm talking about the design itself. (Obviously, the following is just my personal opinion, so please don't take it personally.) Let's start at the top.

First, there's too much empty space. The entire top red band wastes a huge amount of screen real estate while providing only 6 links and a search bar that's (1) way too tall and (2) not wide enough for a meaningful (i.e. non-trivial) query.  This giant red band is present on every page, effectively reducing the height of the browser window by 20% for no good reason. I mean, it could be a *single line* at the top of the page, what's the point of squatting on 20% of the page filling it with empty space? Don't get me wrong, judicious use of empty space is very important in any website design. But this is overuse of empty space.

Second, that ugly gray band in the middle with "The D Programming Language" in a font that's way too big and in-your-face. This is nothing but a reincarnation of the evil Splash Page from the 90's, where useful content is hidden behind obscure links relegated to the corners of the page while the prime real estate in the middle of the screen is an overly big splash of the marketing message that the website authors want to shove down your throat. No thanks. Let *me* decide if I'm interested in your site, I don't need you to tell me what I should be interested in. The title should be just that: a title. At the top of the page, in a prominent place if you wish, but give me the *content*! When I go to a website, I'm looking for *information*. Not ads and vacuous slogans. If I wanted ads, I'd go read a pulp magazine website or something. Or monsterjobs.com. But on the website of a *programming language*?! Ick.

Third, the real content of the page begins at the bottom of the screen, with an overly large heading "C-like Syntax". Really?? The primary selling point of D is that it has C-like syntax? Wow. Not to mention, the text that follows is cut off halfway at the bottom mid-paragraph because the red bar and the gray splash screen has occupied almost all of the prime real estate on the screen, so there's not enough room for even a single paragraph of real content, but it has to spill to the next screenful.

Which brings me to the next point: the page is WAY TOO LONG.  Worse yet, its already overly-long length is further exacerbated by the gratuitously huge title font sizes. Too much space is wasted on titles and section headings for no good reason. And there are too many sections on the page. Nobody is going to read past the first 2 screenfuls, which, due to the wanton waste of screen space in the first screenful, has not enough space for meaningful content.

When you have so much content you wish people to read, the first order of business should be to provide easy navigation so that people can *get* to the content in the first place. But, AFAICT, there is no way to jump between those overly-long sections past the first screenful. So basically, nobody is going to read that stuff. Unfortunately, that includes important information about dub, the Dconfs, TDPL, the various compilers, etc.. The only thing that's gonna impress people is the overly huge title and the 3 slogans that, as far as they can tell, are unsubstantiated (since the substantiation is too far down the page for them to care to read). They will have no idea about the Dconfs, TDPL, what compilers are available, etc.. I.e., things that are actually pertinent to *programmers*, who are our target audience. Or are we targeting marketing people as our primary audience now, and wish to impress them how sleek our website design is?

IMO, things like (1) code examples, (2) language features, (3) language and standard library docs, (4) compilers, (5) IDE support, are what programmers care about. These things therefore should be front and center. Programmers don't really care about the name of the language -- unless you first convince them they should, by showing them the preceding pieces of information first. The overly prominent download link is misplaced, because before you present pertinent info to the programmer, why would he want to download your language in the first place? Why should he care for *your* language above the hundreds and thousands of others out there? The download link should be somewhere on the first page, in an easy-to-find place, for when he decides "OK this looks interesting, now where can I download it and give it a try?". But it shouldn't be front and center.  Instead, what should be front and center is the stuff that's pertinent to the programmers (i.e., our target audience).  The code. The language features. The nice syntax. Why they should care about this language. Good navigation is essential here, because he may not be convinced by the first glance, and may decide to look at the tutorials or docs first. Those links should be in a prominent place so that he can find them easily. And it should be simple (i.e. one click) to navigate between any given tutorial page, any documentation page, and the download page (for when he has seen enough to decide he wants to give it a try). It should be easy to tell at a glance where on the website he is. A collapsible navigation bar helps a lot here. And on each page, the most representative code examples or features should be at the top, where it is visible without scrolling down, 'cos most people won't bother to scroll down (unless you've given them reasons compelling enough to catch their interest).

Otherwise they will lose interest and go back to watching YouTube or something. At least I know that if this were what the D website looked like back when I first found D, I would've closed the tab and moved on instantly. My first reaction would have been: OK, so this is "THE D PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE" (the font is so big!). Obviously the creators want me to care, but why should I care? I don't see any code examples (and no obvious links to some, either). No feature list (also no obvious links to that). Only 3 unsubstantiated (AFAICT) slogans. Sounds like some dreaded marketing person designed this ugly page. (Where are my fellow programmers?!) And obviously they want me to download their language (download link front and center). But since they haven't told me anything interesting about their language, why should I? All they have is this red and gray space. If their language is as vacuous as this page, I don't think I'd be interested. *yawn* Yeah, I think I'm gonna go back to YouTube and watch cute baby elephant videos instead.


Comparing this page with the current dlang.org page, I think that the current dlang.org page meets more of the above expectations than this one. So I'd have to say that this design is a step back rather than forward. (At least for me.)


> There are some spaces not filled.
> 
> Yes the font size needs a scale up.

Please, no. The fonts are WAY TOO BIG already.


> About the layout (Vertical Wall Text), I think they became popular because the mobile, you know those 7" or 8" size screens, then you can read the site like an ebook or maybe because the technical side, like partial loading.
[...]

This is why I have said before, and I say again, that for mobile devices you need a different kind of layout. You cannot use that kind of layout for a PC browser. It simply doesn't translate.


T

-- 
If you want to solve a problem, you need to address its root cause, not just its symptoms. Otherwise it's like treating cancer with Tylenol...

On 1/21/15 11:55 AM, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> This giant red band is present on
> every page, effectively reducing the height of the browser window by 20%
> for no good reason.

I'm also a fan of vertical navigation menus because today's screens have a wide aspect ratio making vertical real estate precious and horizontal real estate cheap. -- Andrei

On Wednesday, 21 January 2015 at 19:57:25 UTC, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 05:52:06PM +0000, MattCoder via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> On Wednesday, 21 January 2015 at 17:34:46 UTC, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d
>> wrote:
>> z
>> >+1. I didn't like it either. But then again, the majority of people
>> >rarely agree with me, so I didn't say anything. But obviously I'm not
>> >alone in disliking this spaced-out layout.
>> 
>> Well, of course it needs some polishing, for example: I think the top
>> menu should be visible on screen while you scroll down, because
>> imagine that you are at bottom of the page and want to go somewhere
>> else (Forums, Documentation etc).
>
> I'm not talking about polishing. I'm talking about the design itself.
> (Obviously, the following is just my personal opinion, so please don't
> take it personally.)

Never, I don't take anything like this personally, this is a discussion board and sometimes we will agree and some don't! :)


>> There are some spaces not filled.
>> 
>> Yes the font size needs a scale up.
>
> Please, no. The fonts are WAY TOO BIG already.

So, reading from my Galaxy Tab 7" on Horizontal I found harder to read than other sites, but this is a minor problem, it could be solved with CSS and media thing.

> This is why I have said before, and I say again, that for mobile devices
> you need a different kind of layout. You cannot use that kind of layout
> for a PC browser. It simply doesn't translate.

Yes, but on the technical side the partial loading will be same on mobile and desktop, but in this case if it is easy or not to do this partial loading with this layout is a purely guessing of my part, I'm not a web-developer!

Matheus.