[www-redesign] Current status

[www-redesign] Current status

[Sven Vermeulen]

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Okay, it's quite difficult to keep this one alive, but I'll try anyhow :)

Aaron, you told me that the design put online at
http://www.siphos.be/~svermeulen/gentoo/index.html was quite different from
what you had in design. Is this still the case? If so, I'll need the
"better" design to be put in CVS.

We hardly have anything except this front-page design and that's not much,
although many can be distilled from it.

As you might notice at
http://dev.gentoo.org/~swift/www-redesign/roadmap.xml#layout we (I) still
need some designs for other reference pages. Really, this is designing. I'm
not good at it. I'd be *very* grateful if people take a stab at it.

My proposal for the structure used by the Gentoo website is online at
http://dev.gentoo.org/~swift/www-redesign/structure.txt, comments are
appreciated. You might want to take a look at other distributions and
community-driven projects to get an idea on how you'd like the website to
evolve.

We might also want to start looking at our XML DTDs, see if we can improve
the current XML formats, explain why certain tags are obsoleted and what
tags aren't, etc. This is the first step to the XSLT.

But mainly, we need those reference pages. Anyone with some knowledge of
layouting pages - go for it!

Wkr,
      Sven Vermeulen

-- 
  Documentation & PR project leader

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

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Re: [www-redesign] Current status

[Sven Vermeulen]

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On Mon, Mar 07, 2005 at 08:42:06PM +0100, Sven Vermeulen wrote:
[...]

Oops, forgot to include something a bit more interesting. I've tar'ed up the
current stuff we have (not much) and put it online at
http://dev.gentoo.org/~swift/www-redesign/redesign-www-20050307.tar.gz.

Wkr,
      Sven Vermeulen

-- 
  Documentation & PR project leader

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

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RE: [www-redesign] Current status

[Aaron Shi]

The design is similar, but there are problems present in the one at
http://www.siphos.be/~svermeulen/gentoo/index.html that was never present in
the one located at http://www.aaronshi.com/gentoo/  I have no idea how that
could occur other than if the html and css files/versions got mixed up
somehow.  I will mail you the right files in a bit as soon I get started on
the new reference designs on the roadmap.  Now that we have a roadmap, I'll
get started on those pages right away.

Can anyone with Safari or other exotic browsers hit print preview on
http://www.aaronshi.com/gentoo/generic.html and tell me if it looks the same
as in Firefox (which I'll be using as the reference browser)?  Printing uses
the print css which we could also use as a basis for the printable reference
page.  What do everyone think about color in print pages?  I.e. should I
leave the colors in print pages or make it all black and white (what you see
in the print preview right now is essentially black and white)?

-Aaron


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sven Vermeulen [mailto:swift@gentoo.org] 
> Sent: Monday, March 07, 2005 11:42 AM
> To: www-redesign@robin.gentoo.org
> Subject: [www-redesign] Current status
> 
> Okay, it's quite difficult to keep this one alive, but I'll 
> try anyhow :)
> 
> Aaron, you told me that the design put online at 
> http://www.siphos.be/~svermeulen/gentoo/index.html was quite 
> different from what you had in design. Is this still the 
> case? If so, I'll need the "better" design to be put in CVS.
> 
> We hardly have anything except this front-page design and 
> that's not much, although many can be distilled from it.
> 
> As you might notice at
> http://dev.gentoo.org/~swift/www-redesign/roadmap.xml#layout 
> we (I) still need some designs for other reference pages. 
> Really, this is designing. I'm not good at it. I'd be *very* 
> grateful if people take a stab at it.
> 
> My proposal for the structure used by the Gentoo website is 
> online at 
> http://dev.gentoo.org/~swift/www-redesign/structure.txt, 
> comments are appreciated. You might want to take a look at 
> other distributions and community-driven projects to get an 
> idea on how you'd like the website to evolve.
> 
> We might also want to start looking at our XML DTDs, see if 
> we can improve the current XML formats, explain why certain 
> tags are obsoleted and what tags aren't, etc. This is the 
> first step to the XSLT.
> 
> But mainly, we need those reference pages. Anyone with some 
> knowledge of layouting pages - go for it!
> 
> Wkr,
>       Sven Vermeulen
> 
> --
>   Documentation & PR project leader
> 
>   The Gentoo Project   <<< http://www.gentoo.org >>>
> 

--
www-redesign@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [www-redesign] Current status

[Michael Curtis Napier]

I'm working on the xsl at the moment. I'm trying to recycle the
existing guide.xsl but much of it will have to be changed to fit the
new layout. I have the main index.xml working if anyone wants to look
at it. The style sheet needs to be tweeked a little though.

http://curtis119.no-ip.org

Some of the other pages work but the formatting isn't fixed. About, Get
Gentoo and Social Contract(I added this to the jumppad). I'll be
working on this all week and I'll give an update as it comes together.


