

A redesign of the Django websites - olasitarska
https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2014/dec/15/announcing-django-website-redesign/

======
bbx
For comparison:
[http://i.imgur.com/U2p3BEU.png](http://i.imgur.com/U2p3BEU.png)

It's always difficult and probably unfair to express an opinion right after
having seen the redesign.

As with any complete overhaul that keeps close to nothing from the previous
version, it's _very_ hard to improve the experience without losing any sense
of identity. In this case, the Bootstrap vibe is quite prominent.

It does makes sense for the documentation, but the main page is less
appealing. I'm not a developer, but the previous design actually got me
intrigued by the framework and encouraged me to look deeper.

I guess a redesign was probably needed. I just hope it's a design they will
iterate over.

~~~
nicksergeant
They're not using Bootstrap.

~~~
wambotron
Whether they are or not, it still looks like it. I think that's what he meant
by "vibe."

------
publicfig
I really, overall, love the redesign. It's much cleaner, better organized and
it's awesome to have better support for width based scaling. As someone who
uses the Django documentation very often, I'm happy to see this redesign.

I must plea, though, that if anyone responsible is reading, it would be
extraordinarily helpful if the green highlight color is set back to the system
default, or at least a darker color. I have quite a bit of trouble following
through blocks of text on a screen or reading black-ish colors on bright white
backgrounds, and often use my highlighting tool to help me keep track of
location and to distinguish the text from the background. The almost invisible
green makes that very difficult for me.

~~~
olasitarska
Done!
[https://github.com/django/djangoproject.com/pull/192](https://github.com/django/djangoproject.com/pull/192)

Will be deployed soon :)

~~~
publicfig
Thanks for the update, looks quite a bit better!

------
nightmiles
This is a very interesting redesign, and it shocks me that they chose to do
it. On the one hand, this update is beautiful with a tasteful front page and
familiar-yet-fresh documentation pages. On the other hand, the old design was
also fantastic.

Despite kicking around for just under 10 years, the old Django look never felt
old, ugly, or clunky. It had a clean, thoughtful layout with good color
contrast and an unmistakable Django identity. To me, it never gained the
"cruft" that similarly-aged designs seem to take on. It always felt modern.

Loving the new design, but I would have never guessed that there were plans to
ditch the old one.

~~~
heyts
Absolutely, the previous design tenure of 10 years is quite a feat. There are
very few websites that can last this long without feeling old-fashioned.

------
themoonbus
No matter what web stack I end up using down the road, I will always have a
special place in my heart for Django. It taught me the fundamentals of MVC in
web app context, and in some ways got me a job that led to many good things in
my life.

Redesign looks nice, the old site was beginning to look dated.

------
avolcano
Funny how, even after a redesign, I can still recognize the layout of the docs
after occasionally looking at them a few times a year :)
[https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.7/](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.7/)

~~~
fletchowns
This is an important point I think. People have been referring to these docs
for years and got very comfortable with the layout. I'm glad they kept this
part so similar.

------
sailfast
This is a lot more readable and approachable - nice work! Cool to see that the
designers managed to stick to the green template while making it work for a
bunch of different content types. Thanks for the update!

~~~
glofish
I think it has too much empty space ...

~~~
lgp171188
Yes, even I thought the same. I hate that the home page has a lot of content
that I have to scroll down to view (at 1440x900 resolution).

[http://ibin.co/1kret3oW7caZ](http://ibin.co/1kret3oW7caZ) illustrates
whitespace wastage in the blog

Edit: Added an illustration

~~~
humpt
> whitespace wastage

there is no such thing. Think more whitespace equals more focus around the
content and less clutter.

------
andrewingram
Overall I like it, but it could really do with a max-width set for the
content. I use my browser full screen on a 24" monitor and some of the line
lengths are far in excess of readable.

~~~
andrevvmc
The max-width has been deployed, thanks for the feedback.

~~~
humpt
a bit offtopic but why is you username highlighted in green?

~~~
robbiep
New HN username

------
glofish
I like the new design but IMHO there was nothing wrong with the old one.

There was something very warm and reassuring about the old colors and I feel
there was more information filled.

------
arthursilva
The old design was/is awesome, I'll miss it.

I didn't fell comfortable with the new one, looks too bright to my eyes.

~~~
martinvol
I totally agree.

------
hysan
First impressions:

\- Increased whitespace makes it feel less informationally dense.

\- The colors are a bit too light. As someone with sensitive eyes, it makes
reading the docs for long periods of time harder. This is going to be tough to
get used to.

\- For whatever reason, my eyes keep skipping over the light green bar that's
between the nav and the content. I didn't even see the download link on the
getting started page until I took a second look at it. I wonder why this
happens?

Overall, I'm not adverse to it. I like the clean look, but one reason why I
liked the old site is because I could see all the information I'd want to know
on the first page without scrolling. You can't get that here, and it makes me
wonder how much information I'll miss out on over time.

------
roebk
I love the new design, it encompasses many modern design patterns, it's clean,
flat and all the elements have room to breath. My biggest issue with the
redesign it that I and many others have huge difficultly reading black text on
a white background. If anyone would like to find out more about visual stress
then this link provides a quick, easy to digest overview
[http://www.crossboweducation.com/articles/visual-stress-
symp...](http://www.crossboweducation.com/articles/visual-stress-symptoms-and-
solutions/).

I hope it's a problem they acknowledge and provide a solution in a future
iteration. Until then, I'll have to install a browser extension to modify the
background colour.

