RE: [www-redesign] Current status

[Aaron Shi]

> > + ToDo: code html/css in a way that works.
> > This is how http://www.aaronshi.com/gentoo/ looks at the moment:
> > http://dev.gentoo.org/~neysx/images/new.png
> > FYI, the current design:
> > http://dev.gentoo.org/~neysx/images/cur.png (1)
>
> I know of this problem, but I wasn't expecting anyone to
> browse with such large fonts!
>
> The problem occurs under 2 conditions:
> 1) a browser using the Gecko engine
> 3) user-defined font size increase overrides browser default
> by 2 levels or more
>
> These 2 conditions have to occur simultaneously to cause the
> problem.
>
> For a font size increase of exactly 2 levels, the 3rd
> condition is that the browser width has to be less than 965px.
>
> This is the reason why I implemented a font size switcher on
> the article pages:
> http://www.aaronshi.com/gentoo/generic.html
>
> Users can increase the article text size, without using a
> crude browser based rule that leaves everything blown out of
> proportion.
>
> However...
>
> There are 3 possible solutions to this:
>
> 1) Decrease the number of nav items (i.e. to 4 or 5) so when
> window is narrow they won't wrap over.
> 2) Specify a very small default size so when people increase
> the font size it won't grow too big...however a majority of
> people leave the browser font size on default and to them it
> would appear small if we specify a small size.
> 3) Redo the layout.  The page is currently horizontally
> fluid, I'm sure we can make things like the nav bar and
> header vertically fluid as well.
>
> The first 2 solutions are not too feasible.  Solution 3 will
> be quite complicated which is why I didn't do it in the first
> place.  Since it has come to my attention that this issue
> might be affecting more people than I previously estimated, I
> better get started on it right away.

As I soon discovered, solution 3 isn't quite feasible either.  However, I
managed to make some adjustments and although it doesn't look as good as the
normal index (slight changes, can you spot them?), bigger user fonts will
work.  The layout is generally ok up to the font that Xavier had in his
screenshot (2 levels higher than browser default).  I don't see much point
in supporting 3 or higher levels above browser default font size.  At those
sizes they should just switch to the bare bones text version and blow it up
all they want.  Most web pages don't even look like web pages at that point.

Big font safe layout:
http://aaronshi.com/gentoo/fonttest.html

If anyone has better ideas/methods regarding large fonts and layout, please
give it a shot.  I think the best idea is to not tweak the design for
browser-specific user defined font size increases, but rather supply the
font sizes via alternate style sheets and cookies (like how the font size
changer on http://www.aaronshi.com/gentoo/generic.html works).  This way, we
have control over what fonts are increased, etc.  


> Glad to hear someone is working on the xsl. Once you have
> something and Aaron has some CSS for me to use, i'll start
> working on the scripts.gentoo.org design. All I can say is
> that it's going to be a fun job getting the layout looking right...

No kidding, after I implemented the above adjustments in Firefox it took
another hour to get it working in IE.  Then another 30 mins for Opera...the
only way to make the nav work in Opera after the adjustments was to float
everything to the right.  Weird as hell.

I think we should thoroughly test everything out in different browsers
before we use the CSS as a base to start on other things.  Some work arounds
will require a lot of work and we certainly don't want to be knee deep when
we realize it.


> One problem I've noticed with this design is that we loose
> our quick links in the footer like on forums.g.o, could we
> fit them in there somewhere?

Hence the 2 tiered CSS system.  Forums.gentoo.org can have that feature
implemented in its own sitewide CSS in addition to the basic look and feel
provided by the global CSS. ;)

Regards,
Aaron

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