I have the handbook working a little but it's on a different virtual
server. I'll try to integrate it into the main one by the end of this
week so everyone can look (It's not very nice to look at at the
moment).


Aaron, are you planning on making this cascading stylesheet with multi
.css files permanent? I think it would be easier if we consolidate it
into one style sheet. Making a seperate style sheet for things like
"about" and "socialcontract" and "docs" and "news" would make things to
complicated when we could have one single css file that controlled
every page. A seperate one for "print" may be OK though. Thoughts
anyone?


--- Sven Vermeulen <swift@gentoo.org> wrote:

> Okay, it's quite difficult to keep this one alive, but I'll try
> anyhow :)
> 
> Aaron, you told me that the design put online at
> http://www.siphos.be/~svermeulen/gentoo/index.html was quite
> different from
> what you had in design. Is this still the case? If so, I'll need the
> "better" design to be put in CVS.
> 
> We hardly have anything except this front-page design and that's not
> much,
> although many can be distilled from it.
> 
> As you might notice at
> http://dev.gentoo.org/~swift/www-redesign/roadmap.xml#layout we (I)
> still
> need some designs for other reference pages. Really, this is
> designing. I'm
> not good at it. I'd be *very* grateful if people take a stab at it.
> 
> My proposal for the structure used by the Gentoo website is online at
> http://dev.gentoo.org/~swift/www-redesign/structure.txt, comments are
> appreciated. You might want to take a look at other distributions and
> community-driven projects to get an idea on how you'd like the
> website to
> evolve.
> 
> We might also want to start looking at our XML DTDs, see if we can
> improve
> the current XML formats, explain why certain tags are obsoleted and
> what
> tags aren't, etc. This is the first step to the XSLT.
> 
> But mainly, we need those reference pages. Anyone with some knowledge
> of
> layouting pages - go for it!
> 
> Wkr,
>       Sven Vermeulen
> 
> -- 
>   Documentation & PR project leader
> 
>   The Gentoo Project   <<< http://www.gentoo.org >>>
> 

> ATTACHMENT part 2 application/pgp-signature 


--
www-redesign@gentoo.org mailing list

RE: [www-redesign] Current status

[Aaron Shi]

I'm using multiple style sheets to take advantage of the cascading
properties of CSS.  There won't be a separate style sheet for each section,
that would defeat the purpose of CSS.  ;)  What I have in mind is a global
css for all Gentoo sites (if I recall, we were going to implement this
design on bugs/packages.gentoo.org  etc.).  Then a sitewide style sheet for
each gentoo site (i.e. one for www.gentoo.org, one for bugs.gentoo.org, one
for forums.gentoo.org...) if necessary.  So as far as screen CSS goes, each
page would have two that completes the presentation: the global one for all
sites and the sitewide one for the current site.  The basic look and feel
would be consistent throughout all the sites, but I'm sure each site would
have individual needs that would be better addressed via a sitewide style
sheet.  Right now there are a few lines of CSS links within a page, but
eventually (if we don't care about old browsers like NS 4.x) we can use a
"loader" style sheet and use @import to load all the CSS into one CSS file,
and just have that one file on a page.

I contemplated about having one giant style sheet, but with more than one
site using the CSS we would have, for each site, a CSS file with partly
identical CSS and partly specific CSS...all in one file.  What we'd have is
multiple such files for all the sites.  Eventually when small adjustments
are made here and there (i.e. site level adjustments), the CSS files which
are supposed to do exactly the same thing one some levels and specific
things on other levels will become inconsistent.  Also, if we have sitewide
requirements that need to override global rules, then with the 2 tiered CSS
it would be clear where to find the rules (global or sitewide file), but
with the all-in-one scenario the above confusion can happen easily.

