[HN Gopher] MDN Redesign
___________________________________________________________________
MDN Redesign
Author : Vilkku
Score : 242 points
Date : 2022-03-01 14:07 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hacks.mozilla.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (hacks.mozilla.org)
| moritzruth wrote:
| I really like it.
| steren wrote:
| Wow, it's fast. I searched something, and as soon as I selected
| one of the quick result, the page displayed!
| agumonkey wrote:
| To me it's a yes. I never used mdn super deep, but on a first
| microsecond feel, I felt "nice", which is rare with redesigns
| these days.
|
| Good luck
| seumars wrote:
| Love the update. The color-coded pages are also very useful.
| Though I wish they had an option to hide deprecated methods and
| properties, or at least put them in a different group.
| Vinnl wrote:
| What do you mean by color-coded pages? That sounds useful, but
| I don't see anything about it?
| JSdev1 wrote:
| 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 actually read the information. Unfortunately I still prefer
| the previous version
|
| Question: Why do these important sites never get actual user
| feedback before forcing out a major update as a big "surprise" ?
| CA0DA wrote:
| can you share your custom styles?
| JSdev1 wrote:
| 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"
| seumars wrote:
| Also interested in the custom styles. Although I like the
| redesign, it's all over the place typographically - 300 only
| for h1, 400 for h2 with a slight increase in letter spacing
| (?!) - but can't be bothered to apply a fix myself.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > Why do these important sites never get actual user feedback
| before forcing out a major update as a big "surprise" ?
|
| The people behind the redesign do so for career, resume &
| portfolio reasons - they are very unlikely to ever use MDN
| themselves so they don't care and don't see the problem. You
| can't rely on user feedback because there's a very high risk
| users will tell you everything is fine and there's no need for
| you to mess with anything.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| So...they should change their tagline to: _Resources for
| Developers, by UI Designers_
| JSdev1 wrote:
| Ok I added styles that I am using for the site, I included
| Before and After screenshots, see link
| https://github.com/mdn/yari/issues/5389
| gaius_baltar wrote:
| Hell Mozilla, I feed so sad every time one of that awesome
| Godzilla-like monsters with communist-inspired imagery is
| replaced by a generic bland corporate-friendly logo. :(
| [deleted]
| CSSer wrote:
| I found a bug. If you visit a page with a REPL, the REPL will
| always use the dark mode style on a subsequent visit regardless
| of the saved theme value in localStorage. To see this in action
| visit this page[0], toggle the theme to light (or dark and back
| again), and then do a refresh. When you toggle the theme to
| light, the REPL will update accordingly, but this doesn't persist
| after the refresh. Anyone know who I should tell about this?
|
| [0]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...
|
| Correction: it only stays dark for me because my initial visit
| used dark mode. If your initial visit uses light mode, it will
| stay light even if you later choose dark mode.
| irrational wrote:
| 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 releases to be
| sponsors? Funding MDN would be less than pocket change to any of
| these companies, much less all of them that claim to be sponsors.
|
| https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-brings-microsoft...
|
| https://www.zdnet.com/article/developers-rejoice-microsoft-g...
|
| https://opencollective.com/open-web-docs/updates/introducing...
| dmitriid wrote:
| > Why are Google, MicroSoft, Amazon, Apple, etc. not hosting
| MDN for free on their cloud platforms
|
| Can't say for others, but Google has web.dev whose implied
| purpose is to be the sole source of truth for the web (even if
| a lot of it Chrome-only)
| downrightmike wrote:
| 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.
| randomsilence wrote:
| Does anyone of them see the web as their future platform? Each
| one of them apart from Amazon has at least one competing
| technology.
| [deleted]
| StanAngeloff wrote:
| > 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 subscription service based on
| the feedback we received from web developers > Support MDN and
| _make it your own_. For just $5 a month.
|
| Ah, this makes sense now. It looks like MDN is trying to rebrand
| and reposition itself as a subscription service going forward.
|
| I remain optimistic, it's been a great resource over the years.
| tzs wrote:
| 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.
| StanAngeloff wrote:
| > Improved navigability sounds useful.
