New landing page

[mjpost]

I told gpt-5.6-sol to design a new landing page.

Please implement a modernization and improvement of the Anthology landing page (https://github.com//issues/7605). There are some ideas in this thread (https://github.com//pull/4037), in particular this comment (https://github.com//pull/4037#issuecomment-3138095965). We want something that provides access to all volumes and doesn't hide things but improves the aesthetics of the current landing page, which has a very wide table. After the implementation, build the local preview and display it for me.

Would close #7605.

[github-actions]

Build successful. Some useful links:

• Complete site preview: https://preview.aclanthology.org/landing-page
• Potential changes of interest:

This preview will be removed when the branch is merged.

[mjpost]

Hmm, not a fan of this first iteration. I left it way too underspecified.

Okay, I looked at the page, and I like a lot of it: the venue filter, the new stats. But it feels too industrial, having lost a lot of the warmth of the current page, and it also takes a ton of vertical space. It feels a bit too modern. I would like something closer to the older feel and compactness, but with the features I requested.

[mjpost]

Still too wide, industrial, and monochrome. Too new. Loses the warmth of the old. Why is there a duplicate search bar?

[mjpost]

This version, I actually am starting to like:

[mjpost]

A little more fiddling, consolidating and reducing wasted vertical space

[mjpost]

All right, final change for the night. It's a little tighter, with some dead space removed, and the filter bar consolidated. I...kind of like it.

[mjpost]

Side-by-side front page blocking:

[mbollmann]

No time to look at the implementation right now, but visually that's not too far from what I once had in mind. Maybe there could be a block at the top of the list which in the beginning, as long as the user doesn't filter anything, shows the most recently ingested venues?

[nschneid]

venue names (otherwise might be construed as author names)

[mjpost]

I had that but it cropped the ellipses on mobile...

[mbollmann]

"*" in the search bar? Right now it only matches *SEM.

That's not the most intuitive IMO, and would require that the asterisk works in other contexts too (e.g. "*CL"), otherwise I'd find that more confusing.

[nschneid]

If "*" is an option it should be explained, e.g. "* to list all venues". But I'm not sure it's worth the extra complexity.

[nschneid]

Playing with the current preview, I like the "*" feature—makes me feel like a power user. :) Probably not something most users want, especially on mobile, so I'd lean against including a link that they might accidentally click.

How about instead of "Search 515 names...", the make the search box text "Search 515 venue names ('*' to list all)".

[mjpost]

I'm not sure how to balance all these factors. I can't see how to fit in space to describe all this behavior. Maybe it's fine to have * as an Easter egg? Longer default text doesn't really fit in the search box.

We could do an expansion at the bottom, yes, but you can see someone noticing all the matches when they type 'e', and wondering if * works, and then suggesting this to us like we hadn't thought of it. The search box is the more natural place to get all venues.

Another idea is to add a right-aligned "All" link in the search box that does this, I guess, but this also runs into the space issue on mobile.

[mbollmann]

Idk, I still feel like an expansion at the bottom is the most natural way. I don’t like in the current preview that I can type "*" to list all, but "*CL" matches nothing.

[mbollmann]

The asterisk also tends to be more awkward to type on mobile.

[nschneid]

There's room at the narrowest width:

Some awkwardness at intermediate widths when there is more to the left/right of the search box, but if the text occasionally overflows I don't think that's a huge problem.

People might try to do other things with '*' and discover it doesn't work—not the end of the world.

[mbollmann]

People might try to do other things with '*' and discover it doesn't work—not the end of the world.

Bad UX for no reason, in my world. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[nschneid]

complete

[nschneid]

Do we want to wait a few days before rolling it out? Invite our friends/Exec+ to take a sneak peak, check compatibility across browsers, see if they uncover any critical issues?

[mjpost]

Yes, this is just a draft, feel free to comment, and we'll update the date before publishing.

[mjpost]

The tops of the venue acronym and full name seem to be aligned; it would be better if they were baseline-aligned.

Fixed.

How about switching to a square, ▪, which also echoes the shape of the ACL icon:

Now that you mention it, I can't unsee it. I can still generate the icon version, but I like this a lot.

Clicking an ellipsis button causes the text to jut out on the left.

Fixed.

[mjpost]

Trying this out

[nschneid]

Eh...neither love it nor hate it. We don't publish posts very often so I guess it makes sense to expose one if we do, for 45 days. But it takes a chunk of the first impression of the page on mobile. What about putting it below SIGs, so less obvious but visible to those who scroll through the whole page?

[mjpost]

First feedback from the Exec was confusion about what the blocks are. One suggestion was to label the sections; another was to remove the "new" section and just have those volumes appear in their sorted order.

Proposals:

1. We get rid of the "new" section, and just fold new volumes into where they would appear naturally (including our approach to display non-top-level-but-new volumes). This leaves two sections: flagship, everything else, plus workshops at the bottom
2. (1), but we just have a single section instead of setting flagship ones apart
3. We just label the sections

My preferences is 1 > 2 >> 3.

[nschneid]

The thing I like about the recent section is that it includes non-top-level venues. What would it look like with labeled sections? The labels could be subtle.

[mjpost]

I like the presence of non-standard, updated venues placed at the top, too. However, it may also introduce confusion as to why there are highlighted years there, but also elsewhere.

[nschneid]

What about something like

[mjpost]

One option for labels. I don't like the terms "flagship" or "other" here but am too tired to think of something else at the moment.

[mjpost]

Eh...neither love it nor hate it. We don't publish posts very often so I guess it makes sense to expose one if we do, for 45 days. But it takes a chunk of the first impression of the page on mobile. What about putting it below SIGs, so less obvious but visible to those who scroll through the whole page?

I kind of think the rareness of this argues for fronting it. If we take the time to write something, we should put it in front of people so they see it.

[nschneid]

I think this looks OK. The labels shouldn't be so tiny they make you squint.

[nschneid]

And "Other major venues" for the 3rd category