Picture this: you need to make an override to a global rule.  Since each
site has its all-in-one CSS, rather than making an overriding rule below the
global rule, you could alternatively just edit the global rule in the file
and it would achieve the ends.  Then suppose another person comes along and
is making a new network site, he'll take the all-in-one CSS from the first
site, copy the global rules for the new style sheet and then adjust the
specifics for the new site.  However, the supposedly global rule was
modified by a previous person, so what he just copied over will be
inconsistent with the actual global rules.  If this happens elsewhere, what
we'd end up with a bunch of inconsistencies.  I'm sure mechanisms (i.e. the
CVS) are in places to prevent this from happening, but with the 2 tiered
system it would effectively make it impossible for this kind of problem to
occur.

Or, if we have all the the CSS for all the sites in one file, then we would
be wasting a lot of bandwidth transmitting unnecessary information. 


To recap the 2 tiered system idea:

- "Global" controls the basics of all sites within the Gentoo network (i.e.
the layout and basic look and feel of www/bugs/forums/packages/etc., to
maintain a basic appearance consistency)

- "Sitewide" controls all pages within a specific site (I'm sure the site
level CSS requirements will be quite different for bugs compared to forums,
so each of these sites will have a sitewide file that governs all the pages
within its domain)


The cascading I have in mind goes like this:

- Global screen (tier 1)
- Sitewide screen (tier 2)

- Global print (tier 1)
- Sitewide print (tier 2)

- Font size variation rules for article pages (tier 3, though I wouldn't
really consider this a tier)


Using a loader:

- Loader

- Font size variation rules for article pages

Insider the loader:

We @import the all the necessary global and sitewide screen/print files.


Hopefully this clear things up a bit.  I wish I could talk in person and
draw pictures and things. ;D

-Aaron



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Curtis Napier [mailto:curtis119@yahoo.com] 
> Sent: Monday, March 07, 2005 7:36 PM
> To: www-redesign@robin.gentoo.org
> Subject: Re: [www-redesign] Current status
> 
> I'm working on the xsl at the moment. I'm trying to recycle 
> the existing guide.xsl but much of it will have to be changed 
> to fit the new layout. I have the main index.xml working if 
> anyone wants to look at it. The style sheet needs to be 
> tweeked a little though.
> 
> http://curtis119.no-ip.org
> 
> Some of the other pages work but the formatting isn't fixed. 
> About, Get Gentoo and Social Contract(I added this to the 
> jumppad). I'll be working on this all week and I'll give an 
> update as it comes together.
> 
> 
> I have the handbook working a little but it's on a different 
> virtual server. I'll try to integrate it into the main one by 
> the end of this week so everyone can look (It's not very nice 
> to look at at the moment).
> 
> 
> Aaron, are you planning on making this cascading stylesheet 
> with multi .css files permanent? I think it would be easier 
> if we consolidate it into one style sheet. Making a seperate 
> style sheet for things like "about" and "socialcontract" and 
> "docs" and "news" would make things to complicated when we 
> could have one single css file that controlled every page. A 
> seperate one for "print" may be OK though. Thoughts anyone?
> 
> 
> --- Sven Vermeulen <swift@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
> > Okay, it's quite difficult to keep this one alive, but I'll 
> try anyhow 
> > :)
> > 
> > Aaron, you told me that the design put online at 
> > http://www.siphos.be/~svermeulen/gentoo/index.html was 
> quite different 
> > from what you had in design. Is this still the case? If so, 
> I'll need 
> > the "better" design to be put in CVS.
> > 
> > We hardly have anything except this front-page design and 
> that's not 
> > much, although many can be distilled from it.
> > 
> > As you might notice at
> > http://dev.gentoo.org/~swift/www-redesign/roadmap.xml#layout we (I) 
> > still need some designs for other reference pages. Really, this is 
> > designing. I'm not good at it. I'd be *very* grateful if 
> people take a 
> > stab at it.
> > 
> > My proposal for the structure used by the Gentoo website is 
> online at 
> > http://dev.gentoo.org/~swift/www-redesign/structure.txt, 
> comments are 
> > appreciated. You might want to take a look at other 
> distributions and 
> > community-driven projects to get an idea on how you'd like 
> the website 
> > to evolve.
> > 
> > We might also want to start looking at our XML DTDs, see if we can 
> > improve the current XML formats, explain why certain tags are 
> > obsoleted and what tags aren't, etc. This is the first step to the 
> > XSLT.
> > 
> > But mainly, we need those reference pages. Anyone with some 
> knowledge 
> > of layouting pages - go for it!
> > 
> > Wkr,
> >       Sven Vermeulen
> > 
> > -- 
> >   Documentation & PR project leader
> > 
> >   The Gentoo Project   <<< http://www.gentoo.org >>>
> > 
> 
> > ATTACHMENT part 2 application/pgp-signature
> 
> 
> --
> www-redesign@gentoo.org mailing list
> 
> 
> 

--
www-redesign@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [www-redesign] Current status

[Xavier Neys]

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Hi all,

My 2% of your currency:

+ Artwork origin is still unknown. As long as we don't know for sure we are
allowed to use it, we won't expose ourselves to legal action.