|
| It does, indeed. It does also remind me of GitLab and their
| quest for finding the _best_ navigation [1]. It was every few
| versions that the nav kept changing... from horizontal to
| vertical to fly out to top /side, etc. Looked like
| bikeshedding on the outside as it seemed to be easier to
| iterate over the design of the product rather than the actual
| product. Ultimately what their UX team settled on has been
| pretty stable for a while.
|
| [1] https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2019/07/31/navigation-
| state-of...
| ulimn wrote:
| > Wait, this sounds like redesign for redesign's sake?
|
| Is it "redesign for redesign's sake" if even your quoted text
| states the reasons behind it? ("improved navigability and a
| universal look and feel across all our pages")
| Vinnl wrote:
| I mean, dark mode alone is somewhat a redesign for redesign's
| sake that is nevertheless bound to please many of MDN's
| audience.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| No, darkmode is not redesign for redesigns sake - it brings
| benefit for its users.
|
| But redesign for "modernisation" sounds like doing it for the
| sake of it, unless people would benefit somehow from improved
| UX. Modernisation alone does not tell this however, I would
| expect slick awesome buttons, but some ugly, but important
| buttons gone.
| hellomyguys wrote:
| It's pretty explicitly stated that they think a benefit of
| the redesign is improved UX.
| Vinnl wrote:
| Well, in that case it's not a redesign for redesign's sake
| regardless of how it sounds, because they added a dark mode
| now :)
| andruc wrote:
| What about for "improved navigability" then?
| tshaddox wrote:
| What is "redesign for redesign's sake" even supposed to
| mean then? It's pretty obvious that they think visitors
| will like the new design.
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| I imagine it's to try make it seem like MDN is still viable -
| Mozilla fired a good amount of their staff including allegedly
| most of the docs team.
| mariusor wrote:
| You seem to be implying that MDN is no longer the best
| resource for reading documentation about web technologies.
| Outside of reading the W3C RFCs, is there something better
| out there?
| irrational wrote:
| W3schools has greatly improved over the years and is often
| better for a quick lookup.
| Sateeshm wrote:
| One thing w3schools has going for it are the elaborate
| examples. That really helps when it's a new concept you
| are trying to learn. Mdn is better for looking up syntax
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| An outrageously good resource really, I use it almost every
| day! Very happy to pay for it.
| masswerk wrote:
| I don't think that what to all practicality amounts to a tax
| on basic documentation for web technology would be a great
| thing or even a good idea. This would finally put an end to
| the Web as it was conceived.
|
| (Yes, I walk every day, but this doesn't mean that I would
| welcome feet as a subscription service with the poor damned
| to crawling.)
| irrational wrote:
| 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?
| aww_dang wrote:
| Documentation should be free if you want people to use your
| platform in a coherent way. MDN has always been refreshing
| and to the point as compared to other sites.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| 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.
| irrational wrote:
| That's like paying a subscription to BMW for the seat
| warmers in your car because they provide value to you.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I don't expect you to care, but wow I'm tired of car
| analogies. They're usually worse than simply talking
| about the subject at hand.
|
| It's not at all like that. I pay a one-time fee to BMW to
| get a seat warmer feature, they're not constantly
| improving or updating them in my car. They're in my car
| and they're on or off. If they break and I value them, I
| pay to have them fixed.
|
| MDN is updated often and I it makes my job easier. It
| makes constantly evolving spec much more digestible. I'd
| sorely miss it if it were gone tomorrow. It's a service,
| not a one-off feature.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| > It's not at all like that. I pay a one-time fee to BMW
| to get a seat warmer feature, they're not constantly
| improving or updating them in my car.
|
| No, the idea was to have all the cars equipped with seat
| warmers, but the software in the car would only allow you
| to turn them on if you paid a subscription:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/bmw-subscription-model-
| for-f...
|
| I haven't heard anything about it since, so I assume BMW
| eventually realized just how retarded the idea was.
| zeorin wrote:
| Don't give them any ideas
| asiachick wrote:
| It is? Since went? It used to be edited by volunteers who
| often made mistakes and or gave bad info.
| irrational wrote:
| Since 2017. Just search "mdn google Microsoft" and you
| will find lots of links to the press release.
