Our modern web theme goes live | Hacker News Reader

Our modern web theme goes live

php.net

46 pointsSeldaek40 comments

For better or worse, the one thing that I can say that is very positive about php, is php.net has basically great documentation and it's usually easy enough to find what you need about particular methods. If php didn't have the documentation that they do, it would not be as successful as it is.

I think you're right, and there's a lesson here.

I was recently evaluating a several options on github for a tool I needed. All options satisfied my basic requirements, so the choice came down to community/recency, and documentation.

I went with the project that was better documented.

Joke was on me, there had been several great feature updates, but without new documentation.

So, please, I implore OS committers, as much as it may be a pain, please require documentation updates when accepting patches!

We switched from PHP to Python a few years back and the one thing I consistently miss is the documentation. I feel that PHP has far superior documentation in terms of clearly showing arguments, returns, examples etc.

It is how PHP survived (at least in the 4.x.x and early 5.x.x days when I last used it) the massively inconsistent "standard" library: the documentation reduced the effect of that problem considerably and made discovery of features relatively easy.

A "good enough" system with excellent documentation is going to win out against a better system without the doc documentation to make library feature discovery and use easy.

It'll be interesting to see how node.js develops in this regard. Currently the core documentation is pretty good there, but as the size of the project grows it'll take effort to maintain a certain standard and coverage.

yep. but python after a while you dont consult it for basic stuff.. with php... even after a decade... im still going there to remember if a method is all words glued, or with underscore... and the argument orders, etc.

hint php.net/method will take you direct to the docs to check that argument ordering

Documentation was originally the reason why I started working on php all those years ago, and that set the bar for every other language that i've working on since!

In general I like the new design. I do have one thing that I'm not wild about:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/

The page that you are dropped into for that is not very friendly. I much prefer the layout for a sub-page once you've clicked a link.

http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.variables.php

I agree.

In addition, I hope the next "fix" will be to cull the comments. While there are occasionally some worthwhile edge cases documented in the comments, there is also a great deal of spectacularly bad design advice, which doesn't help PHP's reputation among language elitists as being for script kiddies and beginners.

The main reason I like the comments on php docs is it's helpful for me to see a basic usage example. A lot of docs (your typical 'man' page for instance) just have a dictionary-like wall of text without a usage sample.

That would be nice. If they won't cull the comments, I'd like to see them make the lower rated comments harder to see, or have some kind of warning near them that says "If you use this, you're going to have a bad time."

Wow, indeed. Hopefully that's a bug and not that way by design.

It reminds me of Drupal circa 2006, not that that's necessarily a bad thing (it's been a tremendously usable site since forever, so if it ain't broke…), but "modern" is a bit of a stretch.

Have always liked the user contributed notes on php.net. It really increases the value of the documentation.

It isn't often that a doc doesn't solve my api level problem but when it does, user notes always save the day. There is always someone who faced same corner case as mine. One of the many advantages of using the world's most popular server side language.

Note that users of extensions like Ghostery will have the search functionality (e.g. http://us2.php.net/results.php?q=curl&l=en&p=all) "broken." You'll have to allow the Google AJAX Search API permissions for it to work.

How do I view the new modern design?

I see some text on a very plain page with a top bar logo that feels oddly squashed in relation to the other content. Feels like 2003 to me.

So I assume this is the new site? :|

I guess this is what passes for "design" for people balls-deep in PHP engineering. The old one was at least quaint/retro, this is just kinda "babby's first blog design".

Search does not work without javascript.

Fixed header takes away screen real estate.

Grey text is hard to read.

Sends every pageview to Google.

I do not like it.

* Sends every pageview to Google.

you mean it has analytics, like every other page on the internet.

* Fixed header takes away screen real estate.

it's modern, you know, where people have screens larger than VGA. This isn't 1998 anymore.

* Search does not work without javascript.

Very hard to be a nice guy with this sort of comment. Javascript is part of the web fabric, if you switch it off much of the web breaks. Switch off CSS and you'll notice the page doesn't look very good either. javascript is to behaviour what css is to appearance. I'm really tired of people who switch off js and then complain. Get with the program! Saying something as utterly stupid as this negates any other potentially valid point you might have had.

* I do not like it.

http://weknowmemes.com/2011/05/and-not-a-single-fuck-was-giv...

That is a tough one, JavaScript is sort of modern and will come with any language modernizing. Try it on a modern browser like Chrome and using modern settings, like JS:ON (your post has changed 3 times in the last three minutes, I can't keep up)

Either way, I hope they keep with the improvements and accept JS as very important to their future success.

same opnions.

also, remember 1st time i went to php.net. it was a screenfull design (no scroll) with a curved navigation on the side (probably images cut in a table) and everywhere you moused over that navigation a popup with transparent ballon showed... i didnt even read the site content and dismissed it as a dhtml-for-cms fad and contied to use only apache as my backend framework

Just looking at the home page, the text being sooo close to the left-hand margin really bothers me. I use a portrait monitor and browse full screen and it just feels odd having to read the text butted up against my monitor border.

Definitely worlds better than the old design, I think it's awesome, very clean. Makes me want to do some projects in PHP again.

I like how you can finally add the search field as search engine in Google Chrome.

I had expected some pretty home page indeed remarks in the comments, none yet.

It's simple- That's awesome.

To all the snark related to "modern", oh you mean the cluster-f*ck of animated javascript and sensory overload that has become the modern web? please.. you can K.I.S.S it.

This new PHP.net site is also dependent on javascript, as the search engine does not work without javascript.

wow you really missed that one..

I'm the alignment nazi and here's your guru meditation:

  .navbar .brand {
    padding: .5em 0 .5em 0;
  }
  
  .navbar .brand img {
    margin-left: -0.2em;
  }

And this is why blogs make lousy home pages.

Contrast on links is not quite good enough.

That is news-worthy?

modern, as PHP

Oh man, my childhood memories...gone... sniff

Well, they moved from 1996 to 2006. So, progress?

Still, big improvement. Snarky comments aside, it seems easier on my eyes. Not a big fan of underlined hyperlinks though.

>Not a big fan of underlined hyperlinks though

Don't worry, soon it will become illegal to care about usability and then everything can exist for purely aesthetic purposes.

Arbitrary top-down usability guidelines from the early web aren't the unquestionable gospel you think they are.

That is an awful lot of fallacious reasoning packed into one sentence.

What evidence do you have that this guideline is arbitrary? It will need to be pretty compelling evidence given the overwhelming evidence showing higher click through rates with underlined links.

Where do you get "top-down" from? Was that simply chosen from a list of sufficiently vague insults that can be tacked onto anything without having to justify them? Who is this top and how are they forcing this down?

What evidence do you have to support the notion that usability guidelines become incorrect due to age? How many years does it take for a guideline to go from right to wrong? Can they be preserved in some way to increase their shelf life?

How do you know I think they are unquestionable gospel? Nothing I said indicated anything of the sort, you have never met me, and know nothing about me, so where could you possibly have gotten that idea? Do not feel compelled to create motives or positions for me in your imagination, if you would like to know how I feel or think about something you can simply ask me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com