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Re: the new site layout went live

From: Daniel Stenberg <daniel_at_haxx.se>
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2015 09:05:33 +0200 (CEST)

On Wed, 10 Jun 2015, Vadim Grinshpun wrote:

Thanks for your feedback!

> 1. The horizontal menu works well on pages where it fits on a single line
> (e.g., the main page). On pages where the menu is split into two lines, e.g.
> on .../libcurl/c/, it's a bit 'busy'.

Yes, I agree. But I can't make the menu small enough to fit in a single line
on all pages...

I just now pushed a change that makes the menu use the full page width, which
makes it slightly better.

> It might be worth considering abbreviating menu entries where possible
> (i.e., Example Sources => Examples, All Functions => Index?)

Indeed, I've did some of that now.

> 2. on the libcurl API pages, some of the discoverability has been lost.
> Previously, when looking at, e.g., a multi interface page, there was a
> sidebar listing multi interface functions, which was very useful. That
> kind of context-dependent detail
> I know there's a "See Also" section, but it's at the bottom, and doesn't
> have the same visual impact.

I agree that this is unfortunate and I too miss it. My thinking is that the
"Index" page might be used more for this now and that we can use the "related"
box on the pages more to also help providing links to truly related things.

It actually already made me find missing references in SEE ALSO sections that
really should be there - which thus improve the man pages.

> Some ideas on how to address this:
> - the top menu could be a single-line, unchanging, context-independent.
> Basically, something like a list of "main categories"...
> - within a certain "category":
> - the selected main category would be highlighted in the top menu
> - a secondary menu, visually distinct from the main menu, would
> display things that are context-specific.

Yeah that's certainly one idea and I've had other people suggest that too, as
it apparently is somewhat unexpected to users that the top menu changes when
you move about the site.

However, adding a second level menu at the top won't bring the full list of
function names back to the menu since they are so many and were one of the
reaons these pages felt "crowded".

> (as far as how to make the secondary menu visually distinct -- could be
> a sidebar, or a second horizontal menu (which could be on a separate
> line, or same line but colored differently), I'm sure there are other ways.

Ideally I guess it could be either, depending on screen width, but I'm not
sure I'm prepared to venture down that CSS exercise (I only pretend to know
web stuff and my CSS skills are limited). I'll need to experiement a bit. Let
me save that a few days though.

-- 
  / daniel.haxx.se
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Received on 2015-06-11