# Improve contrast in docs.julialang.org menu

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/improve-contrast-in-docs-julialang-org-menu/1370>\
**Category:** Community\
**Created:** [January 9, 2017, 4:17pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/improve-contrast-in-docs-julialang-org-menu/1370 "2017-01-09T16:17:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 12\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![TravisA9](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/travisa9/32/357_2.png) [@TravisA9](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/TravisA9)\
**Post date:** [January 9, 2017, 4:17pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/improve-contrast-in-docs-julialang-org-menu/1370/1 "2017-01-09T16:17:04Z")

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I love Julia’s docs and use them a lot But struggle to read the topics menu. Am I the only one that has trouble with this? Is it a good idea to make a style adjustment there? The problem is that the text is light gray and the background is a slightly lighter gray. On hover or select the style is a little easier to see but It would be nice to be able to see the options without having to hover the mouse over every option.

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**Author:** ![cormullion](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/cormullion/32/49131_2.png) [@cormullion](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/cormullion)\
**Post date:** [January 9, 2017, 4:49pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/improve-contrast-in-docs-julialang-org-menu/1370/2 "2017-01-09T16:49:49Z")

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I’ve thought the same but hadn’t yet got round to filing an issue (probably with Documenter.jl?). Also, I think there’s too little hierarchical structure, i.e. there are 65 top-level items including some ‘apparent’ duplications (eg two “Strings”). But I think changes are already in the works…

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**Author:** ![TravisA9](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/travisa9/32/357_2.png) [@TravisA9](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/TravisA9)\
**Post date:** [January 9, 2017, 4:56pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/improve-contrast-in-docs-julialang-org-menu/1370/3 "2017-01-09T16:56:14Z")

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Good point!

…and on a somewhat unrelated thought, it would be nice to be able to do a key word search or something like that to find packages for specific purposes. Last night, I noticed that comments of one package author that didn’t know that another similar package was being developed. I have found myself reading through the “1226 registered packages” listing to see if packages exist for one purpose or another.

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**Author:** ![TravisA9](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/travisa9/32/357_2.png) [@TravisA9](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/TravisA9)\
**Post date:** [January 9, 2017, 5:03pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/improve-contrast-in-docs-julialang-org-menu/1370/4 "2017-01-09T17:03:32Z")

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Just a thought… although at the moment I am a bit busy to offer my help on this. Since many of julia’s users are into data science, it would be pretty useful and impressive IMO to have something like a D3 visualization of the packages in some sort of cluster-layout. I was thinking that the packages could be clustered based on the vocabulary found in the packages or their documentation.

Sorry, I guess this is getting off the original topic here.

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**Author:** ![mike](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/mike/32/39_2.png) [@mike](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mike)\
**Post date:** [January 9, 2017, 8:06pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/improve-contrast-in-docs-julialang-org-menu/1370/5 "2017-01-09T20:06:05Z")

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> [@TravisA9](#):
>
> The problem is that the text is light gray and the background is a slightly lighter gray.

Agreed. The current style used by Documenter is just carried over from the original Sphinx theme, and I’m currently working on making it a bit more readable since the colours are indeed slightly difficult to read at times.

> [@cormullion](#):
>
> Also, I think there’s too little hierarchical structure, i.e. there are 65 top-level items including some ‘apparent’ duplications (eg two “Strings”). But I think changes are already in the works…

Yes, changes to how we display the nav menu are also in the works; the current theme doesn’t really handle deeply nested content that well I think. Being able to expand/collapse different parts of the tree would go a long way to making it more manageable I think.

Anyone will any other feedback on these kinds of things are more than welcome to add their suggestions here (or on the Documenter issue tracker) and I’ll try to incorporate them if possible.

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**Author:** ![felix](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/felix/32/604_2.png) [@felix](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/felix)\
**Post date:** [January 10, 2017, 2:22pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/improve-contrast-in-docs-julialang-org-menu/1370/6 "2017-01-10T14:22:08Z")

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Would it be possible to include some version navigation? Google often takes me to `en/release-0.4/manual/...`, and usually I want to go to `en/stable/manual/...` instead. It would be cool if there were a link/button/menu to choose the version.

