One more update on d-programming-language.org

[Bruno Medeiros]

On 10/09/2010 01:07, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> http://d-programming-language.org
>
>  From David Gileadi: the annoying Google Translate bar behavior on
> browsers with other languages has been fixed, the behavior when
> shrinking and growing the window size has been improved, the Reddit
> button is gone, and a few styles were changed.
>
> Could have sworn I sent this already, it just disappeared.
>
>
> Andrei

The Translate gadget looks broken on my machine:
http://oi56.tinypic.com/2r23was.jpg
(latest Firefox, default zoom)

Also, the search section looks fugly, IMO. The text&button itself is not 
bad, but the dropdown is, and not just on aspect, but also 
functionality. I'm surprised no else commented likewise. :(

My suggestion is to remove the drop-down altogether. Let the more 
refined search scope options be available elsewhere, perhaps on the 
search results page itself. Also, we should use Google Custom Search. 
Just linking to raw google looks amateurish. That's because (amongst 
other things) the search page shows up with all the Google personalized 
homepage stuff (if you enable it for google.com). Compare: 
http://oi55.tinypic.com/350mmxc.jpg
to:
http://www.google.com/cse?q=foobar&cx=013598269713424429640%3Ag5orptiw95w&ie=UTF-8&sa=Search

Here's an example of what I'm suggesting for the search functionality, 
try it out:
http://svn.dsource.org/projects/descent/downloads/dwebpage.htm
(obviously the layout and colors are broken, I just want to demo the 
functionality, especially using Google Custom Search)

An alternative is to maintain the current behavior: and have the search 
page be presented on its own, instead of contained the D programming 
language site:
http://www.google.com/cse?cx=016833344392370455076%3Afjy38cei55c&ie=UTF-8&q=foobar&sa=Search
However I don't know how to customize the CSS for this hosted page, 
plus, when you click the scope labels, the search query changes: you get 
an annoying extra "more:library_reference" keyword one it. Meh.

Yet another alternative is to put the search text&button as a section in 
the navigation leftbar, and put the three search scopes as 3 radio 
buttion options, each on their own line... but please, no dropdown on a 
header! :S

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - Software Engineer