New Website Documentation Styling

Hey JUCE fam, I was actually a huge fan of the previous documentation CSS styling on the website! Here are the reasons I liked the previous styling better:

1. Font
The font was much more readable than “Contax”, which in my opinion, looks like more of a stylistic font with its sharp edges and thin weight. It isn’t a font catered to being easily readable such as “Helvetica”. The weight of “Contax” is quite thin when not bolded which makes description text more difficult to read. Further, this has a negative impact for mobile users who may be using smaller screens. (I actually read JUCE Docs on my phone sometimes when not at my computer and I need to check some things I am thinking about.)

2. Colour Scheme
The old colour scheme was more easily readable because it had less harsh contrast between the background and text. I also enjoyed that it was a dark theme, making it easier on the eyes, especially late at night. The current scheme uses hard pure white with dark text making a harder contrast with a brighter overall look. This makes it harder to read for extended periods of time, especially in a night-time setting.

3. Consistency
The new JUCE landing page looks freakin amazing and beautiful. It seems odd the documentation looks so different. Why not keep a consistent look?

4. JUCE Brand Style
I know this may sound superficial, but honestly the previous styling was something that drew me to using JUCE in the first place. When I was an outsider to JUCE and first discovered it, I browsed the documentation, and when I saw the high visual quality of the documentation (along with the pristine content quality) I was immediately drawn into using JUCE. I thought to myself: “Wow, someone actually cares about how this documentation looks! I should use this library.” This was a huge surprise to me because most online documentation libraries for C++ that I have seen look old, clunky, etc. And JUCE looked fresh, polished, and professional. Outsiders will partially judge the quality of the content of a website based on its visual look. If newcomers see that a company cares about the visual and design, then they will assume the company also cares about the quality of their code. (I know that is dumb, but it is just a design principle.)

Summary
In summary, I strongly believe the previous documentation styling looked much better and provided a better documentation experience. It was definitely the best online documentation experience I have had. I would like to hear what others think about this. Thank you.

P.S.
I am aware that I can use the offline Doxygen documentation (which is great) and style it however I wish, but Google searches are great at helping me find things in the documentation, so I actually tend to use the website more.

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I feel similar about this topic, I’m also missing the perfect look of the old documentation that was so much more fun to read, compared to other API documentations out there. However, I remember there were a lot of people around here that didn’t like it’s dark look, so in the end, it seems to be a matter of personal preference. And I think there are some really more important things about JUCE than the colour scheme of the documentation.

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And I 100% disagree with every single argument you made.

The font and color scheme are 100% better now than before. The dark purple was almost impossible to read on the black background and the font was way too thin.

There was essentially no contrast and some text almost vanished. It was very unpleasant.

Now it’s much better, although I am really stumped how somebody chose yellow for a white background. Could it be that whoever picks the colors has some form or other of color blindness and to them it’s all perfectly legible?

4 Likes

Agreed, @reFX, the legibility is MUCH improved. For documentation, style is secondary to legibility.

I’m having a really hard time reading the new doc style. The fonts are too thin and making me squint. Are there any work arounds for me to view the docs with more readable fonts. Honestly I don’t know how anyone thinks this is good. Maybe its browser dependent, I don’t know.

I just took a look, and it looked fine to me… then I realized I had the page zoomed in… lol… but that totally works for me, have you tried that?

There are browser plugins which let you tweak the style of almost any website these days using CSS. Or you can build the docs yourself with doxygen…

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The browser plugin option works great for me. I use: https://darkreader.org/

Page zoom helps only a little. I do notice the fonts are substantially easier to read on chrome then compared to safari but still hard. I have generated doxygen which uses helvitica which is considerably easier. It’s not only bad fonts on the main site but also complete lack of shading to help delineate each related section. It is so tiring to use honestly.

Does anyone have Reccomended css or style sheets I can use as chrome extension on the main site or to generate even better doxygen docs?