Updated Docs site!

Hello friends,

The Docs site has received a big update! Check it out:

http://docs.spark.io/

To highlight some new features:

  • An “edit this page” button that links to the Github edit page. Now easier to contribute!
  • Improved legibility: larger fonts, better color scheme for the code.
  • Better navigation that can be extended more easily as we have more pages.
  • Statically generated! No more of this client-side javascript nonsense that makes the docs feel laggy. Everything should feel faster now.
  • Hosted on Amazon S3 instead of Github pages! Also faster.
  • Changes to the docs are automatically deployed to S3 through Travis CI, unless of course it breaks the build, in which case it’ll fail and I get a nasty email.
  • There’s a download button in the upper right that will download the docs as a zip file for local enjoyment. Yes, the file’s huge; at some point we’ll have to compress some pics.
  • Links to the old site (that have the # in the url) should redirect successfully once it’s loaded into docs.spark.io

Things I wanted to do but haven’t gotten to:

  • Fix the scroll spy thing that highlights the section where you are in the menu. Can’t get the mapping to work, David I might need a hand with this one.
  • Compress all the assets and remove any external dependencies so it will run perfectly offline
  • Improve the coloring on the code, which sometimes gets funky
  • Make the headers for the code (like EXAMPLE SYNTAX) in regular fonts instead of monospace fonts so they stick out better

Enjoy, and please share your feedback! We will continue to work on improving our documentation, both in presentation and in content.

:spark:

Z

7 Likes

It might just be me, but the https://docs.spark.io/ (HTTPS) link above doesn’t work. http://docs.spark.io/ works fine.

Love the new color code thing, much easier on the eyes, well my bloodshot square eyes that look at a computer screen all day!

there is a tiny little thing with addresses the double forward slash makes the rest of the line a comment, but not always. I clicked on the cloud API reference, the bit to the right of authentication displays well but after the first 2 the next few are comments, then they go back to being ok, then comments

Not just you @Blake! We’ll get that fixed

Fixed the link!

[more content for discourse]

1 Like

This looks like a definite improvement over the previous version. A few nitpicks though:

  • still crashes Safari on the iPad (just go to firmware reference for example)
  • not convinced by the 3 column layout. Eg to find out what arguments a method takes requires scanning both the middle column (for the description) and the right column (for the syntax)
  • why load so much in one page? Eg the whole firmware ref in 1 page.
  • On my Mac with the Magic mouse I cannot use the “track” surface to scroll in the left column; it only scrolls the middle column

Keep up the good work!

1 Like

Someone please even post the linux drivers needed for the spark to get configured, only getting windows over there. And I suggest that rather than GNU Screen, Minicom would be a very great asset for the linux (fedora) users.

All the best! :smiley:

I can agree with that. Would be a neat addition since we sometimes have soooo many features that it adds up to quite a list. Would be nice if you could look into this, if there's more interest from other as well(?)

Time.weekday() documentation has a typo:

Friday is missing and Sunday is in there twice.

Friday should be inserted as 6, Saturday changed to 7 and the second Sunday removed.

I’m not a linux user but I believe that linux users generally don’t need drivers to talk to the Spark Core over serial. What distribution are you running?

It's definitely a good suggestion - I went back and forth on this. I will definitely be making some ongoing tweaks to the navigation, and I'll keep this in mind as one way to tackle the organizational problem.

2 Likes

Would you please change the color of your links from the blue/green to a more visible color like dark blue. Us old people have trouble seeing them (on MAC).