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A redesign of the Django websites

djangoproject.com

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Re: A redesign of the Django websites

#71

Post by raverbashing »

publicfig wrote: post #54
Daviey wrote: post #35

It must just be me, but it feels that the site is optimized for mobile browsing. There is very little content and my eyes have to move massively just to read the page. I actually prefer the old layout. :/

Documentation websites actually have some pretty good use-cases to being scalable to mobile, either because people will view documentation on a tablet or phone while developing, or due to people using smaller browser widths when developing to be able to display their IDE or terminal windows next to the documentation windows.

Yeah, no.

Smaller browser widths I agree

But using a phone/tablet to navigate the docs? Might as well use notepad for coding too, since the objective is to suffer.

Re: A redesign of the Django websites

#72

Post by brokentone »

mhurron wrote: post #36
brokentone wrote: post #26

It's amazing what a facelift can do to the perception of a project. There are some really great projects that look abandoned or the docs are really difficult to use that prohibit me from giving them a fair shake.

It's amazing how many people measure a project based on the amount of time it spends redesigning the website to follow the trend-du-jour.

Yep, that's exactly what I'm saying. It's not fair, but it is the case.

Re: A redesign of the Django websites

#73

Post by publicfig »

[deleted] wrote: post #70

[deleted]

I honestly am not seeing how their documentation and "information heavy" pages are any worse off than they were before. If it's that there isn't as much text on the page, you can just zoom out on your browser and see more text. Other than that though, most of the pages look pretty similar to how they did before, just without as much visual clutter to make the content more readable. I feel like you're just kind of looking for things to be critical about.

Re: A redesign of the Django websites

#75

Post by publicfig »

olasitarska wrote: post #60
publicfig wrote: post #58

I really, overall, love the redesign. It's much cleaner, better organized and it's awesome to have better support for width based scaling. As someone who uses the Django documentation very often, I'm happy to see this redesign. I must plea, though, that if anyone responsible is reading, it would be extraordinarily helpful if the green highlight color is set back to the system default, or at least a darker color. I ha…

Done! https://github.com/django/djangoproject.com/pull/192 Will be deployed soon :)

Thanks for the update, looks quite a bit better!

Re: A redesign of the Django websites

#76

Post by robertlf »

I liked the old site better. This is clearly a case of, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The purpose of documentation is utility, not to look modern. It does nothing that I can see to improve the utility. In fact, all of the white space makes it harder to use. It would be nice if there were an older "theme" users could continue using.

Re: A redesign of the Django websites

#77

Post by edraferi »

mhurron wrote: post #36
brokentone wrote: post #26

It's amazing what a facelift can do to the perception of a project. There are some really great projects that look abandoned or the docs are really difficult to use that prohibit me from giving them a fair shake.

It's amazing how many people measure a project based on the amount of time it spends redesigning the website to follow the trend-du-jour.

This isn't as crazy as it might seem - using a modern home page design proves that someone has been investing time in the project since that design became popular.

Using the "trend-du-jour" for a homepage quickly communicates to viewers that the project is alive & active. It's a much more accessible signal than mailing list or commit history (although those are clearer, more accurate signals of project health).

Re: A redesign of the Django websites

#78

Post by wambotron »

nicksergeant wrote: post #57
bbx wrote: post #9

For comparison: http://i.imgur.com/U2p3BEU.png It's always difficult and probably unfair to express an opinion right after having seen the redesign. As with any complete overhaul that keeps close to nothing from the previous version, it's very hard to improve the experience without losing any sense of identity. In this case, the Bootstrap vibe is quite prominent. It does makes sense for the documentation, but the mai…

They're not using Bootstrap.

Whether they are or not, it still looks like it. I think that's what he meant by "vibe."

Re: A redesign of the Django websites

#79

Post by rogerhoward »

Daviey wrote: post #35

It must just be me, but it feels that the site is optimized for mobile browsing. There is very little content and my eyes have to move massively just to read the page. I actually prefer the old layout. :/

It seems there's a range of opinions on this - no surprise. I find myself frequently, though not exclusively, using my phone (current, iPhone 6+) or tablet for docs while I use my laptop for coding. I know others who do this too. It's all anecdotal, but I don't think of having good mobile support on a docs site as being an edge case.

Also, I work a lot in Django, and love the new site.

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