OCaml.org Newsletter: November and December 2023

Community
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Welcome to the November and December 2023 edition of the OCaml.org newsletter! This update has been compiled by the OCaml.org team. You can find previous updates on Discuss.

Our goal is to make OCaml.org the best resource for anyone who wants to get started and be productive in OCaml. The OCaml.org newsletter provides an update on our progress towards that goal and an overview of the changes we are working on.

We couldn’t do it without all the amazing OCaml community members who help us review, revise, and create better OCaml documentation. Your feedback enables us to better prioritise our work and make progress towards our goal. Thank you!

This newsletter covers:

  • Learn Area: We made substantial changes to the Learn Area UI, introducing a new landing page and improving various elements on the Learn Area’s subpages. Work on a documentation search feature is in progress, and new documentation has been added or substantially improved!
  • Upcoming Dark Mode: We completed the UI designs for the upcoming dark mode and our Outreachy intern has started to implement the changes.
  • Announcing the Outreachy Interns: We’re happy to welcome two interns to work on OCaml projects!
  • General Improvements: As usual, we also worked on general maintenance and improvements based on user feedback, so we’re highlighting some of our work below.

Open Issues for Contributors

We created many issues for external contributors. The majority of them are suitable for OCaml beginners, and we’re happy to review and provide feedback on your pull requests!

You can find open issues for contributors here!

Learn Area

1. Redesign of the Learn Area

OCaml.org is undergoing an exciting transformation, and we’re thrilled to share some key updates with you. Our main focus has been the finalisation and approval of a new user interface (UI) design, aimed at enhancing your experience. This update isn’t just about looks; we’re ensuring the website is fully optimised for mobile and tablet devices.

The collaboration between our team and users like you has been instrumental in shaping the project. Your input and support have been invaluable, and we’re grateful for the community’s involvement in making this website the best it can be.

Our design system has seen several updates, including new components like a variable landing page button, diverse icons (including social media and OCaml icons like Dune and opam), enhanced text styles, updated color variables, and more.

We’ve completed the designs for all pages of the Learn area. Each page has been designed with attention to detail, ensuring consistency and coherence across all versions.

If you’re curious and want to take a closer look at the designs, you can access our Figma Design Files. Please be aware that the content shown on the pages is not always accurate. We aim to provide our designer with better content for the mockups and UI going forward.

The work on implementing the new designs for the light mode of the Learn area have been completed in December!

Relevant PRs and Activities:

2. OCaml Documentation

In November, we focussed on addressing and incorporating community feedback on the “Getting Started” documents. The comments and discussion on Discuss were so helpful. We encourage more of that!

We also worked on polishing “Basic Data Types” and “Values and Functions.” Plus the team has been working on new “Modules,” “Functors,” and “Libraries With Dune” documents, hoping to have it, and the ones in community review (below), published before the end of the year.

Relevant PRs and Activities:

We started opening issues marked with “help wanted” to enable external contributors to help improve the docs. The response has been overwhelmingly positive, and we’re thrilled to keep this up and make the OCaml documentation truly great with your help!

Upcoming Dark Mode

In December, oyenuga17 started to implement the new dark mode on OCaml.org. Plans are to complete and activate the dark mode based on browser / operating system preferences by early March.

We continuously merge small patches into ocaml.org, and you can take a look at completed dark mode pages on https://staging.ocaml.org. We placed a button at the bottom of the page to toggle the dark mode on staging (this is not going to be released, it is only a means for us to review the dark mode pages).

Relevant Activities and PRs:

  • Implement dark mode on learn area landing page - ocaml/ocaml.org#1836
  • UI design for dark mode on all OCaml.org pages, and resulting Design System changes

Announcing the Outreachy Interns

In November, we reviewed and rated the Outreachy contributions for the dark mode project and the GUI project and selected the two interns. @oyenuga17 is working with the OCaml.org team on implementing the dark mode, while @IdaraNabuk has been selected for the GUI project. Congratulations @IdaraNabuk and @oyenuga17!

Since the Outreachy application period ended in October, we list all the remaining pull requests done on Outreachy Issues in the “General Improvements” section below.

General Improvements

Most Important Changes TLDR:

Many thanks go out to the many contributors who helped improve OCaml.org in November and December. Find them listed below!

Relevant PRs and Activities:

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Wow, that’s a lot of great work!

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We’re a small team and couldn’t do all of this without the help of the community. :orange_heart:

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