Description
#12996 was the main rustdoc style alterations, then #13485 was landed making most of the changes.
When the changes landed, feedback was definitely mixed. A few people said they liked it, but I feel that most of the feedback was slightly negative. In the ten days since then, I believe I have in IRC heard one positive opinion and on quite a few occasions (at least half a dozen, which I would consider quite a large number) distinctly negative opinions, some of things that at the time we thought that we could live with but are discovering that, having given it time to sink in, it really is worse. At first glance, the changes may look nicer (I don’t know—I didn’t find it so, overall), but we have lost a lot of utility and character in it.
I want us to change our direction and mostly go back to the old styles.
Here are my three main reasons for saying, “The old is good”:
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Things were separated into blocks that could be perceived individually, much more effectively. In some places this went a little too far, and I would be in favour of changing the main content’s background from grey to a very light grey, but taking out all blocks is significant hindrance to usability. The structure of all the content is very significantly important; being able to quickly navigate around.
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The old design had character. The bottom borders on things, the distinct colour scheme, the fonts—they all felt like Rust. I draw particular attention to the blocky font used in the headings; that font was a very good font choice and fits in with the Rust name, logo (especially the logo), &c. More changes to the new styles are being proposed, but the changes are still just feeling tacky and generic—they don’t feel like Rust.
Character is a surprisingly important thing, and at present we’ve lost it. I think we should be looking rather at changing the styles of the non-rustdoc docs to make them feel like Rust. I hope you understand the abstract concept that I am getting at.
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Not only did the font choices have character, they were also easier to read the structure of the page from. This has also contributed to it being more difficult to read things.
This is mostly separate from issues like the reduction of information density (#13591)—that can be improved upon without going back to the old layout, though I rather suspect that with the everywhere‐is‐white approach, usability will be hindered further by more dense information. But I cannot reasonably hold that as a point against the new design until it has been tried.
I propose, then, that we revert almost all of the style changes. I would still keep the lightening of the grey background in the main body area (not in the sidebar by any means), though I would prefer it not to be taken quite to white—rather, swap its background colour with that of the code blocks, as they were back then. Not lessening anyone’s contributions to either design in any way, I believe that the earlier design was largely more appropriate for Rust.
No decision should be reached terribly rapidly on this matter; it would be well to try to gauge what people actually feel about the matter; it may be that, given the threat to the new design, people will flock to support it and it be revealed that I am actually incorrect. It is always hard to judge such things. Most people will always be silent.
/cc @thehydroimpulse @adrientetar @brson @huonw @cmr @Seldaek