use Perl

Major update to perldoc.perl.org

Journal written by jj (2990) and posted by brian_d_foy on 2009.07.17 14:27   

I'm pleased to announce a significant update to perldoc.perl.org, the Perl documentation website.

The main change is a complete new visual design, bringing a fresh, modern look to the site. Additionally there are a number of new features to aid navigation and usability - a floating page index window, recently read pages list, improved Pod rendering, and many more.

• too narrow (Score:1)

  by daxim (8218)

  http://www3.pic-upload.de/17.07.09/ew6t69k5hibi.png [pic-upload.de]

  Can you provide the old colours (with link rel="alternate stylesheet")? I don't like dark pages for documentation.
  • Re: (Score:2)

    by ambs (3914)

    I know this is bad, to have a lot of working changing the webpage design, and the first comment is, bring the old back.

    Unfortunately I agree with daxim. This design is too heavy (in colors and distracting boxes) for documentation, and too narrow (when we all have panoramic screens.

    I think the old design was cool.

    Before finishing, just as an external example, look at http://www.gtk.org/ [gtk.org] . The main page have lots of collors, and fixed width, but when you get to the documentation ( http://library.gnome.org/dev [gnome.org]
  • Re: (Score:1)

    by fhew (6022)

    I have to agree with the 'too narrow' comment even though I can live with the colours. This 'narrow' presentation is not only silly in the day of the wide screen, but it also breaks the HTML philosophy of letting the user's browser and physical display determine the most appropriate presentation. Ie. why should I endure a narrow presentation with wide gray borders just because you have to?
    • Too narrow and too wide (Score:1)

      by tgape (9307)

      I agree on the colors being a bit too dark, at least on the sidebar and top (that is, those places which are dark.)

      Judging by a comparison of the referenced picture above and the current look, I think it's been tweaked to handle the too narrow complaint. However, that just puts the real complaint into sharp relief - it breaks the HTML philosophy of letting the user's browser and physical display determine the most appropriate presentation. Why should I have to endure a horizontal scrollbar just because yo
• Seems nice (Score:1)

  by kwilliams (1467)

  I don't usually have strong design opinions. This time is no exception. =) I like it, and I think it's better than the old site, which was also fine.
• Sorry, but it's ugly, ugly, ugly (Score:1)

  by Ron Savage (5224)

  Hi Folks

  Surely in this day and age we can do better than that.
  • Re: (Score:1)

    by Ranguard (1858)

    Surely in this day and age we can do better than that.

    I think it's fantastic your volunteering to do all the work to make it 'better'. Please let me know when you've implemented a 'better' version so we can all critique it.

    I think what has been done is a fantastic start and kudos to all involved, if there are a few minor issues (width), then I hope someone (with CSS / design skills I do not have) is able to help by submitting patches.
  • Re: (Score:2)

    by vek (2312)

    Wow, that was helpful. Well done.
• Wow - I can feel the love (Score:1)

  by telemachus (9301)

  I thought you might appreciate this. It's from Daniel Burrow's release notes for aptitude 0.4.11 [algebraicthunk.net]:

  When you're tired of being beat with a stick, you're tired of Debian.

  It's nice to see how warm and encouraging the Perl community can be. Just another big happy family.

  In any case, thanks for all the work Jon. I use perldoc online more or less daily, and this seems like a reasonable time to say thanks.
• actually, I like it (Score:2)

  by TeeJay (2309)

  My only quibble would be that you probably want a bigger search box closer to the middle as seen on google and search.cpan.

  The documentation page *is* wide enough, even on a 1600x1050 widescreen (there is a reason newspapers have columns).

  All in all, pretty happy with it.

  --
  
  @JAPH = qw(Hacker Perl Another Just);
  print reverse @JAPH;
• Slick. (Score:2)

  by bart (450)

  It's slick. It's beautiful. I'm really impressed. Congratulations for that, and I'm happy to see an attempt of a proper design for a Perl site - it looks done by a graphic designer and not by just any programmer, as most Perl sites.

  It also, has the limitations of a design by a graphic designer: it appears to have been made with a particular screen size in mind. Now there, the touch of a programmer (technical-analytical mind) would be welcome, to make it actually properly adjust to the window size of people,
• Well done (Score:1)

  by draegtun (6354)

  I like new site... well done on the improvements to it.
  
  The only quibble I had with this and previous site is the syntax colour highlighting.... but hey I'm fussy on this point (spent a while manually setting my syntax colours to look like GitHub on TextMate here!).
  
  Oh and extra plus for adding "Perl Programming" text to site ;-)
  
  /I3az/
  • Re: (Score:1)

    by jj (2990)

    Thank you for your comments, nice to hear you like the new design.

    If you've got any suggestions for more suitable colours for the syntax highighting, just drop me a mail at jj@jonallen.info and we can have a chat about it. I'd be very interested to see what you've got set up in TextMate (I use Komodo Edit on a Mac btw), so please get in touch.
• great--just one nit (Score:1)

  by spang (9309)

  I think the new look is great. The one thing that bothers me is that the floating header disrupts the flow of the text when paging through a document. That is, if you're using the "page down" button to scroll through a document looking for something in particular, every time you page down the first couple lines of the new page are hidden by the floating header. What benefit does the floating header give? Is it actually any better than just having to hit "home" to go to the top of the page to see the nav li
• kudos (Score:1)

  by jeremiah (7870)

  I think it is well done. I am certainly going to use the site more now that it is re-designed even though I used it a lot before. Thanks for all the hard work! Jeremiah
• Well done (Score:1)

  by SamuraiJack (8889)

  Could you re-design cpan.org the same way?
• Can we steal your stuff? (Score:1)

  by Alias (5735)

  Great new look!

  Are the original source material for the design available for us to use in derived design?