I generally agree on all those points, there's a bunch of things I could critique, like shrinking the search bar behind an icon, or things I like such as the more concise breadcrumbs which make the hierarchy a bit clearer.
But overall I guess after thinking about what I did and didn't like about the design, nothing really stood out as a showstopper for me. I like the old design a lot more, but MDN has always been a reference and I dip into dozens of different references every week, getting used to design differences is par for the course. As long as they don't mess with the overall content hierarchy which is great as-is I'm not too impacted.
So my takeaway was if they invest the same energy into the content hierarchy on a page, I think that would add some value. Keep what they have, don't overstuff it, but just making it easier to see "you are here" and "here be dragons". Like on that example you linked there's a "warning" about tabindex that doesn't explain why you should never add one to a dialog - seems obvious to experienced frontend developers but it would leave juniors and people who might benefit most from such a warning scratching their heads or developing a cargo-cult mentality to certain things. I can envisage a content sweep of their warning / gotcha boxes would add more value than a design refresh.
Also generally since their content is constantly expanding, something that makes it easier to get your bearings in the existing content, adding more context cues etc, and quicker navigation between adjacent paradigms or some "maybe you meant this" suggestions that would be neat. I think that's what they were going for by elevating the "related content" on the left - but that's just showing a list of stuff on the same level as the current item. Why would I care about <summary> on a <dialog> page? If you use their search for "proxy" you might end up on a page talking about web proxies, or javascript proxy objects - disambiguation would be awesome for people who are trying to get their bearings.
(then again I usually just hit back, go to my google results, and pick the next page if it's not what I was looking for...)
But overall I guess after thinking about what I did and didn't like about the design, nothing really stood out as a showstopper for me. I like the old design a lot more, but MDN has always been a reference and I dip into dozens of different references every week, getting used to design differences is par for the course. As long as they don't mess with the overall content hierarchy which is great as-is I'm not too impacted.
So my takeaway was if they invest the same energy into the content hierarchy on a page, I think that would add some value. Keep what they have, don't overstuff it, but just making it easier to see "you are here" and "here be dragons". Like on that example you linked there's a "warning" about tabindex that doesn't explain why you should never add one to a dialog - seems obvious to experienced frontend developers but it would leave juniors and people who might benefit most from such a warning scratching their heads or developing a cargo-cult mentality to certain things. I can envisage a content sweep of their warning / gotcha boxes would add more value than a design refresh.
Also generally since their content is constantly expanding, something that makes it easier to get your bearings in the existing content, adding more context cues etc, and quicker navigation between adjacent paradigms or some "maybe you meant this" suggestions that would be neat. I think that's what they were going for by elevating the "related content" on the left - but that's just showing a list of stuff on the same level as the current item. Why would I care about <summary> on a <dialog> page? If you use their search for "proxy" you might end up on a page talking about web proxies, or javascript proxy objects - disambiguation would be awesome for people who are trying to get their bearings.
(then again I usually just hit back, go to my google results, and pick the next page if it's not what I was looking for...)