ISIS documentation link can be old

[oleg-alexandrov]

Searching on Google for "ISIS documentation" leads to this:

https://isis.astrogeology.usgs.gov/8.1.0/UserDocs/index.html

This is version 8.1.0, which is two versions behind (there has been 8.2.0 and 8.3.0).

On the left there is a pane where versions are listed, and 8.1.0 does look to be the latest too.

I think that is confusing.

I am not sure what the solution is. Should there be a /latest/ page, which would always redirect to the latest version?

Should the pane on the left be sourced from a location that knows all the versions?

[amystamile-usgs]

Thanks, Oleg, for bringing up this issue. We are aware of these concerns. I am currently working on the ISIS documentation this week, so I will do my best to find solutions.

Regarding Google search results for ISIS documentation, we don’t have control over how Google ranks pages, so we’re unsure how to make the latest version appear at the top. However, if you go to the root URL https://isis.astrogeology.usgs.gov, it will redirect to the latest version. Additionally, there is a "Public Release" option in the left menu that takes you to the latest release. I agree that renaming this to "Latest" would make it clearer.

Unfortunately, each ISIS version's front page is generated at release time. To maintain a consistent menu across versions, we would have to manually update the HTML for each previous version, which would add complexity to an already lengthy release process. That said, during our current documentation sprint, I will see about manually updating the menu for previous versions and exploring options to improve this for future releases.

I am also working on a continuously deployed "dev" docs version that will stay in sync with the dev branch. Let me know if you have any additional concerns or suggestions for improvement while I work on these pages.

[oleg-alexandrov]

Good points. I think if there was a permanent "dev" link, such as:

https://isis.astrogeology.usgs.gov/dev/Application/presentation/Tabbed/jigsaw/jigsaw.html

which would get overwritten frequently, and would exist as an actual page, rather than a redirect, Google and users would have an easier time locating that rather than a precise version (which can be arbitrary, btw, as sometimes it produces 8.1.0 and sometimes 8.2.0, but I never saw 8.3.0).

Looks like you are planning something along those lines, which is great.

Renaming the "public release" link on left for consistency would indeed help too, stating either "dev" or "latest". Saying "public" is really not helpful since all releases are public.