+ General note: html pages should make as little use of <img> as possible and
let the css add images whenever possible.
FYI, I just replaced line.gif(1) from the current pages with a border
attribute because it writes more bytes to the logs than it sends down the
wire. At 40,000+ hits/day on line.gif alone, it's a waste easily avoided.

+ ToDo: complete design, i.e. decide on how to display note/warn/impo
elements, code samples, tables, credits, handbook navigation...

+ 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)

+ ToDo: cleanup and coding of guide.xsl will be rather trivial once the above
has been completed. I have already made it a bit shorter(1) by factoring the
right-hand column that was coded twice and removed the <table> used to layout
newsitems.


(1) some changes are still waiting to be committed.


Cheers,
--
/  Xavier Neys
\_ Gentoo Documentation Project
/  French & Internationalisation Lead
\  http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en
/\

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RE: [www-redesign] Current status

[Aaron Shi]

> + Artwork origin is still unknown. As long as we don't know 
> for sure we 
> + are
> allowed to use it, we won't expose ourselves to legal action.

The following images have no usage restrictions.

http://sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=view&id=207618

http://sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=view&id=182475

http://sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=view&id=141927

http://sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=view&id=77962 

http://sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=view&id=147870

The following image has no usage restrictions provided that the author is
contacted (which I just did, waiting for reply).

http://sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=view&id=176068

There are two images unaccounted for, the background for Interact and the
image for Resources.  I can no longer find them in the database (might've
got lost when their database pruned etc.).  People with similar problems
have posted on their forums that one should seek the admin's help.  I have
contacted the admin to track down the original authors.  If the admin cannot
locate the original authors/permission info, I will find suitable
replacements.

All other graphics, icons, etc. are made by me.


> + General note: html pages should make as little use of <img> as 
> + possible and
> let the css add images whenever possible.

That is also my goal, the prototype already uses CSS to place most of the
images, but it can be further improved.


> + ToDo: complete design, i.e. decide on how to display note/warn/impo
> elements, code samples, tables, credits, handbook navigation...

I'm on it.


> + 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.

Regards,
Aaron



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Xavier Neys [mailto:neysx@gentoo.org] 
> Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2005 3:41 AM
> To: www-redesign@robin.gentoo.org
> Subject: Re: [www-redesign] Current status
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> My 2% of your currency:
> 
> + Artwork origin is still unknown. As long as we don't know 
> for sure we 
> + are
> allowed to use it, we won't expose ourselves to legal action.
> 
> + General note: html pages should make as little use of <img> as 
> + possible and
> let the css add images whenever possible.
> FYI, I just replaced line.gif(1) from the current pages with 
> a border attribute because it writes more bytes to the logs 
> than it sends down the wire. At 40,000+ hits/day on line.gif 
> alone, it's a waste easily avoided.
> 
> + ToDo: complete design, i.e. decide on how to display note/warn/impo
> elements, code samples, tables, credits, handbook navigation...
> 
> + 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)
> 
> + ToDo: cleanup and coding of guide.xsl will be rather 
> trivial once the 
> + above
> has been completed. I have already made it a bit shorter(1) 
> by factoring the right-hand column that was coded twice and 
> removed the <table> used to layout newsitems.
> 
> 
> (1) some changes are still waiting to be committed.
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> --
> /  Xavier Neys
> \_ Gentoo Documentation Project
> /  French & Internationalisation Lead
> \  http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en
> /\
> 

--
www-redesign@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [www-redesign] Current status

[Ian Leitch]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Michael Curtis Napier wrote:
| I'm working on the xsl at the moment. I'm trying to recycle the
| existing guide.xsl but much of it will have to be changed to fit the
| new layout. I have the main index.xml working if anyone wants to look
| at it. The style sheet needs to be tweeked a little though.
|
| http://curtis119.no-ip.org
|
| Some of the other pages work but the formatting isn't fixed. About, Get
| Gentoo and Social Contract(I added this to the jumppad). I'll be
| working on this all week and I'll give an update as it comes together.
|
|
| I have the handbook working a little but it's on a different virtual
| server. I'll try to integrate it into the main one by the end of this
| week so everyone can look (It's not very nice to look at at the
| moment).
|
|
| Aaron, are you planning on making this cascading stylesheet with multi
| .css files permanent? I think it would be easier if we consolidate it
| into one style sheet. Making a seperate style sheet for things like
| "about" and "socialcontract" and "docs" and "news" would make things to
| complicated when we could have one single css file that controlled
| every page. A seperate one for "print" may be OK though. Thoughts
| anyone?

