Introducing the new symfony.com

June 16, 2014 • Published by Javier Eguiluz

Today we are proud to introduce the most significant symfony.com update in the last four years. As announced during the last SymfonyCon 2013 conference, in the coming months the official Symfony website is going to be redesigned section by section.

A bit of Symfony history

Although the symfony-project.com domain was registered on August 30, 2005, the oldest symfony website capture on Archive.org dates back to October 2005, when the project's main color was brown and the latest Symfony version was 0.4.1:

The original Symfony website as of February 9, 2006

The big change was introduced on March 2011 when Fabien unveiled during his Symfony Live 2011 keynote the new symfony.com domain, the new project branding and the new website design:

The new Symfony website introduced on March 4, 2011

The new website

Today we are introducing the third big redesign of the Symfony website:

The new Symfony website introduced as of June 16, 2014

As you can see, the new website maintains all the design and navigation elements that you know and love, but updating and modernizing them. Take a look for instance at the Download page update:

Comparison between the current and the new Download page

The new Download page drastically simplifies the original contents to help you get started with Symfony easily and as soon as possible. In addition, it tweaks and updates every single design element while maintaining the original look and feel of the website. As expected with any modern web design, the new website is also fully responsive, which greatly improves the browsing experience on tablets and phones.

The introduction of this redesign is just the first step into the whole website update. Some of the least visited pages haven't been redesigned yet and some planned new contents are still missing. However, before continuing with the upgrade, we prefer to receive first your feedback about this redesign. We are specially interested in reading your critics about lacking features or anything that just doesn't work or feel right. After all, this website is made for you!

Published in #Symfony

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Comments

Massimiliano Arione said on Jun 16, 2014 at 15:58

Finally a responsive website. Good work!

Frank Neff said on Jun 16, 2014 at 16:11

Nice one. Especially the better overview of (LTS-)versions and the different components. Like the responsiveness ;)

Wouter de Jong said on Jun 16, 2014 at 17:01

Little typo: It's the third design, but the second update of the website, isn't it?

Besides that: Responsiveness is great. I need to move around on it a bit longer before providing usefull feedback.

Javier Eguiluz Certified said on Jun 16, 2014 at 17:14

@Wouter fixed the typo about the number of updates/redesigns. Take your time to provide us feedback about the new website. We are eagerly waiting for it :)

Hugo Hamon Certified said on Jun 16, 2014 at 17:59

Great work! Thanks Javier :)

troudbal said on Jun 16, 2014 at 19:28

Hello, no PDF documentation downloadable for 2.5 Reference and Bundles books ? Pleaaaaaase, need them, no Internet at work !

Thanks :-)

Stephan Vierkant said on Jun 16, 2014 at 21:15

Nice! One suggestion: make it wider than just 970px. I've installed Stylebot to make it 1300px wide.

Javier Eguiluz Certified said on Jun 17, 2014 at 06:27

@Stephan since we use Bootstrap 3, at first we used a fourth CSS breakpoint for large desktops. However, we didn't like at all the ultra-wide design and for that reason we limited the maximum page width to the classic 970px.

Anyway, once we tweak and polish the current redesign, we'll reconsider again introducing the design for large desktops. Thanks for your suggestion!

Dirk Luijk said on Jun 17, 2014 at 07:51

I like the new design, great work!

'lg' screen support (wide design) would be nice
I think the top menu item's should be more justified on 'lg' and 'md', there's a lot of whitespace now. Maybe justify it fully, like in the old design?
I miss the old typography (like the non-italic headers over the italic headers, these are new?). Some headers are instead of Georgia.
A slideshow on home (like before) would be great. Maybe take a look at Flexslider 2?

Fabien Potencier Certified said on Jun 17, 2014 at 08:15

#10

@troudbal The PDF were available but the select box was not updated. That's fixed now.

Chris Sedlmayr said on Jun 17, 2014 at 08:30

#11

Good job!

I like that you have dropped the slideshow on the homepage, shows that you know what your main message is. Generally cleaner, but agree I would like a wider breakpoint.

Peter Kokot said on Jun 17, 2014 at 14:12

#12

I love it. Very nice.

Max101 said on Jun 17, 2014 at 14:26

#13

I guess I have to disagree with the masses. I dont like how there is no border on any container and the plain white on black approach does not look professional enough.

Gaurav Kumar Singh said on Jun 17, 2014 at 14:56

#14

great

Alessandro Cipriano said on Jun 17, 2014 at 15:23

#15

Nice. However it could be better if it was still possible to download the last symfony releases, in order to allow the project preparation made by Netbeans (it requires the ZIP file somewhere in the PC).

Javier Eguiluz Certified said on Jun 17, 2014 at 18:16

#16

@Alessandro, all the past Symfony versions are still available to download. However, in the Download page we only show the latest version: http://symfony.com/download?v=Symfony_Standard_Vendors_2.5.0.zip

If you set another version number in that URL, you can download the ZIP for any version. I know it's a bit "hackish" to download specific Symfony versions that way, but we'll wait for more complaints before reintroducing the select list.