| irrational wrote:
| I worked on a site that was redesigned every few years. As soon
| as one redesign finished another one would start. We, the
| development team, didn't understand why the business people
| kept redesigning the site. We finally found out when we were
| chatting with one of the business people who was leaving for a
| new position. She admitted to us that the purpose of
| redesigning was 1. They could point to it as work they were
| doing to justify their jobs to higher ups, 2. Allowed them to
| expense meals and travel while meeting with design consultants
| and doing field research to see how to meet the needs of our
| users, 3. Allowed them to avoid the harder business work that
| they should have been working on instead of fun redesign work.
| [deleted]
| moretti wrote:
| It looked okay until I scrolled down to the browser compatibility
| table and had to tilt my head to read the vertical text
| andrewthebold wrote:
| I tried it out for a bit and I think it's generally pleasant.
|
| Some thoughts:
|
| - The cleanliness and whitespace make it feel like information's
| been lost compared to the previous version. Probably just
| psychological and I'll get used to it.
|
| - I wish the header search button was a search bar instead. While
| it looks cleaner, I actually had a moment where I thought they
| removed search completely. My preference would be to have a
| large, highly visible search bar in the header. Increasing the
| click/tap area would help as well, as I misclicked on the dark
| mode toggle.
| benfrain wrote:
| Where has the ability to press the '/' key for instant search
| gone?????
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| Related, Firefox has that functionality for any page.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Of all the sort of needless website redesigns I've seen, this one
| is actually pretty decent. Having gone through this sort of thing
| a few times myself, I want to give kudos to those who worked on
| this.
|
| In case they are reading this, here's what I liked and what I
| think can be approved upon:
|
| LIKED:
|
| - Besides the interactive examples, it looks like you stuck to
| using standard web fonts instead of loading some bullspit Typekit
| or Google Font Loader thing. Thumbs up!
|
| - Thanks for dark mode!
|
| - Overall the design is minimalistic. Thanks for not trying to
| impress everyone with "modern" design or l33t JavaScript skillz.
|
| - Thanks for keeping MDN alive!
|
| THINGS THAT CAN BE IMPROVED:
|
| - The branding is less distinctive than it was before. It's
| definitely not _bad_ , but the bold monospace "MDN" was more
| distinctive and made me feel like I wasn't on some rando site.
| (In fact, that logo still is visible at the footer of the page.)
|
| - I'm not the biggest fan of the 3-column layout. Again, it's not
| bad, but I think I could totally do without the right-hand column
| and give the main content more horizontal space. Remember that
| your site is for developers, and I think most developers are
| fairly pragmatic about how much content they want to see on-
| screen at a time.
|
| - The left-hand column is a bit weird. I'm not sure how much of a
| benefit the scrollbar provides and it also seems to jump when you
| get to the bottom of the page, which is distracting.
|
| - As others have mentioned, the compatibility table seems nerfed.
| Definitely don't get rid of it, but I think making it more useful
| would have gotten more people a positive view of the new page
| design. If that feature provided a little more info so that I
| only resorted to caniuse.com 1/3 of the time as opposed to 2/3 of
| the time, that'd be a good win.
|
| - Remove the hover effects for the top menu items in favor of
| revealing details on hover/click. Hover is the devil even on
| desktop; I hate it when I casually drag my cursor from the URL
| bar down to the page and suddenly some page element appears and
| covers up what I'm trying to look at.
| JSdev1 wrote:
| Agree 3 column layout is no good, that 3rd column should go
| back to being above the 2nd column as before, I added custom
| CSS to fix that
| pdenton wrote:
| I'll just use zeal from now on and never update it. It was fine
| earlier today, but now it's awful. There was nothing wrong with
| the old design.
| Starlevel001 wrote:
| Looking at the MD source files is enlightening. Every markdown
| documentation system eventually approaches an underspecced, less
| powerful, and domain-specific version of reStructuredText/Sphinx.
| Eduard wrote:
| Is there a way to select the old design? There is too much
|
| space in the new design
|
| for my taste.
|
| Update: https://github.com/mdn/yari/issues/5364
| adrianthedev wrote:
| Oh darn! This is going to take a while to get used to...
| megous wrote:
| Maybe it's time to finally completely switch to embedded...
| mrpotato wrote:
| I was looking around to get a feel for the changes when I noticed
| that the colour scheme is different on some pages, I'm not sure
| why?
|
| Red and black (darkmode) https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/bo...
|
| Blue and black (darkmode) https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/Guide/HTML/Cont...
|
| Both pages are under the "References" section.
