Re: New proposed styling

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Olivier Thereaux <ot@w3.org> wrote:

>First, I do not think w3.org, although a very good site in many
>respects, can be taken as a reference when it comes to style.

Yes, it should; not in general, but for other pages hosted in or connected to
the W3C. In particular, we very deliberately try to follow the w3.org style
guides for things such as links.

I'm all for improving on the general quality of w3.org pages, shooting for a
slightly higher standard, but within reason (without necessarily referencing
this observation to your current redesign).


>I agree that arbitrarily setting the width of the window is not perfect,

For lots of reasons enumerated previously, I am absolutely and completely
against artificially constraining the width of pages. (And, BTW, duked that
issue out with G*d several years ago ;D)


>and will be trying other ideas (such as using a max-width in em rather
>than a fixed px width) before considering the changes acceptable.

Yes, use of units in px immediately lands you on the bad-boy-no-dessert list.


>That said, I have a hard time considering "re-sizing your browser
>window" as a standard. Print publishing I consider a standard. I may
>stretch to calling usenet and e-mail text width a standard.

I quite certain I should not need to remind you that Print != Web.

And the fixed width in email (and Usenet) is seen as a problem, just one that
it is not feasible to fix. Thus the _workaround_ presented by format=flowed.



Also, the new boxed design breaks the previous design for headers and footers;
which were designed to fade into the edge of the window and the background.
With the new boxed in design this just looks jarring.

(
  Improving the margins (which are a little too margin:0 in some places
  right now) in other ways would probably be usefull though; and a “boxy”
  design for the various subsections of the result pages would probably
  improve legibility. Both things are fairly minor and bugfix-ish in nature.
)

The fonts have suddenly become «fly-shit» (isn't that the term Nick? ;D) and
hard to read (as they usually do when “designers” get their hands on them).

The blue navigation bar looks weird; just screaming at you.

The bakground picture is of dubious value compared to a simple solid color for
the background (or even the original white).

The orange headings on white are hard to read, and the orange seems to be
picked out of the air (where do we use that color in our color scheme)?

The spec-alike is-it-a-title? GIF-of-text is redundant with the <h1> _and_ the
<title>, and it's an extra image, and a GIF-of-text (with all that implies).


And finally; we discussed changes of this type in a previous meeting — in the
context of implementing Tabtastic for result pages — and decided that we
should not make any such changes for 0.7.0.



Oh, and BTW, the checkin message with «futzing with new ideas for general site
style» for over 800 lines of diffs spanning 5 files would have got you shot if
it had been in Perl code! Check things in bit by bit so it's meaningfully
possible to revert each change, or to track down any specific problem.

- -- 
If you believe that will stop spammers, you're sadly misled. Rusty hooks,
rectally administered fuel oil enemas, and the gutting of their machines,
*that* stops spammers!                                         -- Saundo

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Received on Thursday, 6 January 2005 09:54:51 UTC