Gentoo Archives: www-redesign

From: Sven Vermeulen <swift@g.o>
To: Aaron Shi <aaron@××××××××.com>
Cc: www-redesign@××××××××××××.org
Subject: [www-redesign] Re: Status on Gentoo redesign
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2005 09:03:23
Message-Id: 20050118090855.GC11527@gentoo.org
1 On Mon, Jan 17, 2005 at 09:36:47PM -0800, Aaron Shi wrote:
2 [...]
3
4 Aaron, could you please subscribe to the www-redesign@g.o mailinglist
5 (www-redesign-subscribe@g.o) and continue all website
6 redesign-related dicussions there? As you see we have some quite active
7 people working on things, and having me playing relay host is a waste of
8 time :)
9
10 > Hi Sven,
11 >
12 > Happy new year!
13 >
14 > The hard disk migration was fine, but a faulty wall socket at home fried my
15 > mainboard and the computer shop that I go to didn't open until a few days
16 > after the new year. All is well now, but I did have a lot of catch up to do
17 > as far as work and school goes since they both rely on the computer.
18 >
19 > Anyhow, the stuff that Michael was basing his work on was the really old
20 > stuff from last November. I had it practically redone during December, but
21 > haven't had a chance to upload it. I'm sorry I wasn't able to do it sooner.
22 >
23 > He must've played around with something that broke the layout in IE 6...some
24 > elements on the page moves if you mouseover links on the navigation bar.
25 > The old stuff did have minor IE problems which were hackfixed in the
26 > November version, so it's not surprising that changes could throw things
27 > off. The new stuff that I uploaded today should be more robust and it
28 > should provide a good base for expansions. =)
29 >
30 > I like what Michael's doing, but I'm a bit worried about a few things that
31 > he's doing. Namely, things like changing CSS classes/ids from what make
32 > logical sense to something that doesn't, e.g. the news wrapper div #news to
33 > #main. The #news wrapper only applies to the What's New section on the home
34 > page for the purpose of selecting elements within and organization. It will
35 > not be used on other pages as the tables, links, etc. in the What's New
36 > section is rather special, and selecting and applying style rules to these
37 > elements on content pages would not make any sense. Another thing was using
38 > a span and a CSS rule to make text italic, but(X)HTML already has such a tag
39 > for the exact purpose: <em>.
40 >
41 > Other than that, he's doing a good job. I like how he centered the jump
42 > pads and used justify for the text (which has quirks when you try to print,
43 > but very negligible). I have included these improvements into the version I
44 > uploaded tonight. ;) I also want to say that it will be a good idea to
45 > limit the number of news items on the home page to two if they have
46 > summaries as long as the current ones. It will make for a faster load time
47 > and less clutter. It is also not necessary to have old news on the home
48 > page. If we decide to have a long page of new items, the jump pads will be
49 > almost useless as they will be many screens down the page.
50 >
51 > Besides streamlining the code and fixing IE quirks, there are also several
52 > other major improvements.
53 >
54 > The CSS is now cascaded: global level (i.e. www/packages/bugs/forums, etc.)
55 > -> site level (i.e. www.gentoo.org) -> page level (i.e. homepage of
56 > www.gentoo.org). This should make modifications much easier during
57 > development and onwards, as it will obvious where rules are located and most
58 > changes should probably only be made on the site/page level.
59 >
60 > I also made a prototype print CSS for the content pages, you can see what it
61 > looks like by going to the generic page in your browser and going to print
62 > preview.
63 >
64 > To address the issue of font sizes, I've implemented a font size changer on
65 > the content pages. The user could increase/decrease the content font size
66 > and the changes are saved into a cookie so that it will apply site wide. I
67 > think this give users flexibility without compromising the layout of the
68 > pages. Without this system, the user would use his browser to increase font
69 > size. The browser would increase all the fonts...making the navigation bar
70 > (and other) fonts extremely out of proporation, causing it to wrap in the
71 > lower bound "designed for" resolution of 800x600. Text is still defined
72 > using relative sizes, so the user still has the option of using his browser
73 > sizes. =p
74 >
75 > I am unable to test any of this on Konqueror as my linux drive is currently
76 > sitting outside the computer waiting for a usb case. :( They work perfectly
77 > in IE6, Firefox and Opera though.
78 >
79 > > about-v1 but without the search box. Chances are we won't have search
80 > functionality anyway.
81 >
82 > Why not? It's easily implemented with Google. It practically indexes like
83 > 200,000 pages from all the gentoo.org sites already anyway. Google offers
84 > an ad free, customizable search solution for 501.c.3 non-profit
85 > organizations. http://services.google.com/publicservice/login
86 >
87 > Even in the worst case, we can always tap into Google by restricting queries
88 > to site:gentoo.org or whatever. I use that for the current Gentoo
89 > site...some search is better than no search and I find what I need much
90 > quicker.
91 >
92 > Btw, how the dev process going? I haven't heard from anyone since sending
93 > in my info/keys last year.
94 >
95 > I realize this is a rather long email, so I'm cutting it here. ;)
96 >
97 >
98 >
99 > The links are:
100 > Home: http://www.aaronshi.com/gentoo/index.html
101 > A generic content page (handbook in this case):
102 > http://www.aaronshi.com/gentoo/generic.html
103 >
104
105 --
106 Documentation & PR project leader
107
108 The Gentoo Project <<< http://www.gentoo.org >>>

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [www-redesign] Re: Status on Gentoo redesign Michael Curtis Napier <curtis119@×××××.com>
Re: [www-redesign] Re: Status on Gentoo redesign Sven Vermeulen <swift@g.o>
Re: [www-redesign] Re: Status on Gentoo redesign Stefan Huszics <sauron@×××××××.se>