New online documentation system for R2015a

Posted by Steve Eddins, March 25, 2015

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Earlier this month we shipped R2015a, the first of our two regularly scheduled annual releases. Typically, when there's a new release, I spend some time talking about features that interest me. The feature I want to mention today, though, is a little unusual because it benefits users who haven't even upgraded to the new release yet.

With R2015a, our Documentation and Documentation Tools teams have overhauled the online documentation on mathworks.com. We've learned a lot from your feedback since the last major documentation overhaul a few years ago, and we are excited about the changes.

I'll use the repelem reference page to show you just a few pieces of it. First, notice that the left-side navigation shows you the product (MATLAB) as well as several information categories (Language Fundamentals, Matrices and Arrays, and Sorting and Reshaping Arrays) that are relevant to repelem.

Next, notice the "i" icon to the right of the product name, MATLAB. Click on this icon to get to a standard set of product information, including Getting Started, Examples, Functions and Other Reference, Release Notes, and PDF Documentation.

The left-side navigation also helps you easily see and get around to all the information that's available on the page you're looking at. Below, the left-side navigation is shown directing you to information about one of the input arguments for repelem.

Now if you haven't upgraded to R2015a yet, and if you've tried to use repelem in your MATLAB, then you've already noticed that repelem isn't there. If you scroll all the way down on repelem reference page, it shows you why:

You can see that repelem is new in R2015a! Customers have long been asking us to provide this information on function reference pages. (Please note that the "introduced in" information is not available for all functions yet. It will take us some time to update every page.)

Finally, the new document system displays reference pages and other content very nicely on mobile devices. Here is a screenshot from my phone:

We'd like to know what you think about the new online doc. That would help our teams as they bring these updates to the documentation system that's included with the product. If you have any feedback you'd like to share, please leave a comment below.

Published with MATLAB® R2015a