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destruk
Binge Watcher

SDK Wiki Pages?

Hey, here is an awesome idea!  Let's just change the entire layout and interface for the Roku Online Wiki Developer Documentation.  That's amazing!  And then let's redirect all the links to the old system to the new one so everyone is forced to use it.  Whatever will Roku think of next to make all developers' lives EASIER!  This is incredible!  Awesome job guys!
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10 REPLIES 10
destruk
Binge Watcher

Re: SDK Wiki Pages?

And then let's delete all the old links so any reference posted to this forum no longer works - https://sdkdocs.roku.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=1608549
That will be an unbelievable help to programmers on our platform. And the Google Cached pages need to be wiped clean too so those don't work either.  Excellent.
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speechles
Roku Guru

Re: SDK Wiki Pages?

Roku must have never heard the phrase "Too many cooks spoil the soup/broth!"

They don't understand the damage they are doing to their brand. They are hurting themselves by damaging their developers relations. They need to put their best foot forward and instead they always place their foot awkwardly and stumble around clumsily. It makes developers weary when the docs we rely on are played with in this manner. Roku are you drunk? A little hair of the dog?

It is like Roku is saying "YEP WE HATE DEVELOPERS F U ALL!" .. Is that what this is Roku? Do you hate us? Can you stop being so penny smart and pound foolish? Can you undo what has been done? It is really annoying when companies mistake horrible things as better. Is this the future? Is Roku even listening? Do they even care? Will they even respond? Do they have souls?

Once this transition is complete, we will announce the migration to the new site more broadly through our standard communication channels and promptly give the community a big middle finger.

 Features — Includes high-level platform feature overviews, bridging the gap between business and technical documentation. If traditional SDK documentation answers the “how,” the documentation in the Features section will answer the “what and why.”

Who asked for the "What and Why" to be put with the "How"? Why was this done. Was it to make it harder to read how to develop because now it is mixed with irrelevant babbling too? This is distracting when trying to code having to read around clutter. Rethink this decision.

Developer — Longtime Roku developers can think of this as synonymous with our old “SDK Docs.” This section includes getting started materials, technical implementation guides, troubleshooting tutorials, etc.

Yeah you might be wishing you had done less as your Longtime Roku developers will see this change as detrimental just as I have. You basically slap them in the face and tell them to like it or lump it. Thanks.


Whoever at Roku thought it would be smart to mess with things should've taken greater care. At the moment it is clumsy, awkward, and harder to navigate for developers than before. Way to go Roku. Slowing down developers and making them hate working with you helps your bottom line.

Side Note: Love the tiny font used on the side bar. Love the fact the font used is also thin. This makes it hard to read on the white background the page uses. Overall a nice suprise to see you can barely make anything out on that sidebar. The minimal use of Roku purple is also nice. Now it is hard to tell is this even a Roku website anymore? Notice on these forums the use of the purple banner with Roku proudly displayed at the top. Now contrast that with these new developer/document pages. Why it is white background with purple text on the header? Why isn't this a purple background with white text, like literally, seen everywhere else? The lack of purple clearly contrasts against Anthony Wood's (Roku CEO) philosophy as he proudly wears the colors. This page and its poor use of that color. Way to go. It now is harder to read, requires squinting and concentration to focus, and overall makes what was once an easy task several shades harder. A win/lose for all. Overall it is one step foward and five steps back.

Take cues from this: http://devtools.web.roku.com

That page is beautiful. Has the same goofy "WRONG" top bar. But that sidebar.. The sidebar. It follows the philosophy of being purple. It has a purple sidebar. Now why can't the header have that purple background too? Also make the fonts larger if possible. Make them larger so people don't need to increase the font size on their browser for your website. Make less work people need to do to use your resources. Please consider what has been mentioned in this post and let in sink in. Thanks. 🙂
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destruk
Binge Watcher

Re: SDK Wiki Pages?

Not to beat a dead horse 7 feet under after digging to 6, but Roku posted the notice yesterday, May 9, 2019
"Roku will slowly sunset the documentation pages that previously lived on developer.roku.com/publish and /develop over the coming weeks. All content from these pages has been migrated to the new site."

uh, that was done today for http://developer.roku.com/develop
So not 'over the coming weeks'

Way to work ahead of the curve.
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squirreltown
Roku Guru

Re: SDK Wiki Pages?

FYI the line to whack this dead horse extends around the block. 
It's been obvious for years that there are no designers at Roku, but I see it's now a requirement for someone's niece/nephew the website vendors too. 
Kinetics Screensavers
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destruk
Binge Watcher

Re: SDK Wiki Pages?

It might be a priority to at least put the example apps back online that are now inaccessible.  There were more than 70 of those to help developers with scenegraph.
You have 6 of them here -
https://developer.roku.com/docs/referen ... -videos.md

But the one for Labels is not available.

And why aren't they linked or checked into the same place as the "Samples" link on the left navigation bar of https://developer.roku.com/docs/developer-program which goes to https://github.com/rokudev/samples#roku-sample-channels ?
Where is the flow chart for your updates, or can you put the old pages back on so we can use those while you transition?  Is the forum thread on 'links to fix or amend documentation' simply ignored now while you wipe away what is there and start over with this new system?
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speechles
Roku Guru

Re: SDK Wiki Pages?

ByronHom, do you always just regurgitate things you read? Puke it back into the thread. Obviously without the Roku* in front of your nickname no one can take you seriously. Also looked at your recent posts none of which make any sense. So what we have here is just a mess.

Roku, Why do you hate your developers? Why don't you listen to them when design those pages meant for them? Why?

Is it nepotism and some child needed a job so why not let them redesign things on the developer portal? Is it supposed to look awful, be hard to read, hard to navigate and require more clicks than before? If so awesome they are doing wonderful. Maybe slow down page loading and throttle the page repsonses to slow everything down more. That would add to the frustration. Maybe remove more examples from the SDK. People don't really use those do they? Nah it is just clutter. Remove all that stuff so developers need to post here how to do things that were before covered quite clearly in the older SDK. Now the tools you provide are great dont get me wrong. Whoever did that did some awesome stuff. But whoever did the SDK redesign needs a few smacks with the cat-o-nine tails. The pain users feel using that portal should be passed onto whoever designed that fiasco.
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Komag
Roku Guru

Re: SDK Wiki Pages?

This page on "Expressions, variables, and types" has a bunch of extra \ characters which really messes up the code!
https://developer.roku.com/docs/references/brightscript/expressions-variables-types.md
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RokuTomC
Community Moderator
Community Moderator

Re: SDK Wiki Pages?

Thank you for your feedback. There are planned UI enhancements to the new documentation portal. We have integrated actionable feedback from this thread into our roadmap for UI enhancements.

"destruk" wrote:
Where is the flow chart for your updates, or can you put the old pages back on so we can use those while you transition?

You can access an archive of the old SDK Docs site as unstyled HTML here: Samples" repo in GitHub. Their documentation now exists in their README.

The broken links which you flagged in the “Playing videos” document have been updated: SDK documentation: links to fix, missing/broken/etc" thread. We will be actively monitoring the thread for the coming weeks and will respond in a timely manner to issues related to the new docs site.

"Komag" wrote:
This page on "Expressions, variables, and types" has a bunch of extra \ characters which really messes up the code!
https://developer.roku.com/docs/references/brightscript/expressions-variables-types.md

Thanks for flagging this issue. These Markdown rendering issues are now resolved.
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Komag
Roku Guru

Re: SDK Wiki Pages?

Except now the whole Brightscript language reference is gone! I can only see the Components, Interfaces, and Events, but not the language itself.

...and Depreciated APIs is broken too.
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