On Thursday, 22 January 2015 at 14:15:58 UTC, ref2401 wrote:
> Can we just get back the old design, please?

I think it's a waste of time to make the website look "modern" while what we really need is to point out the topics of interest (better):

What is D?

- Systems programming language
- Native (three compilers: dmd, ldc, gdc)
- C++/C like
- Modelling power
- Modern convenience
- Cross platform
- Interacts with C/C++
- Community driven (free, boost license)
- Benchmarks (+ examples)

AND also very important

- (Build) tools (dub, dvm)
- GUI toolkits
- third party libraries
- Guide to Windows integration
- ... (please fill in)

(basically all the major points that newbies ask about on the forum)

The layout should be clear and simple ("one-click-shops"), whether we jazz it up later is not so important now. I know that hours and days can be wasted with getting the CSS and JS right, however a convenient and clear structure are more important now than shiny icons and the like. In fact, thinking about the content/structure might give rise to new ideas as regards the design. If the design is there first, it adds unnecessary constraints regarding the structure / content, i.e. the free flow of ideas.

On Thursday, 22 January 2015 at 14:54:16 UTC, Chris wrote:
> On Thursday, 22 January 2015 at 14:15:58 UTC, ref2401 wrote:
>> Can we just get back the old design, please?
>
> I think it's a waste of time to make the website look "modern" while what we really need is to point out the topics of interest (better):
>
> What is D?
>
> - Systems programming language
> - Native (three compilers: dmd, ldc, gdc)
> - C++/C like
> - Modelling power
> - Modern convenience
> - Cross platform
> - Interacts with C/C++
> - Community driven (free, boost license)
> - Benchmarks (+ examples)
>
> AND also very important
>
> - (Build) tools (dub, dvm)
> - GUI toolkits
> - third party libraries
> - Guide to Windows integration
> - ... (please fill in)
>
> (basically all the major points that newbies ask about on the forum)
>
> The layout should be clear and simple ("one-click-shops"), whether we jazz it up later is not so important now. I know that hours and days can be wasted with getting the CSS and JS right, however a convenient and clear structure are more important now than shiny icons and the like. In fact, thinking about the content/structure might give rise to new ideas as regards the design. If the design is there first, it adds unnecessary constraints regarding the structure / content, i.e. the free flow of ideas.

PS What annoys me about the modern, tablet friendly layouts is that once you enter a section, you lose reference to other sections, i.e. you have to browse back to the entry point, because the menu logic has changed. Example:

https://ocaml.org/learn/

If you click on one of the tutorials, say "Basics" (https://ocaml.org/learn/tutorials/basics.html), you have to go back to "Learn" to be able to go to the list of tutorials. We should avoid that.

Btw, a cool feature for the library section would be a way to quickly scroll up / jump back to the top of the page, like e.g. the up arrow on duckduckgo.com that takes you to the top of the page, or simply a "back to top" link under each function documentation. That would really help.

On 1/22/15 6:15 AM, ref2401 wrote:
> Can we just get back the old design, please?

No. -- Andrei

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 :)

+1. Nice. One thing, too much space and to large fonts. As a user I get to little information without having to scroll.

On Thursday, 22 January 2015 at 16:00:51 UTC, NVolcz 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
>>
>> 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 :)
>
> +1. Nice. One thing, too much space and to large fonts. As a user I get to little information without having to scroll.

And please don't forget accessibility! Keep it simple, because the blind and visually impaired cannot use fancy stuff that depends heavily on JS.

(cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_accessibility#Standards_and_guidelines)

On Thursday, 22 January 2015 at 05:27:04 UTC, Zekereth wrote:
> First of all I like the new design. Way better than what's here now. I'll just throw another site into the mix that I like which is Ocaml's site: https://ocaml.org/ .

That's quite nice. It even has a section with recent forum posts. Maybe we should try to emulate it.

On Thursday, 22 January 2015 at 16:58:39 UTC, Meta wrote:
> On Thursday, 22 January 2015 at 05:27:04 UTC, Zekereth wrote:
>> First of all I like the new design. Way better than what's here now. I'll just throw another site into the mix that I like which is Ocaml's site: https://ocaml.org/ .
>
> That's quite nice. It even has a section with recent forum posts. Maybe we should try to emulate it.

We are already doing that: http://dlang.org/  <- Look at your right :)

Matheus.

On Thursday, 22 January 2015 at 17:00:55 UTC, MattCoder wrote:
> On Thursday, 22 January 2015 at 16:58:39 UTC, Meta wrote:
>> On Thursday, 22 January 2015 at 05:27:04 UTC, Zekereth wrote:
>>> First of all I like the new design. Way better than what's here now. I'll just throw another site into the mix that I like which is Ocaml's site: https://ocaml.org/ .
>>
>> That's quite nice. It even has a section with recent forum posts. Maybe we should try to emulate it.
>
> We are already doing that: http://dlang.org/  <- Look at your right :)
>
> Matheus.

It doesn't show up on my phone. Anyway, I more meant that we should model our general design off of ocaml.org as their site looks pretty good but still has a lot of information.

On Thursday, 22 January 2015 at 17:03:52 UTC, Meta wrote:
> On Thursday, 22 January 2015 at 17:00:55 UTC, MattCoder wrote:
>> On Thursday, 22 January 2015 at 16:58:39 UTC, Meta wrote:
>>> On Thursday, 22 January 2015 at 05:27:04 UTC, Zekereth wrote:
>>>> First of all I like the new design. Way better than what's here now. I'll just throw another site into the mix that I like which is Ocaml's site: https://ocaml.org/ .
>>>
>>> That's quite nice. It even has a section with recent forum posts. Maybe we should try to emulate it.
>>
>> We are already doing that: http://dlang.org/  <- Look at your right :)
>>
>> Matheus.
>
> It doesn't show up on my phone.

Oh yes, In mine It doesn't show up only when Vertical, but I can see in Horizontal.

> Anyway, I more meant that we should model our general design off of ocaml.org as their site looks pretty good but still has a lot of information.

Indeed, that https://ocaml.org/ is a good start.

Matheus.

On Thursday, 22 January 2015 at 17:15:59 UTC, MattCoder wrote:
> On Thursday, 22 January 2015 at 17:03:52 UTC, Meta wrote:
>> On Thursday, 22 January 2015 at 17:00:55 UTC, MattCoder wrote:
>>> On Thursday, 22 January 2015 at 16:58:39 UTC, Meta wrote:
>>>> On Thursday, 22 January 2015 at 05:27:04 UTC, Zekereth wrote:
>>>>> First of all I like the new design. Way better than what's here now. I'll just throw another site into the mix that I like which is Ocaml's site: https://ocaml.org/ .
>>>>
>>>> That's quite nice. It even has a section with recent forum posts. Maybe we should try to emulate it.
>>>
>>> We are already doing that: http://dlang.org/  <- Look at your right :)
>>>
>>> Matheus.
>>
>> It doesn't show up on my phone.
>
> Oh yes, In mine It doesn't show up only when Vertical, but I can see in Horizontal.
>
>> Anyway, I more meant that we should model our general design off of ocaml.org as their site looks pretty good but still has a lot of information.
>
> Indeed, that https://ocaml.org/ is a good start.
>
> Matheus.

OCaml's site's using Bootstrap as a framework.. surprise surprise :)