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Hi fellow webcoders :) |
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First I must apologize for if this has been already brought up, but I |
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have not been able to find any mailarchive for this list. Also, since |
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I'm not familear with CSV, I'm just looking the CSS file from |
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http://www.aaronshi.com/gentoo/ and most recent addition by Curtis, so |
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if some of these things is already changed in CSV I again apologize. |
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In any case, when I first visited these pages they where compleatly |
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unreadable to me. The reason for this is that for some strange reason |
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BODY has the highly inapropriate CSS of font-size: small. That means |
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that my correctly set up browser, with a fontsize of comfortable |
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readingsize, is suddenly compleatly ignored/run over by someones random |
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preferance. Why? |
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Who thought is was a good idea to tell me that "hey your are using a too |
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large fontsize, you should use a setting at least 11% smaller then what |
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you currently belive is good for you, no matter what size you are |
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currently using". Isn't this a VERY bad assumption o make? |
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Sure, it's easy enough to change the fontsize for me (albeight it might |
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get a bit tiresome to have to do it every time I visit gentoo.org in the |
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future...) but isn't it a lot smarter to start with the assumption that |
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the user actually is happy with his current fontsize and dont need to be |
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force to use smaller fontsize? If someone has their fontsize way too |
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high (or for that matter already way too low) isn't it a lot better to |
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have him/her changes their own preference settings to something that |
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suits them instead of forcing everybody else to have to change fontsize |
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_every_time_ they visit the website? |
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In short, can we please respect the visitors whishes and stick with |
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font-size:100% as the dafault for the main content of the site? |
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Next thing, that also severly lowers readability, is that there seems to |
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be no max-width at all defined for the textual content. Studies show |
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that once text-lines become longer then about 35em or 40em at the most, |
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readability (as in actually understanding what you read) drops like a |
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stone. Thus it is really good practice to make sure people can |
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comfortably read what you write by adding eg max-width:38em on Ps. There |
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is nothing wrong with allowing images/tables/etc to span a lot wider if |
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the user have the screenspace, but plain text should be limited. |
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Next reflection, closely related to the above, is that not only is the |
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no max-width, in fact the only forced width seems to be one that makes |
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sure the page is a PIA to read on anything that has less then a 800px |
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wide screen. Are we deliberately trying to piss of people on 640x480res |
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or those trying to visit on eg their handhelds? I know I won't enjoy |
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having a 4 screen wide page to scoll sideways on with my Symbian UIQ |
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smartphone when it could wrap the text just fine at 208px if it was |
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allowed to. |
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Surely we can manage to make a design that is a lot more forgiving in |
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the screenresolutions the visitor has access to and not have to do |
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really stupid things like min-width:770px on body. |
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In any case, I have also made a really quick proof of concept for how to |
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get away from the tablemess/abuse in the "what's new" section. It |
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especially improves readability in non CSS/table capable browsers. Since |
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I don't know what has been done sofar by others I didn't make a |
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compleate recoding of the page. |
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Opinions are most welcome / Stefan Huszics :) |