We’re excited to announce the new theme for our documentation site! If you can’t wait to see it - go explore right now! Otherwise, read on below to discover the improvements and changes.
Over the past month a number of Medic teammates have been diligently implementing the Hextra theme as an upgrade to the prior Docsy theme which control how our Hugo based docs site renders in a browser.
Here’s the home page with arrows for specific improvements:
- The left navigation is now more spacious and easier to read. Navigation arrows are right-aligned making it easier drill down to a specific section without the arrows jumping around via separate indentation levels.
- Search is revamped - it now only includes documentation site content and does not use external resources like Google.
- Many pages now implement Hextra Cards - large callouts making it easier to skim a page and choose which section is most applicable to your task at hand.
- Commonly used external sites like the forums and the GitHub site for docs are a click away. As they’re external links, a “opens a new tab on a new site” up arrow is next to each link.
- Custom cards - Hextra is easily customized so, when helpful, other types of cards are used to further guide readers to their content.
- Native Hextra Callouts are now used through out the site. These share a branding giving a consistent expectation to the ready when they see the same icon and color for callouts.
- Simplified right hand navigation.
Additional features, not shown in this screenshot, include:
- Interactive directory trees - as seen in the Docker guide.
- Steps now have a more pronounced and even more loudly enumerated style which you can see on the forms page.
- Details which can be initially hidden or shown and then toggled by the user. This is especially helpful for hiding technical debug information which you want to have contextually present, but hide unless needed, as seen on the first time contributors guide under the “If you get any errors…” details.
Unchanged is most of the content. We’ve been extending, refining and curating content for years which means it still stands on its own, even with the fancy new theme. All the bookmarks and existing links will just work, ensuring the same content is right where you expect it.
Some key pages have been given the card treatment as seen here on the community page shown in the dark theme:
While the content is almost all the same, the new card layout and icons further signaling where each card goes, is readability win!
If you want to see the old site - we’ve put up an archive, but note it’s an archive and won’t be updated.
Please let us know what you think and if you encounter any issues with the new theme. Thank you!
