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OCaml.org Newsletter: August & September 2023

Welcome to the August and September 2023 edition of the OCaml.org newsletter! This update has been compiled by the OCaml.org team. You can find the 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 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!

These past two months, our priorities were:

  • Learn Area: We're working towards making OCaml.org a great resource to learn OCaml and discover its ecosystem. We've focussed on getting the new Get Started documentation ready for publication, and we started work on a second iteration of the designs for the Learn area.
  • 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.

Learn Area

1. Redesign of the Learn Area

After completing the first version of the design in July, we started working on a new iteration that is more in line with the current branding of the site. Feedback from the team and users has been extremely positive on the UX (the structure of the new documentation and the layout of the pages), but we felt that the design direction needed to be reconciled with and improve on the existing designs of all pages. Thus, we are revisiting the designs' UI aspects in both light and dark modes.

Relevant PRs and Activities:

  • Continued work on Figma UX/UI designs for the new Learn area:
    • Continued overall Learn area UI design
    • Improved dark mode for the home page on mobile and made necessary text amendments
    • Designed mobile views for the search field with an open navigation feature and breadcrumb navigation
    • Worked on updating the design systems to ensure consistency between light and dark variants
  • Continued the implementation of new components for the Learn Area:

2. OCaml Documentation

Since August, we've focused mainly on the "Getting Started" documents, including a guide to installing OCaml, a "tour" of the OCaml language, and a tutorial to create your first project in OCaml.

Anticipating on our October update, we've just published the new Get Started documentation pages! :tada:

We still encourage community feedback, as we fully expect to iteratively improve these docs in the coming weeks, especially as they will now serve as the primary resource to everyone who wants to get up and running with OCaml.

Our focus will now shift to filling the gaps in the Language section of the documentation, starting with the Basic Data Types and Functions and Values pages, which are currently in the Community review stage.

Relevant PRs and Activities:

General Improvements

This month, we're welcoming 2 new contributors:

and welcome contributions from returning contributors:

Thanks a lot to all the contributors this month! It's lovely to see more and more people making contributions to the site!

Relevant PRs and Activities: