Ask HN: How are API developers building beautiful documentation?
3 comments
Stripe has great docs, which are hand-edited results from Docco.js. https://stripe.com/docs/api
Mashery has iodocs https://github.com/mashery/iodocs
One thing I particularly like about Backbone's docs is that it has some executable code, which is pretty swank. Similar, but not API docs, but Marijn Haverbeke's book Eloquent Javascript has a built in console that lets you load and test snippets from the book. Cloud9 IDE built with node.js I think also allows embeddable executable snippets in the browser. It'd be cool to see more interactive api docs using similar techniques.
Mashery has iodocs https://github.com/mashery/iodocs
One thing I particularly like about Backbone's docs is that it has some executable code, which is pretty swank. Similar, but not API docs, but Marijn Haverbeke's book Eloquent Javascript has a built in console that lets you load and test snippets from the book. Cloud9 IDE built with node.js I think also allows embeddable executable snippets in the browser. It'd be cool to see more interactive api docs using similar techniques.
For Javascript I use JSDoc3 with a custom template which results in documentation such as this: http://datatables.net/docs/DataTables/1.9.0/ . Not sure how beautiful one could call it, but I get what I want out of it!
Is your template open source?
Is anyone using a tool or CMS to generate these types of API docs (single page w/scrollspy) or are they built in-house with a designers touch?
Would rather be focusing on content over rolling my own, so any help appreciated!