On Mon, Jan 17, 2005 at 09:36:47PM -0800, Aaron Shi wrote:
[...]

Aaron, could you please subscribe to the www-redesign@g.o mailinglist
(www-redesign-subscribe@g.o) and continue all website
redesign-related dicussions there? As you see we have some quite active
people working on things, and having me playing relay host is a waste of
time :)

> Hi Sven,
> 
> Happy new year!
> 
> The hard disk migration was fine, but a faulty wall socket at home fried my
> mainboard and the computer shop that I go to didn't open until a few days
> after the new year.  All is well now, but I did have a lot of catch up to do
> as far as work and school goes since they both rely on the computer.  
> 
> Anyhow, the stuff that Michael was basing his work on was the really old
> stuff from last November.  I had it practically redone during December, but
> haven't had a chance to upload it.  I'm sorry I wasn't able to do it sooner.
> 
> He must've played around with something that broke the layout in IE 6...some
> elements on the page moves if you mouseover links on the navigation bar.
> The old stuff did have minor IE problems which were hackfixed in the
> November version, so it's not surprising that changes could throw things
> off.  The new stuff that I uploaded today should be more robust and it
> should provide a good base for expansions. =)
> 
> I like what Michael's doing, but I'm a bit worried about a few things that
> he's doing.  Namely, things like changing CSS classes/ids from what make
> logical sense to something that doesn't, e.g. the news wrapper div #news to
> #main.  The #news wrapper only applies to the What's New section on the home
> page for the purpose of selecting elements within and organization.  It will
> not be used on other pages as the tables, links, etc. in the What's New
> section is rather special, and selecting and applying style rules to these
> elements on content pages would not make any sense.  Another thing was using
> a span and a CSS rule to make text italic, but(X)HTML already has such a tag
> for the exact purpose: <em>.
> 
> Other than that, he's doing a good job.  I like how he centered the jump
> pads and used justify for the text (which has quirks when you try to print,
> but very negligible).  I have included these improvements into the version I
> uploaded tonight. ;)  I also want to say that it will be a good idea to
> limit the number of news items on the home page to two if they have
> summaries as long as the current ones.  It will make for a faster load time
> and less clutter.  It is also not necessary to have old news on the home
> page.  If we decide to have a long page of new items, the jump pads will be
> almost useless as they will be many screens down the page.
> 
> Besides streamlining the code and fixing IE quirks, there are also several
> other major improvements.
> 
> The CSS is now cascaded: global level (i.e. www/packages/bugs/forums, etc.)
> -> site level (i.e. www.gentoo.org) -> page level (i.e. homepage of
> www.gentoo.org).  This should make modifications much easier during
> development and onwards, as it will obvious where rules are located and most
> changes should probably only be made on the site/page level.  
> 
> I also made a prototype print CSS for the content pages, you can see what it
> looks like by going to the generic page in your browser and going to print
> preview.
> 
> To address the issue of font sizes, I've implemented a font size changer on
> the content pages.  The user could increase/decrease the content font size
> and the changes are saved into a cookie so that it will apply site wide.  I
> think this give users flexibility without compromising the layout of the
> pages.  Without this system, the user would use his browser to increase font
> size. The browser would increase all the fonts...making the navigation bar
> (and other) fonts extremely out of proporation, causing it to wrap in the
> lower bound "designed for" resolution of 800x600.  Text is still defined
> using relative sizes, so the user still has the option of using his browser
> sizes. =p
> 
> I am unable to test any of this on Konqueror as my linux drive is currently
> sitting outside the computer waiting for a usb case. :(  They work perfectly
> in IE6, Firefox and Opera though.
> 
> > about-v1 but without the search box. Chances are we won't have search
> functionality anyway.
> 
> Why not?  It's easily implemented with Google.  It practically indexes like
> 200,000 pages from all the gentoo.org sites already anyway.  Google offers
> an ad free, customizable search solution for 501.c.3 non-profit
> organizations. http://services.google.com/publicservice/login
> 
> Even in the worst case, we can always tap into Google by restricting queries
> to site:gentoo.org or whatever.  I use that for the current Gentoo
> site...some search is better than no search and I find what I need much
> quicker.
> 
> Btw, how the dev process going?  I haven't heard from anyone since sending
> in my info/keys last year.
> 
> I realize this is a rather long email, so I'm cutting it here. ;)
> 
>
> 
> The links are:
> Home: http://www.aaronshi.com/gentoo/index.html
> A generic content page (handbook in this case):
> http://www.aaronshi.com/gentoo/generic.html
> 

-- 
  Documentation & PR project leader

  The Gentoo Project   <<< http://www.gentoo.org >>>