Hi all, I've started redesigning dlang.org AGAIN (yea, I
know...).
Appreciate the work you and others are doing on this. Web pages
are so fiddly but so important for controlling the image one
presents to the world.
I don't have so much to say about the general case, as it is not
my field. But a couple of thoughts in relation to the content
generally.
About/History. A link on the front page to a few paragraphs
setting the context for how D came about might be good. It's a
very powerful story of how Walter came to write D, and Andrei's
subsequent involvement. You could replace the Acknowledgements
section by this, and place this underneath the story with also a
bit more colour on who the other major contributors are - some
short bios.
Why D?. It's the first question people will want answered when
coming to the site, and they have to dig around quite a lot to
get the complete picture.
FAQ - since the FUD crowd keep bringing it up (see Slashdot
discussion of D lang), perhaps the tango vs phobos and D1 vs D2
questions should be answered within the FAQ. Also the "DMD is
not open source" canard.
"> Top-level link: SITEMAP ... should be removed, it's not 1999
anymore. Plus, a
well-structured website never needs a sitemap".
Honestly, I am not so sure that is right. In the age of the iPad
and Kindle, books still have indexes, and they are very useful on
occasion, and I think this does apply to websites too, whatever
the fashion to day may be. If you know what you are looking for
then good structure helps, but one doesn't always know what one
is looking for.
Top-level-link: VISUAL D
... should move under Downloads & Tools; having this at
top-level has a Windows smell and may scare people away.
Perhaps that is right. However if so, under Downloads and Tools
there needs to be a little bit of introduction and context rather
than bam DMD2.066.1. If I have just arrived knowing nothing
about D and want to get started, what is DMD??? And GDC, LDC.
Which one do I pick?
Dashing something off quickly:
"There are three mature compilers for the D programming language.
1. DMD is the reference implementation originated and maintained
by Walter Bright, and available for Linux, Free BSD, and OS X.
Android/x86 support is mature but not yet fully complete, whilst
Android/ARM is currently at a pre-alpha stage.[Link
http://wiki.dlang.org/Build_DMD_for_Android]
DMD is known for its exceptionally fast compilation times - for
example, the standard library, Phobos, takes only XX minutes to
compile on a standard Amazon m1.medium image. This brings the
benefits of scripting languages such as Python for enabling rapid
iterative development; it allows D to be used as a scripting
language [link to RDMD] and permits the creation of dynamically
compiled extensions to running programs - see DREPL [link] for an
example.
The compiler is free to use, the full source code is supplied
with the compiler, and the front end is fully open source under
the Boost(?) license. Although the back end is licensed from
Symantec and this is not compatible with GPL-style licenses, all
development takes place publicly on github. [Say briefly what
can and can't be done under the license and link to the FAQ for
fuller explanation of the licensing].
2. GDC is a fully open-source compiler that uses the Gnu GCC
back-end to generate native code and for some applications may
generate faster, more optimized code than DMD. It is available
for Intel architecture Linux, ARM architecture Linux, and
Windows. Android support is under development and not yet fully
mature [http://wiki.dlang.org/GDC/Installation/Android]
3. LDC is a fully open-source compiler that uses the LLVM
back-end to generate native code and for some applications may
generate faster, more optimized code than DMD. It is available
for ...
The DMD section should have a link to installation instructions
as well as how to resolve commonly experienced problems.
The download page should also have a section for IDEs and
debuggers. Not just Visual D. I suggest it should also have a
link to dstep github page and direct link to download binaries
for each platform (they are tucked away in a subdirectory).
Library interoperability is a key barrier to adoption of D, and
when you arrive at the website, it is not obvious immediately how
to do this. Maybe on front page there should be a top-level
section "Interoperability" or some more mellifluous title linking
to a piece saying the following
"D fully supports the C application binary interface (ABI), which
means that D programs can link to C object files and libraries
and achieve full interoperability. The only step required is to
translate C .h header files to D format, and this can be done
automatically using the dstep tool (available here[link]) or on
Windows using the htod tool (available here[link]).
Substantial C++ interoperability exists, but this is an area
under development and is a priority for the D language for 2015.
Documentation on linking to C++ is here[link], and Calypos is an
alpha project to achieve full interoperability with the LDC
compiler. [link].
Top-level links: STANDARD LIBRARY, D REFERENCE
... I suggest they are moved back into Documentation section
(as it is on the forum.dlang.org) which will contain these
(Language Reference / Standard Library) plus other subsections
e.g. D Style Guide.
Shouldn't the most frequently accessed links be available from
one click from the main page? If it's just under a dynamic
sub-menu, thats fine though.
