Please help me with improving dlang.org

[Kiith-Sa via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 07:44:24 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:
> On 1/17/15 11:42 PM, DaveG wrote:
>> On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 04:44:56 UTC, Israel wrote:
>>> On Sunday, 18 January 2015 at 02:18:16 UTC, Andrei 
>>> Alexandrescu wrote:
>>>> I took the better part of today working on this:
>>>> https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/780. 
>>>> See
>>>> demo at http://erdani.com/d/.
>>>>
>>>> What do you all think? Is it an improvement over what we 
>>>> have now?
>>>>
>>>> I'd appreciate your help with reviewing and pulling this, 
>>>> and also
>>>> with improving the colors (which I'm terrible at) and page 
>>>> tracking
>>>> as mentioned in the pull request.
>>>>
>>
>> I'm no designer, but I do have some comments. Without 
>> consistency it
>> just looks a bunch of parts rather than a singular thing. Some 
>> elements
>> have gradients, some don't. Some elements have round corners, 
>> some
>> don't. Elements with borders use different widths, some have 
>> none. In
>> regards to borders, we engineering types (maybe it's just me) 
>> tend to
>> put boxes around stuff to represent discrete units when basic 
>> design
>> concepts, like proximity and contrast, may be better suited 
>> for the
>> task. I just took a quick pass at it in the browser:
>> Original: 
>> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/114394/D-site/current.png
>> Cleanup: 
>> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/114394/D-site/001.png
>> Cleanup w/o bg: 
>> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/114394/D-site/002.png
>>
>> Think "consistency and subtlety". Good design generally goes 
>> unnoticed.
>
> Looking good. Could you please do a pull request after mine 
> gets in? Thanks! -- Andrei

The thing with the red gradients looks incredibly horrible/ bad 
constrast actually makes it physically (eye strain) unpleasant. 
The cleanup looks better, but now the site has 3 columns with 3 
different styles (not just colors, but e.g. flat vs gradient, 
edgy vs rounded, having that extra border on the bottom vs not 
having it)

Dlang.org needs design by a designer, not by art-insensitive 
programmers. No, I'm not much of a designer either, 
unfortunately. But it should not be too hard to find a student 
with decent art sense who can do much better than this.

Also, note that the collapsible menu can be done in pure CSS, no 
JS needed, which would allow it to work consistently even with 
NoScript.