Re: PHP.net alpha layout

On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 6:50 AM, Patrick ALLAERT <patrickallaert@php.net> wrote: > Hi! > > The "PHP.net alpha" layout is already there since a long time. > What's remaining for having it "beta"? > > Discussing it with some colleagues, it appears that most of them were > not aware of its existence. > Shouldn't we put a small but visible button to let people switch to > the new layout from any page? It would increase the number of > alpha/beta-testers and, possibly, decrease the time to adopt the new > layout. Actually, it's always been beta (even activation of the new layout requires adding the ?beta=1 query string). That said, I think you're absolutely right, and it's reasons like this that layout changes always wind up stagnating and being abandoned. This is, as far as I can remember, the furthest any design changes have progressed in a dozen years (I think PHP4 had pretty much just come out when the site finally dropped the old round-borders-and-buttons look). I think we should throw an overlay - much like the one we display warning folks of things being broken in beta - at the top of the page, saying something like, "See the future of php.net - click here to switch to the beta site." I'm also curious how many people are using the beta site as their default. I, for one, keep forgetting it's there, until someone reports an issue with it --- and I'm sure I'm not alone. P.S. - It was 8 March, 2001, when the site got its present look, minus the right sidebar and a few other notable things. I was close --- PHP 4.0.4 was released. http://web.archive.org/web/20010701000000*/http://php.net -- </Daniel P. Brown> Dedicated Servers, Cloud and Cloud Hybrid Solutions, VPS, Hosting (866-) 725-4321 http://www.parasane.net/