Improvements to the HDF5 documentation web interface

[epourmal]

Dear HDF Group Team,

I would like to suggest a few improvements to the HDF5 documentation website (https://support.hdfgroup.org/documentation/hdf5/latest/) to enhance the overall user experience:

Access to Development Documentation:
Please consider providing access to documentation corresponding to the current develop branch. It would be helpful if changes were easy to locate and identify.

Navigation Bar Redundancy:
The vertical navigation bar on the left currently duplicates the horizontal tab content, which reduces the space available for displaying function references, the Table of Contents for the User Guide, the Glossary, Specifications, etc.

Lack of Parent Page Navigation:
There is currently no way to return to the parent documentation landing page (https://support.hdfgroup.org/documentation/index.html), which can make navigation confusing.

About" Tab Labeling:
The “About” tab title is somewhat misleading. Renaming it to better reflect its contents—such as contributing to documentation or creating new content with Doxygen—would improve discoverability.

Full-Text Search Scope:
The full-text search is a great feature for searching within HDF5 documentation. Could you consider either expanding its scope to include wider web results or clearly indicating that the search is limited to the support portal?

RFC List Updates and Commentary:
The RFC list currently does not include the most recent documents. It would also be beneficial to include a comment or status section for each RFC, with links to the corresponding Reference Manual and related materials if a feature has been released.

Sandbox for New Contributions:
A “sandbox” area to preview new or upcoming documentation contributions (e.g., sparse data support) would be a valuable addition for both contributors and reviewers along with the process of submitting new documentation.

Thank you for your continued efforts and excellent work on the HDF5 project!

Elena

[loricooperhdf]

Hi Elena,

Thank you for your contribution! I separated this into sub-issues, and wanted to touch on some things that have now been addressed.

• Access to Development Documentation --> This was underway and has now been implemented. https://support.hdfgroup.org/documentation/hdf5/latest/ reflects the develop branch.
• Navigation Bar Redundancy --> Also fixed in develop and now reflected at https://support.hdfgroup.org/documentation/hdf5/latest/
• Lack of Parent Page Navigation is now In Doxygen, add a link (maybe the HDF5 logo?) to return to the top-level page of documentation #5491
• About" Tab Labeling is now Improve the About Page in Doxygen Documentation #5492
• Full-Text Search Scope is now Clarify full text search is limited to support site content #5493
• RFC List Updates and Commentary - I didn't make this an issue because fixing the RFCs is currently underway in the Documentation committee. We will add your thoughts here to our notes there.
• Sandbox for New Contributions is now Sandbox for New Contributions #5494

I'm going to close this main issue, and then we can work on the individual sub-issues since some are light and easy and some will require more effort from different people.

Thanks for helping out with ideas as we work through making documentation work better for the community.

Lori

[nbagha1]

@loricooperhdf are we good to close this issue?

[loricooperhdf]

Yes we can, since all the sub issues exist.