Redesign of dlang.org

[Aleksandar Ruzicic via Digitalmars-d]

On Saturday, 19 April 2014 at 00:08:06 UTC, Kapps wrote:
> On Friday, 18 April 2014 at 14:04:04 UTC, Aleksandar Ruzicic 
> wrote:
>> So, what do you guys think?
>> -- Aleksandar
>
> I do agree that the design of the current site is rather dated. 
> I rather like your new proposed design as well. One thing that 
> could be nicer is the search bar being a button to click. It's 
> standard now to just make it an input of type search with 
> place-holder text now, which is faster and more useable. Even 
> better, it could be automatically focused on when you load the 
> (documentation) page so you can immediately start typing to 
> look up an API / language feature.

It sure looks like a button and it wouldn't be a button. It would 
be a regular text (search) input field (something that would be 
apparent as soon as you hover it and get that I-beam cursor over 
it) that would expand on click/focus (no JS needed there, don't 
worry Nick!).


> People who go directly to the homepage are likely coming to 
> check out what D is or why they should use it (which the 
> homepage shows), find a download button (which could still be 
> improved upon), or search the documentation (which is still a 
> few clicks away). I'd argue that most people are going for the 
> third option since you don't need to download often and people 
> just checking it out don't return frequently to check it out 
> again. Having an immediate search field, ideally with 
> autofocus, makes finding documentation a very easy task.


I'm slightly against autofocus on search field, as I am one of 
people who use Backspace to navigate to previous page and I'm 
always frustrated when I hit Backspace on Google search results 
page and it's not taking me to previous page.
But if majority thinks that autofocus on search is a good thing 
(I also think that not many people use Backspace as a means of 
navigation) than I would make it like that (and if there would be 
that little preferences page/popup this option is something that 
can go there together with justification settings).

> A prominent download button immediately visible on the home 
> page rather than the top nav-bar would be an improvement as 
> well. Practically every site with something to download does 
> this, for good reason. It's one of the first things that should 
> jump out at you when you view the site, making it as little 
> effort as possible to commit to at least downloading the 
> installer (see Dart, Python, Rust, Go, Ruby, etc). The longer / 
> more effort it takes to do something, the less likely people 
> are to try it unless they're already very convinced it's 
> something they need.

Download sites do that, so does sites that sell software. I think 
that dlang.org should focus on promoting D as a language, and 
compiler implementations should not be in spotlight.
Also I think that having Download in top-nav as a first option is 
prominent enough. I've put what I think are the most important 
sections in top-nav bar (other navigation items should go to 
context-sensitive sidebar).