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A new look for rust-lang.org

blog.rust-lang.org

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Re: A new look for rust-lang.org

#41

Post by asauce »

shafte wrote: post #38

I actually like the new website. I think the primary barrier to Rust adoption now is something along the lines of "my organization doesn't use it"—this website is clearly geared toward persuading CTOs or administrators. It's a sign of the strength of the Rust community that they feel they no longer need to persuade developers. It implies that many developers have already heard about and are interested in Rust, but ne…

Well said. As a programmer I prefer the old site, however you bring up a good point. The new site is a lot better for people in management to see that Rust is used by other large companies and to not immediately discredit it.

Re: A new look for rust-lang.org

#42

Post by fishtank »

The colors are great, really comfortable contrast level, and the typeface is easy to read. Fairly tight information density, but low-density layouts are a common complaint with the target audience so I think it strikes a good balance. My compliments to the designer.

Re: A new look for rust-lang.org

#43

Post by jamescostian »

ipsum2 wrote: post #10

In my (useless) opinion, the old website looks more modern and approachable. I can see immediately what are the benefits of Rust, as well as a code sample. The new site only offers a vague tagline ("The programming language that empowers everyone to become a systems programmer."), which doesn't explain much.

In my (useful(?)) opinion, the code sample didn't really illustrate the nice things about rust. I do like the bulleted list from the old website, but I find the new website more modern and approachable (especially with all the big headings and smaller text that drills down into the details). Maybe they wanted to give users a more focused view on the biggest selling points, rather than show some generic-looking code and several bullet points that noobs might not understand?

But, in my (useless) opinion, the green is... "bold", and that part isn't very modern or approachable

Re: A new look for rust-lang.org

#46

Post by kiliancs »

In general I like the approach of the beta website, though I prefer the very simple visual style of the current one.

The one main objection is the new slogan.

> Rust: The programming language that empowers everyone to become a systems programmer.

They claim it better conveys "what you can do with Rust", but in my opinion being a systems programmer is not more descriptive than the previous statement and it can be read as Rust not being a good choice for anything else than traditional systems programming, which is obviously not true.

Additionally, and this is subjective, I perceive an elitist tone, as in somehow all other programmers should aim to become system programmers, a more elevated type of programmer. I get this is not the intention and I repeat it's subjective, but still.

Re: A new look for rust-lang.org

#47

Post by zzzcpan »

Fear of empty space is showing a lot on new website. Also poor contrast, poor font size, poor vertical spacing, buttons as links - all make things very difficult to even just read. Meanings of links and labels are confusing too.

Don't make it so hard for people to find the compiler and documentation. You are not going to attract users this way.

Re: A new look for rust-lang.org

#48

Post by piinbinary »

Feature request: A documentation search bar right at the top on the homepage. As an existing user, that's usually the first thing I want to see. After that, a link to browse the documentation. Then a link to install it.

When looking at the home page, I don't know what "Get started" is going to take me to, but experience with other sites has given me a bad taste with "Get started" buttons. (The content it leads to here is good, though much of it would have been better put on the front page.)

Personally, I think trying to sell the language on the homepage is the wrong goal. I like language examples on the homepage to make a snap judgement about a language. If I can't see an example, I'm going to assume that there is a reason you don't want me to see it.

If I'm unfamiliar with the language, the things I want are:

* A code example

* A listing of properties of the language (e.g. statically typed, compiled, no gc, memory managed at compile time, etc)

* A command to install it

* A link to a tutorial where I can quickly try out the basics

* A link to the documentation so I can get a sense of its quality

* A link to the github page

Re: A new look for rust-lang.org

#49

Post by Skunkleton »

kiliancs wrote: post #46

In general I like the approach of the beta website, though I prefer the very simple visual style of the current one. The one main objection is the new slogan. > Rust: The programming language that empowers everyone to become a systems programmer. They claim it better conveys "what you can do with Rust", but in my opinion being a systems programmer is not more descriptive than the previous statement and it can be read…

Also, systems programming is about so much more than being good a programming in a particular language. Programming in rust doesn't make you understand memory barriers.

Re: A new look for rust-lang.org

#50

Post by TylerJewell »

I'm CEO of WSO2 and we are working on a programming language for writing microservices called 'Ballerina', and we host it's community at http://ballerina.io. Prior to the first public launch, I pulled 9 of our core community members into an offsite where we developed and implemented the web site.

It was a challenging exercise and so can relate to Rust's community efforts to the redesign. I wanted to offer some perspectives of what Rust's challenges must be.

1. It is really hard to capture the value proposition for a programming language. While working through Ballerina, there is a hard balance between a) describing the language design, b) explaining why language elements are valuable, c) describe the key types of programming workloads that most benefit from your language philosophy, d) direct those interested to learn more to the right information, efficiently.

2. As such, whomever is leading the Rust site evolution over the years shows a real touch and depth for messaging. It takes a lot of insight and careful observation to your community over an extended period of time to tease out which elements are fundamentally what is driving your audience. Having said this, I have a tendency to feel that the messaging in the latest version might be creating a messaging abstraction trying to appeal to a wider developer base vs. the messaging in the current site which is more strongly appealing to existing system developers. Is this a conscious choice of the Rust team?

3. The rust team has figured out, through years of promotion, that the first (and last) question language teams get is always about "who's using the language? how big is the community?". The hardest part about birthing a language is the chicken and egg problem - someone needs to be the first big production app. Dogfooding is really the only way. Rust takes this head on.

I am not a big design person, so don't have an opinion about whether the minimalistic design is better than the new flowing design. A lot of the design influences for ballerina.io came from Go and Rust lang's web site - we are fans! So, I guess you could say that we prefer the minimalism concept.

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