Near-Term Website Simplications (March 2023)

[DanielRosenwasser]

The primary use-case for the website is to learn how to use TypeScript. We think there are some opportunities to simplify our pages to avoid overwhelming newcomers. Additionally, we have a lot of UI whose surface area translates to testing costs that often need to be repeated.

After discussing among @RyanCavanaugh, @navya9singh, and others, we came to a list of near-term improvements we'd like to make. So in the next month or two, we'd like to make the following simplifications:

• Remove "Popular Documentation Pages" from the footer
• Remove duplicate "Get Started" sections on the landing page
• Remove header link to Handbook (prefer Docs), possible rename to "Documentation"
• Make Docs a special page within the same docs view that the handbook, references pages, etc. live
• Investigate whether the build tool integration page can link out to external resources
• Move Branding page to a GitHub repo
• Move Cheat Sheets to a docs page or GitHub repo
• Delist Tools from the header
• Remove "Errors" view and "Plugins" view from the TypeScript Playground

[homomorphist]

Remove "Errors" view and "Plugins" view from the TypeScript Playground

Does that imply removal of these tabs altogether? Or is it just making the tabs invisible to a newcomer by changing the settings defaults?

[DanielRosenwasser]

I've heard a few people ask about the Errors tab - I think we'd be open to keeping that around.

Plugins though, we're more skeptical of, and we wonder if using something like https://vscode.dev is a better mechanism for these use-cases. Out of curiosity, what are some plugins you currently use @Agapurnis?

[homomorphist]

I'd definitely be a fan of keeping the Errors tab around.

Out of curiosity, what are some plugins you currently use @Agapurnis?

I don't seem to often find myself using them. A lot of the plugins seem to have too-niche of a purpose for me, or are tools to make the editor more on-par with a larger IDE. If I ever need the latter, I'll usually end up switching to something like StackBlitz.

[tjjfvi]

I personally find the plugins to be an extremely useful part of the playground, and extensively use the link shortener, vim, and prettier plugins. vscode.dev is a great tool, but (afaik) there's no way to share links with it – especially in the context of the TS Discord, where the playground is the go-to way to share code.

[typescript-bot]

Hello! As per #2804, we are automatically closing all open issues. Please see #2804 for a description of what issues and PRs can be accepted going forward.