| mmis1000 wrote:
| That is base on category. HTML is red, CSS is Blue, js is
| orange and so on.
|
| The same as category on nav bar. And why the design behind
| that... I don't know, this is just an observation.
| html5web wrote:
| The new site has readability issues, devs you can use the css to
| fix the font size and line height issues. .homepage .article-tile
| p { font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.4; }
|
| .recent-contributions .request-title { font-size: 1em; line-
| height: 1.4; }
| smusamashah wrote:
| I hate it. It is way less readable than previous one. It feels
| like another good thing bitten by "modern designers" who favour
| minimalism over usability.
|
| Old design has more contrast, headings, links, warnings e.g. all
| distinct elements have a distinct visual style. Now, every
| element on the page looks same or as much similar as possible.
| They couldn't find anything better to do.
| andrew_ wrote:
| 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 MDN is reading these replies, could you make the
| old stylesheets open so that we can use extensions like Stylus to
| put things back?
| brimble wrote:
| 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.
| andrew_ wrote:
| 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.
| idoubtit wrote:
| When the content is static, adding so much JS and CSS weaken the
| website for no good reason. There will be more bugs and
| annoyances after this redesign.
|
| Now, scrolling MDN is sluggish with Vivaldi (YMMV). This is so
| annoying that I had to disable JS on MDN. I hope they'll fix
| this, but the amount of CSS and JS is probably too high to fix
| performance regressions.
|
| From my browser console: [Violation] 'scroll'
| handler took 561ms [Violation] Forced reflow while
| executing JavaScript took 565ms
|
| With Firefox, the scrolling is generally quicker, though
| irregularly. But jumping to the top of the page leaves some
| elements of the page completely white for half a second.
|
| Disabling JS fixes most of those annoyances, but I'll have to
| enable it for some documentation examples.
| sheriffderek wrote:
| Is there anything positive about this?
|
| How will setting all of the type close and closer to the same
| size, removing any any contrast for visual hierarchy, adding
| muddy zeros, removing any unique character, removing any syntax
| highlighting differentiation, removing any visual anchors,
| removing underlines on inline code with links, having nothing to
| visually reign in rags, adding more space around just -
| everything, smaller button areas, and a hidden search bar... help
| anyone? But there's dark mode.
|
| I know that we're going to be weirded out by any* changes...
| because we look at this daily - but all of these changes are
| exactly what the books say to "not do." I'm just totally blown
| away at what has happened here. I'm sorry to anyone who was on
| the team at this time. I mean, I'm sure you mean well. And I know
| that most of the docs team was let go recently. But this thing
| feels white labeled. Didn't they show it to anyone as they were
| building it? This is about "changing it" - instead of improving
| it. Well, it's changed! But - now it's worse. I'm pretty sure
| that's an objective truth. If not, please explain it to me. I'm
| happy to evolve. Are the jump-to links new? I like jumping to
| examples...
| [deleted]
| tooker wrote:
| I use MDN heavily every day and this is really depressing. When I
| first landed on a fresh page today I thought I'd clicked on the
| wrong link and got some low-rent MDN knockoff by accident. It
| instantly looked cheap and jarring on a squint test.
|
| Also, why is everything error-toned? Red is a danger color and
| invokes negative emotion almost universally. Red MDN!? Really?
|
| I'm a browser extension developer and I'm strongly considering
| burning a week to write an extension to fix this.
| lolinder wrote:
| > Also, why is everything error-toned? Red is a danger color
| and invokes negative emotion almost universally. Red MDN!?
| Really?
|
| It's not all red. They've color-coded each page by whether it's
| about HTML (red), CSS (blue), Javascript (orange), HTTP
| (green), or Web APIs (purple). The Web Technology section is
| also blue for some reason.
| JSdev1 wrote:
| Why would they do that, what's the point beyond confusion?
| The whole thing is bad
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I believe I commented on hacker news that I'd pay $5 for
| something like this (rather than the proposed $10+). I guess I
| should follow through, haha.
|
| Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27307059
| LKNSI wrote:
| I hate it, but that is just utterly subjective. I haven't had the
| time to formulate and ask myself why yet (just saw it 10 minutes
| ago), but I just feel hatred towards the new design. Could
| possibly change.
