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Improve column widths for TOC, Main content, and secondary content columns on the docs pages #8485
Description
The sizing of these content regions feels outdated and doesn't allow for an optimal reading experience.
It looks like a wall of text rather than an inviting or easy to consume article or documentation.
Goals
- Improve hierarchy
- Improve readability
Activity
alexr00 commentedon Jul 4, 2025
Moving to July
ntrogh commentedon Aug 11, 2025
Hawk Ticehurst (@hawkticehurst) I created an experiment to use the full width of the page to give the main content more space. WDYT?
https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-website/pull/2269
hawkticehurst commentedon Aug 20, 2025
Oops, so sorry I missed this!
But I'd prefer to avoid this approach. Making the core documentation width larger will hurt readability –– there's UX research that shows the ideal length for text content is between 60 - 80 characters.
I've been doing a lot of comparison analysis on other docs solutions to see if there's another solution we can take here. Guessing there might be some combo of adding more space between sidebars and content, conditionally rendering sidebars at different points, adjustments to color / font, etc. –– just need to experiment on the website now see what specific combo feels the best.
ntrogh commentedon Aug 20, 2025
Could we explore something like GitHub docs (example)? This makes better use of the whitespace by left-aligning the left ToC.
hawkticehurst commentedon Aug 20, 2025
Definitely!
sandy081 commentedon Sep 8, 2025
As part of issue triaging, moved this to Backlog