Rustdoc 1.60 produces flat UI

[pravic]

Rustdoc 1.59 and earlier used to produce a nice clean UI, Rustdoc 1.60 is weirdly flat and inconvenient.

Version it worked on

1.59 and earlier:

Version with regression

1.60 and later:

rustc --version --verbose:

rustc 1.60.0 (7737e0b5c 2022-04-04)
binary: rustc
commit-hash: 7737e0b5c4103216d6fd8cf941b7ab9bdbaace7c
commit-date: 2022-04-04
host: x86_64-pc-windows-msvc
release: 1.60.0
LLVM version: 14.0.0

[pravic]

@rustbot modify labels: +A-rustdoc-ui +A-rustdoc-themes

[Urgau]

See this blog post for more information about the changes: https://blog.guillaume-gomez.fr/articles/2022-04-08+rustdoc%3A+Recent+UI+and+UX+changes+in+generated+documentation

[GuillaumeGomez]

I removed a few labels. If you want to start a discussion about a change you didn't like, it's fine to do so. However please provide an alternative and some arguments to support it.

[sharnoff]

Not the original poster, but I found the changes a little disorienting & thought I'd weigh in:

TL;DR: IMO it looks pretty, but I think it should have the separator lines (or some equivalent visual marker).

Overall: I think it looks significantly more aesthetically pleasing. However: previously, I used the separator lines as a distinct visual marker to easily glance to and between sections of the sidebar. This version doesn't have an equivalent, which has made it harder for me to use.

Generalizing from my experience: In the zulip discussion, MDN's style was mentioned as inspiration. IMO, MDN's style works there because the sidebar is a "related topics" area -- it's not meant for primary navigation, unlike rustdoc's sidebar. In MDN's case, the sidebar content is readable only once you look over, but that's ok because you're not there to quickly pick something out of the sidebar -- while reading the article, you're probably not even aware that the sidebar exists, but it has to be there to balance out the page. (see below)

Aside from navigation, IMO this layout feels somewhat unbalanced -- particularly when the names in the sidebar are relatively short (taking up only 1/3 to 1/2 of the width). For example:

I think my feeling here is coming from a lack of definition between the sidebar and the main body, which I think would also be better with separator lines -- or at least something spanning most of the width of the sidebar at multiple points. Again, the sidebar is great if you're looking right at it; I've found it disorienting when I'm looking at the main body of the page.

A couple ideas

I don't think separator lines aren't necessarily the best option here -- I happen to be referring to them because it's what we had before, but perhaps boxes around the text or background shading might fulfill a similar function.

[GuillaumeGomez]

cc @jsha