|
| The reduction of colors used that gave me visual hints feels like
| it's giving me less cognitive offloading - and I have to feel the
| new structure of the page. Maybe my hatred is just because of
| new(tm) - but yeah, others have given better reasons for their
| distaste, and more directed feedback.
| LKNSI wrote:
| even subtle things like header font weights for section titles
| - is gone too.
|
| sub headings have a larger font weight than the section titles
| themselves.
| mmis1000 wrote:
| I think the worst offender is the html section.
|
| They decide to use the error color as primary color. So you
| can't even know it is a error icon/section now without read the
| text.
| kipple wrote:
| Agreed, this "primary color based on language" is a cute
| idea, but awful to actually consume. JavaScript (my most
| visited) is a low-contrast orange (especially when wrapped
| with inline-code styling).
|
| Overall the new design does feel more slick, I think it has
| potential. But I wish they had focused more on
| readability/usefulness over "cuteness".
|
| This site doesn't need to be "fun" -- they've successfully
| created a useful tool. They should be proud of that, and keep
| building in that direction.
| LKNSI wrote:
| You're right! I just saw that. So now you have to remember
| the contextual meaning of the color when switching between
| areas of the site.
| LKNSI wrote:
| https://imgur.com/a/8r3SXaa
| ramesh31 wrote:
| Not sure how to feel about this. On the one hand, the information
| does seem more accessible. On the other, all the personality of
| MDN has been completely wiped out and it feels like an
| autogenerated github page.
|
| Sadly par for the course with modern web design.
| ajb257 wrote:
| As much as personality is fun, it's clear and simple - first
| and foremost it's a reference work?
| ramesh31 wrote:
| Sure, that's the logical programmer mindset. But the web used
| to be fun, and that makes me sad.
| ahelwer wrote:
| Is there a way to collapse the table of contents sidebar like in
| the old version? I read documentation pages like this on a
| vertical monitor (which is usually great!), and the sidebar on
| the new site takes up a full third of horizontal space.
| rosmax_1337 wrote:
| Nope, I don't like it. Is there any way to get the old version
| back?
| romellem wrote:
| 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 a while is useful; now I'll need to drill down to
| see the information, and comparing that info across the browsers
| will be more difficult.
| throwanem wrote:
| I'm somewhat favorably surprised they kept the version history
| stuff at all instead of pointing to caniuse.com, which
| specializes in it.
| wiredearp wrote:
| They once wrote a note over on
| https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/09/caniuse-and-mdn-compat-
| dat... about why and how they differ.
| hinkley wrote:
| There's some bullshit software on my work machine that is
| supposed to make it so that we don't need local admin. As if
| that has ever worked in the past.
|
| Upshot is that Firefox would upgrade, but forget my profile
| every time. That took months to sort out. Chrome simply won't
| update at all. Neither will Jetbrains tools, Docker desktop,
| you name it.
|
| You can try to make everyone upgrade to the latest browser all
| you want, you're still going to have people running old
| versions. If you're running a free website, you are at your
| liberty to ignore those people. But somewhere between 5 and 7
| figures a year there's a cutoff where you're going to do
| backward compatibility because the customer says so.
| orf wrote:
| Sounds like your company takes security very seriously.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Not just this, but mozilla also supports ESR versions, where
| you basically get all the security patches but your browser
| can be almost 10 versions behind the newest release, so even
| with regular updates, with ESR, you'll be behind on newest
| features.
|
| https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-esr-release-
| cyc...
| fgeiger wrote:
| 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...
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Change is hard, naturally there will be some inherent
| backlash
|
| This is the chant of people who've set about forcing
| regressions on others. Usually it would just be more honest to
| say, "we don't care about what you want."
| ectopod wrote:
| I guess the plan is:
|
| * Randomly remove features from MDN
|
| * See which ones people complain about most
|
| * Reintroduce these as part of the new paid subscription
|
| * Profit!
