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.
Also, I work a lot in Django, and love the new site.
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 main page is less appealing. I'm not a developer, but the previous design actually got me intrigued by the framework and encouraged me to look deeper.
I guess a redesign was probably needed. I just hope it's a design they will iterate over.
Mostly I noticed the difference in the Docs. The elements are called out more explicitly and it's easier to find things on the docs, which have considerably less whitespace: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.7/intro/tutorial01/
http://ibin.co/1kret3oW7caZ illustrates whitespace wastage in the blog
Edit: Added an illustration
I hope it's a problem they acknowledge and provide a solution in a future iteration. Until then, I'll have to install a browser extension to modify the background colour.
What would be a better choice? Would black on off-white be better?
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).
Are you Red/Green colour blind? Personally I would have picked a colour closer to the green used in other places of the site to highlight links, but I suddenly became curious as to whether or not that would be any better for you.
Not that I can do anything about it, I'm just really nosy about it since you mentioned it.
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 have quite a bit of trouble following through blocks of text on a screen or reading black-ish colors on bright white backgrounds, and often use my highlighting tool to help me keep track of location and to distinguish the text from the background. The almost invisible green makes that very difficult for me.
Will be deployed soon :)
Despite kicking around for just under 10 years, the old Django look never felt old, ugly, or clunky. It had a clean, thoughtful layout with good color contrast and an unmistakable Django identity. To me, it never gained the "cruft" that similarly-aged designs seem to take on. It always felt modern.
Loving the new design, but I would have never guessed that there were plans to ditch the old one.
How about getting rid of Trac now? There's really no worse issue tracker...
On the other hand, I feel like I am going to miss old design - is there archive somewhere?
After so many years it's going to take a while to get used to but first impression is that it looks nice and readable. Code snippets look much better.
Memory?
I know that Django 1.6+ can be used with Python 3.4 but is Django 1.7.1 written in Python 2.7 or 3.4?
It is possible, and not too difficult in fact, to write a single codebase that runs under both Python 2 and Python 3. Which is what Django has done. The same code runs the same under 2.7 or 3.3 or 3.4.
Are there any guidelines or "best practices" for writing code for both 2.7 and 3.4?
I didn't fell comfortable with the new one, looks too bright to my eyes.
Redesign looks nice, the old site was beginning to look dated.
There was something very warm and reassuring about the old colors and I feel there was more information filled.
- Increased whitespace makes it feel less informationally dense.
- The colors are a bit too light. As someone with sensitive eyes, it makes reading the docs for long periods of time harder. This is going to be tough to get used to.
- For whatever reason, my eyes keep skipping over the light green bar that's between the nav and the content. I didn't even see the download link on the getting started page until I took a second look at it. I wonder why this happens?
Overall, I'm not adverse to it. I like the clean look, but one reason why I liked the old site is because I could see all the information I'd want to know on the first page without scrolling. You can't get that here, and it makes me wonder how much information I'll miss out on over time.
https://web.archive.org/web/20051214180106/http://www.rubyon... https://web.archive.org/web/20050801014309/http://www.django...
It looks slightly blurry on Chrome for me, seems to have been tested primarily on Safari? Also, the redesign may be a bit bland, but overall it's a pretty good job. Now if someone could apply those design cues to Django-Admin that would be awesome!
I think that is a great feature, but it's going to confuse beginners. The first three results for the query 'models' are links to source code.
Maybe the search results could be tagged with a type icon and name (Documentation, Tutorial, Source...) in addition to the document excerpt.
Things I don't like:
* #6A0E0E is too dark for links, the color from hover effect would be much better (#BA2121).
* Front page right sidebar has too much links. I feel the latest news section should have "more priority". I often visit Django's website just to check whether there is a new release and blog post associated to it.
Other than that and a few spacing issues, it's good!
