Sergio,

Thanks for reaching out. Not sure if we should continue here or via e-mail. If the new design was approved by the FreeBSD community then what say do I really have in all this? I am conservative. I am sure many will disagree with me. I type this on a 101-key Austin PC/AT keyboard. I think iPhone 4 was the best of all, that Mac OS X peaked at Snow Leopard, Apple is going backwards in terms of UI, and I'd rather see computer screens going back to 4:3. I like old music. I hate touch screens and non-tactile switches in cars with a passion. I am convinced that many modern design decisions are actually harmful. I'd rather live with as little design as possible.

Sorry, back to the new Handbook...

1. I don't like that contents are separated in two panes on both sides of the main content. I think this is a harmful decision. First, you are left with space too narrow for the main content. This reminds me of 2010s web magazine/news sites designs where 50% of the screen is wasted for ads and the main content is just a single narrow column of text. Next step here is that this narrow column forces you to split your text into shorter and shorter paragraphs to remain readable, until you realize each sentence ends up on its own paragraph like we're serving people with attention disorder. I don't think this is the right format for a book. We are not trying to grab attention here. Design should disappear and let user do his stuff.

2. Table of contents should be at one place. It's really strange that you click on a topic in the left pane, and then an update happens on the right pane all the way across the main text, but the context for both panes is the same - providing user with a ToC. Also, the right pane is called "Table of Contents" but it's ToC for the current chapter only, not for the entire book. Then you have "Book chapters" on the left - is this the full ToC? (Should "chapters" be capitalized?) I very much prefer the old system with just one ToC at the beginning of the book, as in all the books we read, or ToCs appearing at the beginning of the chapters. They shouldn't be all the time on the screen, pretty much like you don't have a ToC hanging out of your reference book all the time while you're reading it. It's not a brochure!

3. I don't like complex CSS getting involved at all. The less CSS/JS, the better. I appreciated Handbook being a simple HTML. I hate when web pages begin to hide elements, or things begin to slide, fold and unfold, text moving on the screen, and so on. I am here to read the book, learn things and do my stuff in the other window. Please make everything as static as possible. The less the UI interferes with my reading process, the better. This includes the two ToC panes that are scrollable. It's like reading a book with some kind of inserts. Do we really need the "top" button at the bottom of the page? Why would want to clutter our screen with that button if there's a Home button on the keyboard? Are you optimizing for tablets and phones? But most mobile devices can scroll back to the top, at least iOS can. We don't need another element here.

4. Interline spacing is not for a book - too much space between lines. Is that 1.15 or 1.2? I'd go back to the old format. The font is gray - why are we loosing contrast, what for? The font doesn't match the web site. Not sure which "portal" you are referring to. The hyperlinks are not underlined, why? I also think there should be a little vertical indent between paragraphs.

5. It will take me a really long time to sip through all the italics. Quick example: paragraph 2.2. Architectures are in bold italics. I can understand bold here, but why italics? Although I'd make bold a little less pronounced. It really screams.

6. The code snippet background color, e.g. paragraph 4.3.1. It was a pleasant almond in the old book. Now the background is black. You are inverting from grey text on white all the way to white text on black. My eyes are crying - why? I guess this was a simulation of a terminal window, but not all terminals are black. This inversion breaks the coherence.

7. Chapter/section/subseciton titles were dark red in the old book, which helped to "unglue" different subjects vertically, especially in a single HTML. Now they're all grey. There's a barely visible (actually to the point of irritation!) horizontal underlining in chapter titles, but as it's an underline it actually contributes to the vertical clutter.

8. Filenames were green in the old book, and now they are grey, but not only that - they're extremely bold. This one is controversial, but I really dislike jumping to that much bold in the main content - I think it interferes with attention and makes the text look incoherent, as bolded out filenames stand out from the rest of the text. With that much bold, and especially with main text being a subtle grey, filenames really grab too much attention and even compete with chapter titles.

9. Warning and note section titles are in the serif font. Why suddenly serif here? Don't get me wrong, I really like serif. I would switch FreeBSD all the way back to serif, I think it was really cool, different and, most important, pleasant for the eyes and easy to read. It showed that FreeBSD is not always chasing for the bleeding edge and that UNIX traditions are valued. But if we are switching everything to sans serif now so badly, then why this sudden move? We need a typographer here.