From: James Britt <jamesUNDERBARb@...>
Date: 2005-01-06T13:57:48+09:00
Subject: Re: Best ways to accelerate Ruby's popularity

Tim Sutherland wrote:
...
> The links at the top and the sidebar(s) on the right are the only parts of the
> page that have to do with Ruby documentation, most of the page is taken up
> with announcements and so on.
> 
> Maybe move all the announcements to a small sidebar with short summaries?


They're basically going away.  When the site started there was more news 
than docs.  Aside from Dave's outstanding Programming Ruby there was 
little else to link to.  It was more a blog for the RDP than a 
documentation directory.  When a new resource came around, it was big news.

That's changed in a big way.  Nowadays, there's almost little point in 
announcing when a new resource is available, as they pop up too 
frequently.  (It's still big news, but, thankfully,  not *as* big, owing 
to the increased frequency.)

Instead, what's needed (and coming along) is a better way to organize 
and search known resources,and a way to recognize these resources 
without a central administrator having to add them.

So certain things will remain (primarily the links to the more stable 
and essential docs, such as the core classes, standard lib, and C API, 
as well as doc bundles and other downloads), but the main page will 
focus more on immediately directing users to resources for assorted 
development tasks.

Along with this, the overall style will get cleaned up, so it will 
easier for the eye to pick out and follow things.