Category order in Reference page

[JetStarBlues]

Actual Behaviour

At present, the major categories in the reference page seem to appear in an arbitrary order...

They currently appear in the following order:

• environment
• color
• shape
• constants
• structure
• DOM
• rendering
• foundation
• transform
• data
• events
• image
• IO
• math
• typography
• lights, camera

Expected Behaviour

I think the groups should appear in some sort of order.

Option 1) Alphabetically

• pro: easiest to maintain (as new groups are added)
• con: not very helpful for a quick, big-picture overview
• this would look like:
  • color
  • constants
  • data
  • DOM
  • environment
  • events
  • foundation
  • image
  • IO
  • lights, camera
  • math
  • rendering
  • shape
  • structure
  • transform
  • typography

Option 2) Organized by theme

• pro: easy for user to get a quick, big-picture overview of what features are available
• con: harder to maintain (as new groups are added)
• con: subjective
  • I tried to come up with some kind of logical organization, but failed at this

[PseudoNerd]

In addition to the alphabetical order, can we have a specific order to the functions to each major category where a column only displays a specific number of functions and then moves over to a new column?

Would love to take this up.

[limzykenneth]

I think the current categories are probably going to be the highest level of hierarchy and further grouping them may not prove useful. I think the largest barrier to free navigation here is the amount of info presented initially and having a very long page to scroll through.

One thing I think can help is to have the categories be collapsible, similar to how openframeworks does it. That way it is easier for the user to navigate the hierarchy logically.

We need to think about how screen readers navigate the page as well though and I'm not experience enough to comment on that.

[manavsiddharthgupta]

hey, @JetStarBlues I would like to work on this issue. can you assign me?

[JetStarBlues]

Hey @manavsiddharthgupta,

I think at the moment, there are no clear next steps with this issue. Be it sorting, collapsible categories, another approach currently not considered, or keeping things as is.

I would ping limzykenneth for direction. If an approach is determined, feel free to take on the issue and create a PR.