Yosvel Quintero Arguelles said on Jun 18, 2014 at 00:15

#17

Congratulations, it is awesome the good work you are doing!!

Alessandro Cipriano said on Jun 18, 2014 at 07:43

#18

I retire my complaint, the site is beatiful as it is now. I should have realized by myself how to get the old installation files!

Anjana Silva said on Jun 18, 2014 at 08:28

#19

Wonderful piece of work!

Richard van Laak said on Jun 19, 2014 at 08:40

#20

Great work! Love it already

Doug Hayward said on Jun 19, 2014 at 10:57

#21

The new site is very nice but I have one small issue. The fixed bar at the top is rather large on mobile, especially when filling in forms such as .. now. I can't help but think it could be halved in height and still be perfectly useable but not dominate my screen.

HTC one x

Ghost said on Jun 19, 2014 at 12:28

#22

Responsive is really good. Same remark about the fixed bar. Could be a bit thinner to read more doc :)

Damien Chiboub said on Jun 19, 2014 at 14:01

#23

It should be interesting to add to Symfony Project the most used bundles :

SonataAdmin FosUserBundle etc...

Thanks

Dirk Luijk said on Jun 19, 2014 at 21:31

#24

@Doug Hayward @Javier Eguiluz

I think this is a 'bug': the #header-bottom should be "top: 0" on "xs" screensize. It's now "top: 36px".

Dirk Luijk said on Jun 19, 2014 at 21:33

#25

There's also an issue with the SensioLabsNetwork bar in mobile browsers. Maybe hide it on mobile devices?

Darek Wędrychowski said on Jun 20, 2014 at 07:28

#26

That looks truly great, good job Symfony Team! :-)

Doug Hayward said on Jun 20, 2014 at 08:55

#27

There is now a big white bar above the nav bar. Also I think it would make sense from a user point of view if the comment box was below the comments not before. As it is currently you scroll down reading the comments and then must scroll back up in order to find the comment field.

soeng kanel said on Jun 20, 2014 at 08:58

#28

The new web look awesome ! symfony forum should update the same style.

Thanks for symfony team for hardworking

Piotr Gołębiewski said on Jun 20, 2014 at 15:15

#29

I just noticed the "floating menu" when you scroll down. Killer feature!

Michał Glajc said on Jun 20, 2014 at 22:04

#30

Nice change. Now it's looks nice on smartphone . In Community should be category " Links" (or something like that) with links to some usefull stuff like (for example) https://packagist.org/, http://knpbundles.com/,http://www.symfony2-checklist.com/

Wouter de Jong said on Jun 23, 2014 at 21:14

#31

Why don't you use the same style for the menu on mobile displays? I don't like the black nav on mobile phones and I think it'll not be very hard to make the new nav bar responsive.

Dirk Luijk said on Jun 24, 2014 at 11:15

#32

There is still an issue with the floating menu. When it become 'fixed' an extra padding should be added to the page (content_wrapper).

When you scroll down slowly, weird things happen.

Gilles Gauthier said on Jun 24, 2014 at 14:35

#33

Under chrome, impossible to selecting the scrollbar and scroll. Bug with the menu. Tested with others people.

Peter Thompson said on Jun 25, 2014 at 12:33

#34

I agree with Dirk Luijk, the behaviour of the menu bar is incredibly annoying while scrolling down the first part of the page.

Javier Eguiluz Certified said on Jun 25, 2014 at 16:02

#35

Thanks for reporting these issues with the new website. I've prepared a short clip showing the right behavior of the header and menu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l13IeL9WgUQ

Could you please compare this video with the behavior on your own computers and explain the errors with more detail? Thanks!

Alireza Aghili said on Jun 25, 2014 at 17:04

#36

I like it . Thanks, dude

Peter Thompson said on Jun 26, 2014 at 11:10

#37

@Javier: I think I am seeing the same behaviour as shown in the video, so perhaps it is behaving as intended.

My problem with it is that as I scroll down and hit the point at which the menu becomes fixed, the main content of the page 'jumps' up, and quite often I then have to scroll back up to read the bit of content that has just jumped out of view!

Peter Thompson said on Jun 26, 2014 at 11:15

#38

And just as an example, if I scroll down slowly from the top of this blog post's page, when I hit the point at which menu fixes, I instantly go from having the whole post title, header block, etc visible, to having the line beginning with "As announced during the last SymfonyCon" as the first content visible on the page.

Javier Eguiluz Certified said on Jun 27, 2014 at 08:13

#39

@Peter I now clearly understand the problem. Thanks for reporting this error.

I agree that the current behavior is odd because some content disappear under the sticky header. Fortunately I can confirm that we have fixed this issue and it will be online after the next deploy.