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Perhaps because I am used to the old style of Mathematica Documentation, the large thumbnails in the "Details and Options" section in version-11.1 Documentation look cumbersome and redundant to me. So I tried to remove them. But I did not find the code in the "Reference.nb" stylesheet that relates to these items.

So how can these thumbnails be removed? Thank you.

enter image description here

Actually I would like to completely restore the version-10 Documentation style, which I think is aesthetically better than the one in 11.1, but trying to do it by replacing version-11.1 stylesheet files with the old ones proved to be wrong.

Alexey Popkov
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User18
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    I'm afraid these new design elements are hard-coded into the Documentation pages and there is no way to remove them without editing these pages... – Alexey Popkov May 08 '17 at 12:07
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    What's very annoying is that if the kernel is busy, the button that opens the details section won't work. – Michael E2 May 08 '17 at 12:11
  • So it seems there is no good solution to it. Thank you all for your opinions. :) – User18 May 08 '17 at 14:50
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    I, too, find these thumbnails of the Details and Options section extremely annoying. Presumably they were added because new or inexperienced users would not click the Details and Options heading to open the cell group. Another instance of making things easier for new users at the expense of experienced users. – murray May 08 '17 at 19:02
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    @murray I totally agree; they are there mainly to get the attention of inexperienced users. Adding to the 'Preferences' panel an option to turn it off would be much better, I believe. – User18 May 09 '17 at 03:17
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    A lot of times at different magnifications the thumbnails look terrible or are cut off horizontally, bad design indeed – M.R. May 09 '17 at 04:23
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    I do not think that what you are asking for can be done in a reasonable manner. If there are things that you consider objectively bad in the new documentation style, why don't you send a report to Wolfram Support? If multiple people send well-written, reasonable reports (not rants and complaints!) then perhaps they will do something. (I also do not like the new style, and I pointed out several shortcomings to Support. One user's feedback won't have any effect though. They did fix the missing tutorial links in 11.1.1 at least.) – Szabolcs May 09 '17 at 10:15
  • @MichaelE2 There are also things that break when using On["Packing"]. (Visually, I do not mind the 'thumbnail'. It is only the broken implementation that bothers me.) – Szabolcs May 09 '17 at 10:21
  • @Szabolcs Yes,that's good advice. – User18 May 09 '17 at 12:31
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    @Szabolcs I did write a fairly detailed list of all the things I disliked about the new documentation style during the 11.1 prerelease. They basically ignored it. I really hope the OP and others send feedback to WRI about the awful looking documentation pages. – QuantumDot May 09 '17 at 22:20

1 Answers1

9

How to hide details and option thumbnails cell:

Shortly, we need to set CellOpen -> False for "NotesThumbnails" style(which is also done when the cell is clicked), but we can't do that on a stylesheet level because there is already code on a cell level for this cell and we don't want to edit all documentation notebooks.

The solution is almost the same as in Is there a way to make the "Details" section of the Documentation expanded by default?, only the style and an action are different.

  1. If it is not there yet, copy Reference.nb to appropriate directory in $UserBaseDirectory:

    styleDir = FileNameJoin[{"SystemFiles", "FrontEnd", "StyleSheets", "Wolfram"}]
    
    If[! DirectoryQ@#, CreateDirectory@#] & @ 
        FileNameJoin[{$UserBaseDirectory, styleDir}]
    
    
    CopyFile @@ (
      FileNameJoin[{#, styleDir, "Reference.nb"}] & /@ {
        $InstallationDirectory, $UserBaseDirectory}
    )
    
    SetOptions[NotebookOpen @ %, {Editable -> True, Saveable -> True}]
    
  2. Find "NotesThumbnails" style spec (Ctrl+F)

  3. Add an option:

    CellDynamicExpression :> Refresh[
        SelectionMove[ EvaluationCell[], All, Cell]
      ; SetOptions[ NotebookSelection[], CellOpen -> False]
      ; SetOptions[ EvaluationCell[], CellDynamicExpression -> None] (*1*)
      , None
    ]
    

    (1 - CelllynamicExpression seems to be too sensitive so we remove it when done to not interfere later)

Works even when the kernel is busy.

enter image description here

Kuba
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