d-programming-language.org

[Bruno Medeiros]

On 30/01/2011 08:03, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> I've had some style updates from David Gileadi rotting in a zip file in
> my inbox for a good while. It took me the better part of today to
> manually merge his stale files with the ones in the repository, which
> have in the meantime undergone many changes.
>
> The result is in http://d-programming-language.org. It has (or at least
> should have) no new content, only style changes. I added a simple site
> index, see http://d-programming-language.org/siteindex.html. It's not
> linked from anywhere but gives a good entry point for all pages on the
> site.
>
> One other link of possible interest is
> http://d-programming-language.org/phobos-prerelease/phobos.html which
> will contain the latest and greatest Phobos committed to github. I've
> included build targets to synchronize /phobos-prerelease/ and /phobos/.
> (Right now both contain the prerelease version; don't let that confuse
> you.)
>
> In agreement with Walter, I removed the Digitalmars reference. The
> message is simple - D has long become an entity independent from the
> company that created it. (However, this makes the page header look
> different and probably less visually appealing.)
>
> Anyway, this all is not done in relation or in response to the recent
> related activity on redesigning the homepage. I just wanted to make sure
> that we have a clean basis to start from, and am looking with interest
> at the coming developments.
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Andrei


I gave a few comments on this some time ago, I'm not sure if they were 
seen (the post was way after the thread creation). It regards the search 
button and functionality, it goes like this:


The search section looks fugly, IMO. The text&button itself is not bad, 
but the dropdown is ugly, 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/temp/dwebpage.htm
(obviously the layout and colors are broken, I just want to demo the 
functionality, especially using Google Custom Search. Also please try it 
*with Firefox*, with Chrome it's broken)

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