💅 docs.ros.org just got a facelift!

[Katherine_Scott]

docs.ros.org Got a Facelift!

Hi everyone,

If you’re anything like me, you probably visit docs.ros.org at least five times a day, and you probably also have at least two dozen bookmarks related to ROS development in your browser. It seems like a good portion of onboarding new ROS users is just pointing them to the ROS documentation and our useful resources.

I’ve been trying to fix this problem for quite a while, and I finally have some good news! Thanks to some wonderful open-source design contributions from Shak and Vlad at HelloRobo.co, we’ve put together a new landing page for the ROS documentation. This new landing page should be your one-stop shop for most of your ROS documentation resources, and it renders well on mobile devices!

Don’t worry, the page still points you to the same ROS documentation, but we’ve managed to include just about everything you could need on one handy page! On the new docs.ros.org page, you’ll find:

• The documentation for every ROS release
• Pointers to our ROS calendars and how to add your events
• Links to all of our community resources (Discord, Discourse, Robotics Stack Exchange)
• Links to the ROS distro art and trademark information
• All of our ROS and ROSCon videos on Vimeo
• Links to ROS REPs and ROS package information
• An at-a-glance installation guide for new users
• A whole lot more!

If there’s something you think we missed that belongs there, please don’t hesitate to reach out or send us a pull request.

And thanks again Vlad and Shak for contributing their design skills to the project! And thanks @Nuclearsandwich with the deployment help.

[davetcoleman]

Looks great, nice work!

[Pyo]

The ROS documentation landing page is so much cleaner and easier to use, I love it!

[peci1]

It looks great!

Just one nitpick:

This looks like a minus or dash to me, which usually means “not supported”. What about using instead?

[ct2034]

Wow. This looks beautiful. Thanks for the work!
To second @peci1 s nitpick:

The table uses 4 icons: bar, x, 3dots, 1dot
The legend explains: bar, 3dots, 2dots, 1dot
(So the x is not in the legend and the two dots are not used in the table)

I love that these mimic the dots design of the ROS logo, but maybe this could be improved.
But even with this arguably tiny flaw it is a lot lot better than before.

[gbiggs]

Thanks to Vlad and Shak for an awesome new landing page, and thanks also to @Katherine_Scott for working hard to push this forward over the past 6 months! It’s a great contribution!

I’d like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that contributions to OSRF projects don’t have to be source code. Even if you aren’t a programmer, there are plenty of ways you can help out, such as designing a new landing page for a project website.

[Katherine_Scott]

Alright, I will replace the dash with a red bikeshed when I get a minute.

My goal here was to call out that Windows is not recommended for new users despite being a Tier 1 operating system. A dash was the smallest edit I could come up with that wouldn’t break things. I figured a key was sufficient, but apparently everyone has strong opinions about symbology.

If you think this chart is bad please take a look at REP-2000 which is where we usually send people with questions about operating system support. Quite frankly, I think we need to overhaul the Tier system entirely. I am getting pretty tired of angry new users complaining when they try to install Jazzy on their Mac and it doesn’t work.

[gavanderhoorn]

I’m not sure this is bikeshedding: even with the legend it’s confusing, as the tier-1 ‘icon’ has 3 dots, while the tier-3 icon has 1 dot ..

[Katherine_Scott]

Does this work for everyone?

[ct2034]

I did not mean to be overly pedantic, sorry. Maybe just out of curiosity I would like to know, what the x in the table means. I assume it means ‘no support’ and would suggest to add this information to the legend.

[Shahudullah]

Nice home page for all the ROS related information