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Comment by StanAngeloff | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.

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.

> 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...

> 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")

I mean, dark mode alone is somewhat a redesign for redesign's sake that is nevertheless bound to please many of MDN's audience.

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.

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 :)

What about for "improved navigability" then?

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.

It's pretty explicitly stated that they think a benefit of the redesign is improved UX.

An outrageously good resource really, I use it almost every day! Very happy to pay for it.

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?

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.

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.

That’s like paying a subscription to BMW for the seat warmers in your car because they provide value to you.

Don't give them any ideas

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.

> 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.

It is? Since went? It used to be edited by volunteers who often made mistakes and or gave bad info.

Since 2017. Just search “mdn google Microsoft” and you will find lots of links to the press release.

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.)

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.

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?

W3schools has greatly improved over the years and is often better for a quick lookup.

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

No there is not, it’s a situation where everyone is burying their head in the sands. No matter how many downvotes I receive it simply does not change the fact that firing a majority of your documentation content team will undeniably have a huge impact on your documentation content.

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