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MDN Redesign

hacks.mozilla.org

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Re: MDN Redesign

#51

Post by irrational »

999900000999 wrote: post #48
irrational wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years ago Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc. sent out a press release saying they were abandoning their own documentation efforts and were going to support MDN going forward, which they now considered to be the official documentation of the web. The servers certainly should be free. AWS, google cloud, Azure should be hosting MDN for free as part of their commitment they laid forth to support MDN.

Without seeing their balance sheet we can’t know what their costs are. Vague promises are one thing, donating enough to support full time employees at MDN is completely different. Even if the servers are free, they’ll have other costs.

Yes, but we are talking about a who’s who of the largest tech companies in the world, each of which has their own cloud service systems. One of them could host the content and the others could each pay for a full time person and it would be a few magnitudes less than my paying a single penny towards it a year.

Re: MDN Redesign

#52

Post by asiachick »

irrational wrote: post #42
micromacrofoot wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An outrageously good resource really, I use it almost every day! Very happy to pay for it.

You do know that MDN is considered to be the official documentation of the web and is backed by Google, MicroSoft, Apple, etc? Why in the world would you think it is okay to pay for something that is less than pocket change to maintain for these multi billion dollar behemoths?

It is? Since went? It used to be edited by volunteers who often made mistakes and or gave bad info.

Re: MDN Redesign

#53

Post by tzs »

StanAngeloff wrote: post #6

> In mid-2021 we started to think about modernizing MDN’s design [..] with an emphasis on improved navigability and a universal look and feel across all our pages. > > A new logo, chosen by our community [..] We worked closely with branding specialist Luc Doucedame Wait, this sounds like redesign for redesign's sake? > Coming soon: MDN Plus [..] In the coming months, we’ll be expanding MDN to include a premium subscr…

Improved navigability sounds useful.

I've often gotten lost at MDN when trying to learn some topic that is new to me. I see on the sidebar of the pages covering aspects of that topic more on the same topic, and within the page links to other related things. I'll have followed some sequence of links through the directed graphs that the pages and links form, and then remember that somewhere on an earlier page there was a link to part of the topic I haven't yet read and then flail around in my history trying to find where I saw that link.

I'd like such sites to have available predefined sequences through the site designed to teach you particular topics. Have context sensitive next and previous and contents links on the page for moving back and forth in the sequence. Context sensitive so that if a page occurs in more than one sequence people get the appropriate navigation for the sequence they are on.

Re: MDN Redesign

#54

Post by andrew_ »

brimble wrote: post #36
andrew_ wrote: post #20

Too much white that's made too many of the visual cues I'd use to navigate blend in with the rest of the page. In the past, I could immediately scroll to polyfills, browser compat charts, etc without having to pay attention while scrolling because those sections were so distinct. I've missed them three times already today and had to start over, scrolling slowly. For me, this update decreases usability. If anyone from…

This one really hurts scanability, which was exceptionally good with the old design. I don't care what they do to the stuff around the content, but this redesign has made the content itself harder to use, which makes it a bad redesign, considering how content-focused the site is.

I don't understand how a company like Mozilla doesn't have the UX talent to call this out immediately when the redesign was proposed. This seems more like a change for the sake of change thing we see out of Google.

Re: MDN Redesign

#55

Post by downrightmike »

irrational wrote: post #47

Does nobody remember these announcements from the past 5 years? Why would MDN need a subscription service? Why are Google, MicroSoft, Amazon, Apple, etc. not hosting MDN for free on their cloud platforms? Heck, why are they not fighting over the privilege to host it and put a big “Hosted on Azure” link at the bottom of every page? Why are these multi billion dollar companies not funding MDN when they claim in press r…

We're long past that way of thinking. At all those companies, they are optimizing for operations not building goodwill. Honestly, this is probably more up openshift's direction right now.

Re: MDN Redesign

#56

Post by wiredearp »

throwanem wrote: post #33
romellem wrote: post #30

Change is hard, naturally there will be some inherent backlash, but one thing I think is a step backwards is the Browser Compatibility table at the bottom. Previously, it had the browser version inline for the cell, now it is just a check mark. To see what version, you need to click on the cell to expand some "more info" section at the bottom. Knowing if a feature was very recently supported or has been supported for…

I'm somewhat favorably surprised they kept the version history stuff at all instead of pointing to caniuse.com, which specializes in it.

They once wrote a note over on https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/09/caniuse-and-mdn-compat-dat... about why and how they differ.

Re: MDN Redesign

#57

Post by fgeiger »

romellem wrote: post #30

Change is hard, naturally there will be some inherent backlash, but one thing I think is a step backwards is the Browser Compatibility table at the bottom. Previously, it had the browser version inline for the cell, now it is just a check mark. To see what version, you need to click on the cell to expand some "more info" section at the bottom. Knowing if a feature was very recently supported or has been supported for…

I fully agree that the browser compatibility information used to be better. That shortened compatibility table is next to useless right now. It even shows a checkmark for features that are only going to be supported by a future (!) version of a browser. For instance, the dialog element [1] is only going to be supported in the upcoming Firefox 98 but already shows a checkmark.

[1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/di...

Re: MDN Redesign

#58

Post by apocalyptic0n3 »

ivanche wrote: post #40
apocalyptic0n3 wrote: post #24

I actually dislike the change to the Compatibility Chart. The checkmark serves the same purpose as green vs red boxes did (and is frankly less readable at a glance, not more) and being able to quickly see relative times features were added at a glance made it easy to evaluate whether to use a feature or not. Guess I'll have to revert to using Can I Use? for this again. I had mostly replaced that with MDN.

I’m almost sure this was done for accessibility reasons. For some people, red and green are the same color.

That actually makes sense. There's no reason they couldn't have done a check mark/giant X along with the version number, though.

Re: MDN Redesign

#59

Post by zeorin »

irrational wrote: post #49
micromacrofoot wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really care about what Google, Microsoft, or Apple do, it's useful to me so I'm happy to pay a small recurring fee for it. I pay for things that provide value to me.

That’s like paying a subscription to BMW for the seat warmers in your car because they provide value to you.

Don't give them any ideas

Re: MDN Redesign

#60

Post by JSdev1 »

CA0DA wrote: post #38
JSdev1 wrote: post #17

What's up with the huge amount of whitespace? This is supposed to be an information dense website, most of the screen is empty white. Not liking this, who designs this stuff? How to revert back, or I just need to add custom styles? Update: I added custom styles to remove 95% of the extra margins, padding, spacing, line-height, updated h1/h2/h3/h4 header styling, code highlight styling, and it looks 10 times better, I…

can you share your custom styles?

I'm still working on it. There is a large amount of things to fix. This is the #1 source of web dev information, and from what I can tell they completely screwed it up with this "design update"
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