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timbojones's avatar
timbojones
Copper Contributor
Mar 06, 2023

"In This Article" takes up too much space in documentation

On my 1280px-wide browser window, the main content column of many learn.microsoft.com technical documentation articles is too narrow.  Code samples and tables (clearly designed for a wider column) get cut off and gain a horizontal scrollbar.  Besides the generally bad design smell of horizontal scroll bars, these sections are often quite long vertically, meaning that the horizontal scrollbar is not even available when viewing content near their top.

 

If I move the window to a landscape-oriented monitor and expand its width, the scrollbars disappear around 1660px.

 

IMO, the "In This Article" TOC is the problem here.  It is rarely useful. Even when it is useful, it creates an enormous amount of useless whitespace throughout every article relative to the useful space it occupies at the top.

 

The "In This Article" section should be either:

a) made collapsible such that it occupies a minimal amount of horizontal space

b) merged into the main column.

 

I've given this feedback on a couple of individual articles, but the problem is broader than can be addressed by the maintainers of any individual product or API.  I have yet to find a way to provide feedback to the designers of the generic layout of learn.microsoft.com.  If this is not the right forum, please direct me to one.  I am forced to "Choose a Label" from a short list, but none of them seem appropriate.

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