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Uh oh. That's one of the main things I go to MDN for. I agree.
| mjw1007 wrote:
| The relevant feedback issue appears to be this one:
| https://github.com/mdn/MDN-feedback/issues/20
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| > Last year we surveyed users and asked them what they wanted out
| of their MDN experience... The overall theme we saw was that
| users wanted to be able to organize MDN's vast library in a way
| that worked for them.
|
| Really? I just wanna google for what I need and find it. I guess
| I'm not representative?
| canyonero wrote:
| I'll miss the old MDN and never had any issues browsing the docs
| there. The content is what matters at the end of the day, and
| kudos to the team for the redesign. I do have a couple of
| complaints though.
|
| 1. Font weight (especially with headings) feels far too thin. 2.
| Seems like there are some color contrast issues when running in
| dark mode (my system theme)
| butz wrote:
| I feel that new website loads much faster that old one,
| especially navigating between pages. Nice. One annoying thing is
| that top bar probably is added a bit later, so all content jumps
| after load.
| apocalyptic0n3 wrote:
| 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.
| mjw1007 wrote:
| The explanation in the article is: << So you don't have to keep
| version numbers in your head, we've put more emphasis on yes
| and no iconography for browser capabilities >>
|
| But as far as I can tell all they've done is put a tick there
| if any version of the browser supports the feature.
|
| That means I could have learned the same information from the
| old table just by looking at whether the cell had anything in
| it, with no version numbers "in my head" at all. So I'm feeling
| patronised rather than helped.
|
| If they'd done a bit more work and made the ticks indicate
| something like "available in the oldest supported version of
| the browser" (which is a recent version for Firefox and Chrome
| but not for Safari), that might have justified what they wrote.
| ivanche wrote:
| I'm almost sure this was done for accessibility reasons. For
| some people, red and green are the same color.
| dogleash wrote:
| As a person with red-green colorblindness, I doubt it. The
| previous version was fine as had an impossible to miss shape-
| based indication (the X across the cell).
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if you told me that this was done
| with colorblind people in mind, I've seen many designers blur
| the line between accessibility and aspects of their design
| preferences they tell themselves are about accessibility.
| apocalyptic0n3 wrote:
| That actually makes sense. There's no reason they couldn't
| have done a check mark/giant X along with the version number,
| though.
| seanpkent wrote:
| Not being able to see browser version numbers at a glance in
| the Compatibility Chart really reduces the usefulness. I know I
| can click on a box to see which version a feature was added,
| but for certain APIs like MediaRecorder
| (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/API/MediaRecord...) this is a lot of clicking!
| There are subtleties like `pause` being implemented in Safari
| 14.1 where the rest of the API was implemented in 14.0 I've
| been bitten by this.
| maxloh wrote:
| They didn't solve the code license issue[0] a year after the
| transaction completed.
|
| For now, one has no way to tell whether a given code snippet in
| MDN is licensed under CC0 or MIT.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/mdn/content/discussions/5901
| throwawayninja wrote:
| > Warning: The tabindex attribute must not be used on the
| <dialog> element.
|
| ... Why? I don't use MDN often, mostly just as reference
| material. I have enjoyed their documentation before, it's always
| been short and to the point with a few examples and it felt very
| complete. With this the first article I click on raises an odd
| question which I feel is either too much detail for reference or
| too little details for experts.
| rezonant wrote:
| The spec itself says the same thing with basically no
| additional detail. I don't exactly see why this is the case but
| I suppose it does interact with focus as is and tabindex would
| conflict with that?
|
| https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/interactive-elements....
| Strilanc wrote:
| Comparing the old version:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210302090607/https://developer...
|
| to the new version:
|
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/di...
|
| I notice that they:
|
| - Reduced horizontal space allocated to content
|
| - Reduced contrast (eg. code blocks have lighter gray background,
| compatibility table is no longer color coded)
|
| - Increased the amount of things that don't render if you disable
| javascript
|
| I'd reverse all three of those if I could.
|
| On the good side they added a dark mode (which I don't care about
| but lots of people love dark mode), and they seem to have avoided
| the common aesthetics-over-effectiveness pitfall of adding tons
| of vertical whitespace.
|
| (As an aside, I find it weird that they mention the home page in
| the article. In fact it's the first thing they mention. I would
| expect the home page to be effectively irrelevant? I only ever
| land on MDN via google searches and direct links to articles via
| stackoverflow answers. It's random-access reference material. How
| would someone end up on the homepage? Maybe they have analytics
| justifying that.)
| Xenoamorphous wrote:
| > Reduced contrast (eg. code blocks have lighter gray
| background
|
| Not an expert but this doesn't seem like a bad thing to me as
| the contrast of the text with the background within the code
| blocks is increased, which I'd expect to be a good thing from
| an accessibility standpoint as I'd say it's more important than
| code block contrast vs non-code blocks.