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**Author:** ![cormullion](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/cormullion/32/49131_2.png) [@cormullion](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/cormullion)\
**Post date:** [January 10, 2017, 3:45pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/improve-contrast-in-docs-julialang-org-menu/1370/7 "2017-01-10T15:45:36Z")

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This one has a version selector:

[http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/](http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/)

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**Author:** ![ChrisRackauckas](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/chrisrackauckas/32/77_2.png) [@ChrisRackauckas](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ChrisRackauckas)\
**Post date:** [January 10, 2017, 4:18pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/improve-contrast-in-docs-julialang-org-menu/1370/8 "2017-01-10T16:18:18Z")

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> [@cormullion](#):
>
> This one has a version selector:

And should get translation selections! I think the translation selection widget should just be in the same spot:

> <https://github.com/JuliaDocs/Documenter.jl/issues/297>
>
> While having two badges works, the ideal case would be to have the ability to sw…itch between versions of documentation via a menu. By allowing a full menu, this would allow choices beyond \`Stable\` and \`Latest\`. This can be good for keeping older versions of docs for backwards compatibility, or having documentation translated in other languages. Since Julia is already very widely used in places where English is not the main language, it is and will continue to be very important that we support translated documentation.
> 
> Maybe @Ismael-VC might have some good ideas for how to implement this. My idea would just be to let the package developer use different Markdown files for the translated files, and have a way of specifying the different kinds of docs. One way to implement this would be to allow one higher level in "pages" where we can specify the Markdown files for building the different versions/translations. 
> 
> Here are screenshots of examples from the Julia website (how they show translations) and the Julia documentation (how they show different versions). Something like this could be used for both translations and versions, and it would set Julia documentation apart from other languages.
> 
> !\[julialangsite\](https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/1814174/19095766/b073e4d8-8a4c-11e6-8044-a411112afb11.PNG)
> 
> !\[juliadocs\](https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/1814174/19095767/b076e052-8a4c-11e6-9e77-acd6f9fcd4a4.PNG)

(slightly offtopic, but I think something that should be brought to light)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![TravisA9](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/travisa9/32/357_2.png) [@TravisA9](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/TravisA9)\
**Post date:** [January 10, 2017, 4:23pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/improve-contrast-in-docs-julialang-org-menu/1370/9 "2017-01-10T16:23:37Z")

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I don’t think anything complicated needs done to improve the contrast but here are a couple of simple options.

If you want to change the background, just changing nav.toc { background-color: #fcfcfc; } is an option that makes a huge difference without investing much time. The question is what color should be applied?

Alternatively the text color in both the menu items and sub-items could be changed with this:  
nav.toc ul { color: #b3b3b3; }  
no need to change the sub items because they inherit their color property  
nav.toc ul .internal a { color: inherit; }

I really like to use the controls in the browser tools to play around with the colors before committing to anything (Most probably know this but just press Ctrl + shift + i to open the developer tools and play with the styles).

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**Author:** ![dpsanders](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/dpsanders/32/3573_2.png) [@dpsanders](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/dpsanders)\
**Post date:** [January 10, 2017, 4:36pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/improve-contrast-in-docs-julialang-org-menu/1370/10 "2017-01-10T16:36:41Z")

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Should this be the one linked from [www.julialang.org](http://www.julialang.org) ?

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**Author:** ![cormullion](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/cormullion/32/49131_2.png) [@cormullion](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/cormullion)\
**Post date:** [January 10, 2017, 4:43pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/improve-contrast-in-docs-julialang-org-menu/1370/11 "2017-01-10T16:43:46Z")

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It’s been noted before that “latest” is misleading, because “in development” or “currently not 100% ready for production use” might be more accurate descriptions. ([Rename "latest" to "development" · Issue #337 · JuliaDocs/Documenter.jl · GitHub](https://github.com/JuliaDocs/Documenter.jl/issues/337)) Probably sticking with stable 0.5 would be better for end users…

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**Author:** ![mortenpi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/mortenpi/32/158_2.png) [@mortenpi](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mortenpi)\
**Post date:** [January 16, 2017, 6:59pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/improve-contrast-in-docs-julialang-org-menu/1370/12 "2017-01-16T18:59:56Z")

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I’d propose the following to help with the contrast:

 ![](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/original/3X/9/f/9f51d3791b849b51b66524869da85bbbd6339679.png)

The items with a darker background are the ones with mouseover.

[Here are the changes to the style](https://github.com/mortenpi/Documenter.jl/commit/7e465d2a5658f0627bb53c1dcccf4eff25939a17) and [an example full site build](http://mortenpi.eu/Documenter.jl/fix-style/).