~~~
Igglyboo
I've never heard of this actually, I would have thought black on white was the
best way to read text.

What would be a better choice? Would black on off-white be better?

~~~
joshuacc
While most printed materials are "black" on "white," when the range is
compared to a light-emitting screen that's more like "dark gray" on "light
gray." Looking at something with too much contrast for a long time can cause
eyestrain.

------
andremendes
I liked, have only two criticisms: Content seems sparse, maybe due to line-
height and/or font-size. I also get a "too much green" feeling in my eyes. The
overall change was positive, imo.

~~~
hcarvalhoalves
I zoom the page down to 75% to browse the docs, it gives the same spacing as
the old layout.

~~~
andremendes
Good! This gives a much more comfortable visualization.

------
Daviey
It must just be me, but it feels that the site is optimized for mobile
browsing. There is very little content and my eyes have to move massively just
to read the page. I actually prefer the old layout. :/

~~~
publicfig
Documentation websites actually have some pretty good use-cases to being
scalable to mobile, either because people will view documentation on a tablet
or phone while developing, or due to people using smaller browser widths when
developing to be able to display their IDE or terminal windows next to the
documentation windows.

~~~
raverbashing
Yeah, no.

Smaller browser widths I agree

But using a phone/tablet to navigate the docs? Might as well use notepad for
coding too, since the objective is to suffer.

~~~
publicfig
Well, the nice thing about mobile first is that the benefits extend to smaller
browser widths as well. And just because you don't find a method appealing to
use doesn't mean it's not a valid use case. I, for one, like to have all my
documentation offline in ePub on a tablet, but that doesn't mean I assume it's
the best method for everyone else (or even anyone else).

Plus, though it amy be an unintended consequence, mobile first shouldn't at
all hurt the desktop experience, just make sure that mobile is not an
afterthought once the design patterns are engrained and it's too late to
modify a responsive experience.

------
scrollaway
Good job on the redesign. I think it looks great.

How about getting rid of Trac now? There's really no worse issue tracker...

~~~
wldcordeiro
I think that there's too much historical data in Trac for them to ditch it.
Migrating would be difficult.

~~~
fletchowns
We migrated from trac to jira a couple years ago and it actually wasn't that
bad. So glad that we did. Trac works fine for little tiny projects (although
these days I would just use github or bitbucket issue tracking). Jira really
shines on larger projects though.

------
robertlf
I liked the old site better. This is clearly a case of, "If it ain't broke,
don't fix it." The purpose of documentation is utility, not to look modern. It
does nothing that I can see to improve the utility. In fact, all of the white
space makes it harder to use. It would be nice if there were an older "theme"
users could continue using.

~~~
jamesisaac
Agreed. The site now... looks more like every other site. But why's that a
good thing? Old design had a more unique personality -- new one looks very
much like a Bootstrap deploy with tweaked colours.

------
emmanueloga_
Anecdotally both django and rails maintained the same aesthetics in their
respective sites for more than nine years (rails still does).

[https://web.archive.org/web/20051214180106/http://www.rubyon...](https://web.archive.org/web/20051214180106/http://www.rubyonrails.org/)
[https://web.archive.org/web/20050801014309/http://www.django...](https://web.archive.org/web/20050801014309/http://www.djangoproject.com/)

------
brokentone
It's amazing what a facelift can do to the perception of a project. There are
some really great projects that look abandoned or the docs are really
difficult to use that prohibit me from giving them a fair shake.

~~~
mhurron
It's amazing how many people measure a project based on the amount of time it
spends redesigning the website to follow the trend-du-jour.

~~~
edraferi
This isn't as crazy as it might seem - using a modern home page design proves
that someone has been investing time in the project since that design became
popular.

Using the "trend-du-jour" for a homepage quickly communicates to viewers that
the project is alive & active. It's a much more accessible signal than mailing
list or commit history (although those are clearer, more accurate signals of
project health).

------
biscotti
My take aways: too much white space, the highlight colour when you select text
within code wells is really hard to distinguish & as others have mentioned
black on white is hard on the eyes.

~~~
olasitarska
The highlight color has been fixed and will be deployed soon. Thanks for
feedback!

------
andrevvmc
The docs have been made a bit denser, thanks for the feedback guys!

------
heyts
I was in the middle of checking the docs, so that was a little odd, but I like
it so far. It is different without being TOO different in terms of layout so
the familiarity sticks.

It looks slightly blurry on Chrome for me, seems to have been tested primarily
on Safari? Also, the redesign may be a bit bland, but overall it's a pretty
good job. Now if someone could apply those design cues to Django-Admin that
would be awesome!

