Www.rust-lang.org: add install to top nav

[mark-i-m]

Design Feature Request

Summary

AFAICT, the "Getting Started" page is only on the home page. I propose we add it as a link in the navbar at the top of every page.

Motivation

If new potential users cannot find this link, they may just give up.

Drawbacks

It would be an additional link at the top of the page. I think this is worth it.

Rationale and alternatives

This proposal is a simple change, which I think should have minimal disturbance of the current design.

Alternatives

• Add a link at the bottom of every page, say in the footer or as a last panel at the bottom of each page. Putting it in the footer might still be hard to find. Putting it as a panel at the bottom might take more design effort.
• Put it at the top of each page but not in the navbar. This might disrupt the current visual design and require some work.

Maintenance

None necessary

Unresolved Questions

None TMK

[ashleygwilliams]

@aturon i'm open to this- but i know the top nav has limited space. what do you think?

[ashleygwilliams]

(thanks for filing @mark-i-m !)

[mitsuhiko]

What if "tools" becomes "get" that has all the things on it (rust itself as well as the tools).

[ashleygwilliams]

i think "get" is very ambiguous, so i don't think i'd want that

[mark-i-m]

Perhaps "install" or "downloads"?

[nicoburns]

I feel like "tools" should become tools+download/install and include the top of the Getting Started page which has Rust installation (name of link to be decided).

I feel like the rest of the Getting Started page is a bit odd. It essentially duplicates content from the book (which everyone's going to have to read to achieve anything useful anyway). So I feel like we might be better off just linking straight to the book and removing that from this site entirely (until the book is merged into this site...).

Edit: And if we do want a really basic introduction on this site, then perhaps bringing back the code snippet at the top of the homepage as others have suggested might be a good idea. Some languages have tabs to allow multiple examples which seems to work quite well.

[mitsuhiko]

Not sure if useful, but something around download is most common:

• Ruby: "Downloads" in navigation, "Download Ruby" on frontpage
• Golang: "Download Go" on frontpage
• Python: "Downloads" in navigation
• PHP: "Downloads" in navigation
• Kotlin: can't figure out how to download
• Elixir: "Install" in navigation
• Swift: "Download" in navigation
• Crystal: "Install" on frontpage

[mark-i-m]

Kotlin: can't figure out how to download

Actually, neither can I... even after googling it... Perhaps a good example to _not_ emulate :stuck_out_tongue:

[nicoburns]

Kotlin: can't figure out how to download

Actually, neither can I... even after googling it... Perhaps a good example to _not_ emulate 😛

I wonder if this is a case of "Install it using the JetBrains IDE", which most of their target market already has. Still not great but it might explain it.

[lbolla]

I think a "Download" and a "Manual" link/button in the front page are a must. A good chunk of people visiting the website will be familiar with the language: they won't read blurbs, they'll just want links to download new releases and read the docs.

[ashleygwilliams]

ok, as an action item for this i will add an install link to the top nav (downloads is not... quite right here, and we use install in other places.) if there are other issues that came out of this that aren't addressed by that action, please file other issues (not because i disagree, but just so i can make sure to keep track). i'll open a PR for this shortly.