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...

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?

Regards,
Ian Leitch
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=ESPU
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--
www-redesign@gentoo.org mailing list

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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[www-redesign] Current status

[Curtis Napier]

I've stopped responding to the gentoo-dev thread. We'll keep all 
discussion here.

Aaron, will you take a look at what I currently have up on the test 
server. Use my code as a base and tweak the css to your liking. I know a 
lot of what you see in my codebase is not what you would like to see but 
I made a lot of changes to make it work correctly and as easily as 
possible with the XSL template. For the time being let's stick to one 
css file.

Try to take into account the feedback we received over the past week. 
Use your own discretion and try to stick as close to your reference 
pages as possible.

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www-redesign@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [www-redesign] Current status

[Curtis Napier]

Aaron, can you make a custom button for the donate box? The crappy thing 
I have there now is disgusting. ;-)


Also, see how I'm doing the news items with divs instead of tables? The 
use of tables should be limited to tabular data unless necessary. If you 
want to play around with what I have there now try to stick with divs. 
If you we can't figure out how to make it acceptable that way we can 
revert to tables as a last resort.

Thanks


Curtis
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RE: [www-redesign] Current status

[Aaron Shi]

> I've stopped responding to the gentoo-dev thread. We'll keep 
> all discussion here.

Good idea, I completely missed out on that other discussion.  Did not know
that the redesign was discussed on another list.

> Aaron, will you take a look at what I currently have up on 
> the test server. Use my code as a base and tweak the css to 
> your liking. I know a lot of what you see in my codebase is 
> not what you would like to see but I made a lot of changes to 
> make it work correctly and as easily as possible with the XSL 
> template. For the time being let's stick to one css file.

This looks much better!  As I mentioned in my email to you (which I just
sent moments ago), I will not be able to work on the site until January.
That's unfortunate, but I'll try to keep up with this list.

As with the CSS, I remembered that I forgot to mention one thing.  I said
that the cascade will allow us to have a separate printable page (e.g.
http://www.aaronshi.com/gentoo/guidepageprint.html), but what I forgot to
say is that it'll also allow the normal page to look like the printable page
if you hit print preview in your browser (i.e. if you print preview
http://www.aaronshi.com/gentoo/guidepage.html it will look like the
printable page).  One of my prior comments about adding the printable CSS
line to make it printable is incorrect.  The line is in fact already there,
the only difference is that in the normal page we set the attribute
media="print" so it only takes effect in print.

I know in my reference pages I have a few lines for incorporating the
various CSS files, but in reality, we can use 1 CSS file to import all the
others.  Would this work?  Of course, very old browsers like Netscape 4 will
not be able to import the additional sheets, but then again they doesn't
handle much CSS anyway.  Really, the proper method is import, but I resorted
to linking all the CSS files individually in HTML so very old browsers will
be able to obtain the external CSS.  


Aaron

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RE: [www-redesign] Current status

[Aaron Shi]

> Also, see how I'm doing the news items with divs instead of 
> tables? The 
> use of tables should be limited to tabular data unless 
> necessary. If you 
> want to play around with what I have there now try to stick 
> with divs. 
> If you we can't figure out how to make it acceptable that way we can 
> revert to tables as a last resort.

I would say that since tables are used to display relationships in data and
there are relationships in our news table (horizontally: in a row the
date/author is related to the news posting and together this is one
instance; vertically: column of date/author, column of news postings), it
makes some sense to use tables provided that the posting is only a short
abstract i.e. a few lines long.

Divs would work, but not sure if it structurally makes sense.  If using
divs, we'd have to set it up like a table to get the vertical alignments
correctly.  One div per news item as a container, then date/author in one
div floated to the left (width specified value, so we don't get the
horizontal white gap in between this and the abstract) and news posting in
another div floated to the right (width auto).  Have not tried this but it
could work.  If anything funny happens e.g. the news items containers
overlap, the style="clear:both" br may need to be used.

Aaron

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