Tidying up the Go web experience

alexaholic 2021-08-18 21:28:33 +0000 UTC [ - ]

The new blog at https://go.dev/blog/ doesn’t seem to have a RSS feed: https://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgo...

sagichmal 2021-08-18 21:03:29 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> You may have already noticed that links to the package reference docs for the standard library on golang.org/pkg now redirect to their equivalents on pkg.go.dev, which is a better experience today and will continue to improve.

Facts not in evidence.

The "classic" golang.org documentation was simple, easy to search, and consistent across user agents. The pkg.go.dev documentation is... well, bluntly: strictly worse.

There are longstanding bugs in basically all user agents. The README for a module is unavoidably truncated by default and requires a click to expand. And the navigation panel on the left is only rendered beyond a certain browser width, and changes as you scroll -- in total, a UX disaster.

I'm so frustrated by these changes. It's one thing to update the look and feel of a site over time. I understand and that's fine. But this was clearly a design by committee, with no single coherent direction. The net effect ticks a lot of boxes but is just functionally worse.

Seirdy 2021-08-19 00:01:50 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Check out https://godocs.io for a good alternative. Just replace the pkg.go.dev hostname with godocs.io and you're good to go. All that's missing is the amount of data present in pkg.go.dev's "imported by" list.

If you have libraries downloaded locally, you have even better options that work offline:

Try the "godoc" command, available in /x/tools to open a classic HTML view of a package's documentation in a local web server.

Even better: `go doc` will send documentation straight to stdout so you don't even need to launch a web browser.

SamWhited 2021-08-19 02:03:05 +0000 UTC [ - ]

The same with Godoc; I tried really hard to like the new thing, assuming my dislike was just the usual resistance to change, but as I've used it I've constantly run into real roadblocks and issues and have been forced to accept that it's just worse in every possible way.

camkego 2021-08-18 22:30:46 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I am afraid I agree with this sentiment also: "The "classic" golang.org documentation was simple, easy to search, and consistent across user agents. The pkg.go.dev documentation is... well, bluntly: strictly worse."

I loved the simplicity of the classic golang.org docs.

I'm sad to see it go.