| nusaru wrote:
| Thank you, I wasn't certain if they added the right-hand
| sidebar with this redesign. I remember consciously thinking
| that MDN was better than other sites because it lacked said
| sidebar.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| Was going to say it looks okay but seeing a side-by-side
| comparison to the previous version cannot but think it's a
| downgrade.
| parksy wrote:
| I generally agree on all those points, there's a bunch of
| things I could critique, like shrinking the search bar behind
| an icon, or things I like such as the more concise breadcrumbs
| which make the hierarchy a bit clearer.
|
| But overall I guess after thinking about what I did and didn't
| like about the design, nothing really stood out as a
| showstopper for me. I like the old design a lot more, but MDN
| has always been a reference and I dip into dozens of different
| references every week, getting used to design differences is
| par for the course. As long as they don't mess with the overall
| content hierarchy which is great as-is I'm not too impacted.
|
| So my takeaway was if they invest the same energy into the
| content hierarchy on a page, I think that would add some value.
| Keep what they have, don't overstuff it, but just making it
| easier to see "you are here" and "here be dragons". Like on
| that example you linked there's a "warning" about tabindex that
| doesn't explain why you should never add one to a dialog -
| seems obvious to experienced frontend developers but it would
| leave juniors and people who might benefit most from such a
| warning scratching their heads or developing a cargo-cult
| mentality to certain things. I can envisage a content sweep of
| their warning / gotcha boxes would add more value than a design
| refresh.
|
| Also generally since their content is constantly expanding,
| something that makes it easier to get your bearings in the
| existing content, adding more context cues etc, and quicker
| navigation between adjacent paradigms or some "maybe you meant
| this" suggestions that would be neat. I think that's what they
| were going for by elevating the "related content" on the left -
| but that's just showing a list of stuff on the same level as
| the current item. Why would I care about <summary> on a
| <dialog> page? If you use their search for "proxy" you might
| end up on a page talking about web proxies, or javascript proxy
| objects - disambiguation would be awesome for people who are
| trying to get their bearings.
|
| (then again I usually just hit back, go to my google results,
| and pick the next page if it's not what I was looking for...)
| munk-a wrote:
| Personally, I really miss the menu background contrast - if
| something is a floating sidebar please give it a modestly
| different background content so that it looks like the box-o-
| stuff it acts like.
| dimitrisnl wrote:
| Oh my, it looks ... bad and hard to read. Any way to spin off the
| previous UI?
| na_other wrote:
| Dash / Zeal haven't been updated yet so the previous UI should
| be present there. I currently have the previous UI in Dash.
| layer8 wrote:
| When will Mozilla ever stop wasting their (and their users) time
| and money on redesigns? (Sorry, had to get that out.)
| politelemon wrote:
| I liked the old logo because it had the iconic Mozilla in it.
|
| The new one looks sterile, lifeless and has no character to it. I
| think the community didn't choose well.
|
| There was also no option to keep the current logo:
| https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/mdn-new-logo-poll-add-option...
| jerrygoyal wrote:
| what HN thinks about that custom scrollbar design?
| JSdev1 wrote:
| Bad, I'd prefer native scrollbar, but only option for now is I
| added extra styling to improve
| 999900000999 wrote:
| What is this ?
|
| Why advertise a service without any details about what it
| actually is ?
|
| On one hand 5$ is a nominal monthly amount to support MDN. But
| seriously, just ask for money. I'd be more inclined to help if
| they just wrote a post saying ' servers ain't free, give us money
| before this turns into w3schools '.
| irrational wrote:
| 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.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| 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.
| irrational wrote:
| 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.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I would love for that to be the case, but at the same
| time Mozilla is notorious with money mismanagement.
|
| I wouldn't hold my breath here for any big company to
| step up and feel more Mozilla's coffers. That said, I'm
| open to buying some merch. As in I'll pay $50 for a
| sweatshirt
| codeptualize wrote:
| I thought I was on a different website for a moment haha.
|
| First impression is good though! Looks clean.
|
| One minor annoyance: The sidebar scroll behaves weird. I'm also
| not a huge fan of the big in your face custom scrollbars. I
| usually have them hidden, and the custom ones do not respect
| that, but that's preference.
