I said before I wasn’t a fan of the new “documentation”, I really don’t have any nice words for it (sorry for those who worked on it).
Today I found a couple of regressions, which make it harder for us experienced developers, to guide newbies to the correct documentation.
It’s not searchable via Google. I can’t just open a new tab and start searching the Xojo docs from the Google search field.
Some properties don’t have their own pages, and are lumped together on one single page. Very easy for anyone to get lost on that page. In particular one property I was looking had a “Notes” section under the property heading, but those notes were for something else entirely and not inline with the actual properties that needed those notes.
I am using API even with the current IDE so even when using 2022r1.1, I keep 2019r1.1 open on the language page (one can keep the reference open without having a project open) so I can use that one.
Okay so “site:documentation.xojo.com “system.version”” does help. I used just type “Xojo system.version” and I’d be right at the correct page.
Which also highlights my second point, the 3rd result looks like what I want, but the correct result is the second, which then requires either scrolling or performing a second search on that page.
Thanks, in this case, I wanted to include a link to online documentation in a forum post.
The single biggest reason I’ve struggled with API 2.0 is because of difficulty navigating the documentation.
As was pointed out, they’re difficult to search and navigate. Googling most xojo keywords leads you to pages on hubwiz.com for some reason, which has admittedly been helpful in some situations (the docs there are outdated but still relevant).
The forum is filled with links to doc pages that don’t work anymore. The old links should forward you to the updated pages but it seems like that was never set up.
I can tell a lot of work was put into the new documentation and I applaud the effort, but it’s really been challenging to use.
What can be puzzling for beginners is that searches often give contradicting results. Example: TextField is indicated as both valid and deprecated. No way to differentiate further in the result list.
For those of you searching with Google rather than using the built-in search field, what is it about Google you like better? Do you exclusively search with Google?
Middle currently is a method of String and it does not show it. And the search (not basic search, do we have a way to invoke the advanced version? I want it) should be a scrollable deep search with weighted results. If I want to know about anything, I should type that thing and it would say me where I can find it, and if possible, move the most probable results to the top (weight).
Agreed. It should have a proper place, like docs-es.xojo.com with ALL the proper content for such context. And maybe docs-de.xojo.com for Germans and so on.