------
ch8230
It looks nice! I do agree with others who are saying that a page with docs
shouldn't have this much white space as it makes it harder to read.

------
shill
I may just be noticing an old feature, but did the search feature on the prior
site return source code in the results?

I think that is a great feature, but it's going to confuse beginners. The
first three results for the query 'models' are links to source code.

Maybe the search results could be tagged with a type icon and name
(Documentation, Tutorial, Source...) in addition to the document excerpt.

------
i_ride_bart
Wow, I always love redesigns. But as another commentor says, I'm a bit worried
how long it will take for my eye memory to adapt ...

~~~
wldcordeiro
Considering that the layout of the documentation hasn't changed in any
significant way. Not long at all.

------
incidence
Overall I think it's good

Things I don't like:

* #6A0E0E is too dark for links, the color from hover effect would be much better (#BA2121).

* Front page right sidebar has too much links. I feel the latest news section should have "more priority". I often visit Django's website just to check whether there is a new release and blog post associated to it.

------
chhantyal
Looking great. Thanks for great Christmas gift :D

On the other hand, I feel like I am going to miss old design - is there
archive somewhere?

~~~
mcagl
# apt-get install python-django-doc

$ x-www-browser /usr/share/doc/python-django-doc/html/index.html

:)

~~~
chhantyal
It's on ReadTheDocs :D django.readthedocs.org/en/latest/

------
joseakle
I'm colorblind and some links on the documentation
[https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.7/](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.7/)
don't look different enough from normal text. Mostly I'm having a hard time
identifying links that aren't underlined.

~~~
mhurron
I'm not colour blind, but I had to look at them for a moment to see they were
even different colours, man that's a subtle difference.

Are you Red/Green colour blind? Personally I would have picked a colour closer
to the green used in other places of the site to highlight links, but I
suddenly became curious as to whether or not that would be any better for you.

Not that I can do anything about it, I'm just really nosy about it since you
mentioned it.

------
imfletcher
looks great - doc site is cleaner yet still very familiar. Everything else
aside, I'd kill for better doc search - or just simply allowing () to search
for functions. Trying to refresh my memory on how the .first() or .latest()
method works, for example, requires browsing. no real way to search for it.

------
talideon
There are two issues I have with the redesign: the use of Palatino as the body
typeface, and the dark green body text, which I think would've been better as
a dark grey.

Other than that and a few spacing issues, it's good!

------
chhantyal
If you miss old Docs UI, here it is on ReadTheDocs
[http://django.readthedocs.org/en/latest/](http://django.readthedocs.org/en/latest/)
:)

------
po
Is there a word for muscle memory but for your eyes?

After so many years it's going to take a while to get used to but first
impression is that it looks nice and readable. Code snippets look much better.

~~~
JetSpiegel
> Is there a word for muscle memory but for your eyes?

Memory?

------
heyts
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is the addition of an option to download
the docs in .epub, which is great and previously was a pain point (at least
for me).

------
_wdh
The new design reminds me of mint ice cream. In a good way.

------
amarsahinovic
You should really fix the selection color. I usually select text while reading
it, and I can barely see the selection here. Otherwise, good job!

~~~
olasitarska
This has been fixed by andrevvm and will be deployed soon:
[https://github.com/django/djangoproject.com/pull/192](https://github.com/django/djangoproject.com/pull/192).
Thanks for feedback!

------
nullflow
OT:

I know that Django 1.6+ can be used with Python 3.4 but is Django 1.7.1
written in Python 2.7 or 3.4?

~~~
ubernostrum
Both.

It is possible, and not too difficult in fact, to write a single codebase that
runs under both Python 2 and Python 3. Which is what Django has done. The same
code runs the same under 2.7 or 3.3 or 3.4.

~~~
nullflow
Thanks for the reply.

Are there any guidelines or "best practices" for writing code for both 2.7 and
3.4?

~~~
Macha
[http://python-future.org/compatible_idioms.html](http://python-
future.org/compatible_idioms.html)

This is a pretty comprehensive guide. It does rely on the future lib, which is
a wrapper around six and a few others to make it easier, but you can also just
write your own minimal lib for things that need to have:

    
    
        if py2:
             pass # Py2 specific line here
        else:
             pass # Py3 stuff here
    

I think Django has chosen the approach of having their own minimal
compatibility layer, iirc.

------
huxley
I was actually browsing the docs when the change went through and did a triple
take.

~~~
wldcordeiro
That must have been oddly disorienting.

------
wiesson
Looks good! Maybe I should start a new Django Project again.

------
10098
That font is terrible. Please bring back sans serif.

~~~
wenbert
I actually find serif fonts easier to read for long texts. So I'm loving this
one! ;)

~~~
10098
Actually now that I think about it, it's not that the font itself is bad, it's
the context in which it's used. It just looks weird on that website.

------
anhtran
I like new design, but I think it's quite bright.

------
iKenshu
I like this redesign

------
Igglyboo
I love it, I have a thing for pastels.

------
rossk
Nice work!

------
_nickwhite
You could almost say that Django has become... unchained.

~~~
mattdeboard
Not really, no