|
| Dark mode is absolutely great!
|
| Much respect for taking on a big redesign like this. Especially
| considering the target audience, that takes guts haha.
| andrewgioia wrote:
| Finally! A way to directly support MDN and the great things
| Mozilla does. I remember emailing them over a year ago about
| their broken previous $5 subscription and getting 0 response back
| which was perfectly Mozilla.
|
| I'm not optimistic at all about a subscription service for "web
| developers who want to customize their MDN experience" as an
| actual value add, as this seems negligible, but I am overall as
| 1. it's a step in the right direction for new ways to monetize
| Mozilla and 2. it sounds like they're listening to feedback and
| willing to iterate on it.
| enw wrote:
| I really dislike this (and I tend to love great design and obsess
| over UX and small details): reduced legibility (small and thin
| fonts, lower contrast in e.g. inline code, alert boxes all blend
| in), and reduced information (compatibility table is near
| useless, missing details in specifications).
|
| Overall this seems like straight out of 2003. The inconsistent
| border contrasts and weird burgundy red accent only strengthens
| the feeling of student side project and lack of taste (red does
| not convey trust).
|
| Also that logo is ugly. It looks frail and awkwardly narrow
| without being harmonious (see e.g. the tiny gap between /|).
|
| Edit: I just realized every category has a different accent color
| (compare e.g. HTML and CSS sections). What an absurd joke from
| Mozilla.
| brimble wrote:
| The old version looked more like it was from 2003 than this--
| but in a good way. It wasn't afraid of making things visually
| distinct. This one's the modern "consistency over usability"
| style that's currently in fashion.
| Vanderson wrote:
| MDN is the single most useful and impactful site in my
| webdev/design career. Above all things, I want this site to stick
| around and exist.
|
| Some comments seem to be critical of any change. And while I
| don't like some of the visual changes, overall I think it's going
| in the right direction.
|
| Most importantly, I want MDN to stay online and whatever they
| need to do (within reason of course) to keep it free, open,
| searchable and existing, I am on board with.
| ent101 wrote:
| This looks way better than before! Font sizes and layout have
| improved a lot.
| puyoxyz wrote:
| I saw these comments and thought people were being grumpy about
| change for no reason, as usual. Then I opened MDN and... yeah no.
| Any way to get the old design back?
| move-on-by wrote:
| > In the coming months, we'll be expanding MDN to include a
| premium subscription service based on the feedback we received
| from web developers who want to customize their MDN experience.
| Stay tuned for more information on MDN Plus.
|
| It's hard not to feel pessimistic about this one.
| seumars wrote:
| If anything it's the _least_ harmful way of generating a
| profit. Better than restricting parts of the site. Besides, a
| subscription service like this is something employers will most
| likely be paying for, not developers - unless you 're a
| freelancer, in which case it still would count as a business
| expense.
| Flankk wrote:
| _Hey Mozilla, just writing to thank you for your excellent
| documentation. The only real problem I have is how free it is.
| Is there any way I can send you money every month in
| perpetuity. Thanks._
| Macha wrote:
| Mozilla's given me a lot of reasons to be skeptical of much of
| their last few years but I think this is relatively safe. I
| don't think they can mess this one up. Web Docs, the bit most
| people here care about is open source and has many
| contributions from MS/Google also, so they can't really paywall
| it or make it too expensive or they'd just go back to hosting
| that content themselves on msdn or web.dev
|
| If they want to launch a paid newsletter/tutorials site with
| the same name, it doesn't really affect me much
| jayelbe wrote:
| Where'd the dinosaur go? :'(
| synergy20 wrote:
| two feedbacks:
|
| the landing page is mostly useless to me, I need an extra click
| to get to reference and guides. It's like a status page used for
| home page, the search can be on the top-right corner of each
| reference|guide page instead. Yes just go directly to
| reference|guide, why not?
|
| on reference and guide pages, I hope there is a left and right
| arrow at both sides of each content page so I don't need scroll
| all the way down to the bottom then click on that small prev and
| next button to turn pages.
| ourmandave wrote:
| Has the look and feel of Microsoft docs (docs.microsoft.com),
| which isn't a complaint.
|
| And maybe it always did in some way.
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