The New Agora Docs Experience
With the launch of the new 4.0 Video and Voice SDKs from Agora, we updated our documentation with a completely new experience for users. These updates provide new task-based architecture, runnable code, and step-by-step testing instructions to make it easier for developers to work with Agora.
Here are five big improvements in the new docs experience:
Easier to Get Started
One of the most important goals of this update is to help users get started with a working prototype within 3 minutes. The first part of that was to move all our “get started” tutorials into docs as Quickstart guides, with consistency across all platforms and products. This means that no matter what you’re building, you can easily find the guide you need.
Interactive, Runnable Code
The second part of getting developers up and running more quickly is the addition of interactive, runnable code. This is not only used in the quickstart guides to get people started fast — it’s used throughout all documentation to speed up the implementation process for everything you do with Agora.
Simpler to Navigate
Simplification was another core focus of the update, with the goal of reducing complexity. Less complexity means less friction throughout the docs experience, making it easier for you to find what you need to develop your ideas. This simplification was achieved in multiple ways.
- Search upgrades and improvements using Algolia.
- Task-based organization of documents. For example: Call Quality, Audio and Voice Effects.
- Unified navigation across Docs, SDKs, API Reference, and Help.
- Overview page for each product listing core features and functionality.
- Consistent left column showing all documentation per product.
- Consistent right column showing all sections of the current document.
- Consolidation of repetitive docs to make it easier to find what you need.
Improved Site Performance
The documenation tech stack has been updated to use the latest and greatest technology. This increased our page performance by 37%. And with an improved CI/CD workflow, we can be fast to iterate and make improvements quickly.
Open Source
To ensure quality and utilize the quick iteration process, it was essential to make our documentation open source. Now, every single documentation page has a “suggest an edit” button, which brings you to the GitHub page and allows you to create an issue. You can even submit pull requests to fix the issue right away and be a contributor to making the docs great!
While we’re excited about the new docs experience, this is just our first iteration. This new base will allow us to continuously update and improve the experience. Our goal is to make the docs experience as frictionless and insightful as possible in order to get you up and running quickly. So, take a look at the new documentation, and if you have any feedback or ideas for improvement, click that “Suggest an edit” button and let us know.
