[Disclaimer: I am being terse. It is late here. Or early, as it were.] On 06/16/2014 01:44 AM, André Malo wrote: > Hi, > > * Daniel Gruno wrote: > >> Hi there, dev@ people (and docs@ cc'ed), >> >> For some time now, a lot of us from the documentation team have been >> pondering on making our site, well, not so 1990s looking and unappealing. > > +1 at the point. > >> >> We've had some input from various people over time, and together with my >> own thoughts, I've come up with a new core template that I plan to >> submit to our CMS system if there aren't too many objections. >> >> A mockup front-page featuring this new design can be seen at >> http://httpd.apache.pw/ (please don't start browsing the entire site, IT >> DOES NOT WORK, it needs to be behind our CMS system to be pretty and >> useable). >> >> And yes, this new layout will feature some changes: >> >> - News are placed in a carousel to eliminate the 'wall of text' we >> currently have. RMs will have to get acquainted with how to change the >> news on the site (which shouldn't be difficult if you look at the source >> code, you will still be able to use the CMS to edit it) >> - The menu is now a top bar instead of a side bar >> - Some menu items have been grouped together differently than before >> - The 8 bit feather has been replaced with the 32 bit one. >> - It's not quite as...blue >> >> Now, before half the team starts complaining that this uses HTML5, >> JavaScript or CSS3, please bear in mind that *we are not the intended >> audience*. This is not - and should not be - about what we want, it's >> about what modern (non-lynx) users will find attractive or off-putting >> about a site. > > That's a killer phrase. User typically find a site attractive, if they find > their use cases served (properly). If it looks nice, the better, of course. > If it wastes her time looking attractive, but not being helpful, it's just > making her angry. > > As a user, I'd like to see relevant information. It must be possible to get > the relevant information without javascript (yes!) and without random > clicking (what should I expect from a non-descriptive arrow-link which > feels like an adverstisement?). I disagree with the use of the word 'must' here, 'should' is a much nicer word to use when one has only personal preference behind ones css+noscript combo (identical comment further down, I write in reverse).
> Which means, all maintained releases should be visible at once. That has > nothing to do with Apache, that's a simple observation, how people look on > software pages. A counter-observation is that a big wall of text, where everything looks the same, isn't preferable either. I have tried to counter that, but I will gladly accept any proposals to add all the (non-EOL) releases to some form of matrix on the front page. I'm just not sure how to tackle it yet. > > And yes, as an admin I may have only a text browser available if I want to > check the current security state of a software *on my server*. Shit > happens. Good thing this proposal works perfectly well with Lynx then. > > Anyway, here are some more comments based on a *quick* review. I find the > 72h timebox way too short for such a change, by the way, especially over a > weekend. It's not _over a weekend_, and I'm not trying to sneak in a change this big. If I wanted that, I would've JFDI'ed it and taken the flak. But I also don't want yet another 17(!) years of saying "hmm we should do something" and then not doing anything because we're too busy staring at our own navels. I asked that anyone object if they found something wrong with a 72h lazy consensus, and you have objected, and I will naturally take that into account. We have a web site that screams "we don't care anymore!", and that makes me an angry pony. And sometimes angry ponies use lazy consensus because it seems like we are only a handful of people who really care enough. I am glad that you care, that makes another one of us. > > (also a screenshot: <http://people.apache.org/~nd/shot.png>) That's a matter of tweaking the CSS, although I hadn't imagined anyone visiting with less than 720p these days, so I hadn't tried what would happen if someone did. I will correct the styles to also work with very narrow screens. > > - Don't fix the fonts to px size. > - The maint font (Libertine) is badly readable. I disagree, but we can probably find a font more suitable (or settle for Serif if all else fails) > - the tagline is weirdly placed (see screenshot, made with a current > firefox) Due to the above issue with a very narrow screen. I have now opted to not fix the top bar to the screen, thus avoiding this. > - The carousel padding seems strange, too > - also, it's italic, that looks, like, 80s, sorry (as in: Text processing > software on my good old Atari ST :-) There was one line of italic, just the one. It is now gone. > - (Maybe the points above are due to freetype, but that's how it is. > > - As said, all the technologies are fine, just make sure, it's usable > without it. An implementation could be to add real links to the dropdown > headings pointing to pages listing the submenus). Done. > > Also, the legal stuff should be reachable without Javascript anyway. As stated earlier, I find that to be a very...vague argument. Other than actively choosing to disable JavaScript while retaining CSS styles, you won't find yourself in a situation where you can't use the navigation properly. > > - Once I activated JS, I immediatetly found the carousel autoscrolling > annoying (the animation too, because it steals my time, but YMMV). That can be adjusted/disabled. I have changed it to 15 seconds per frame, up from 10 sec/frame. I'm interested in hearing what others think of this. > - A final version should remove external dependencies and all inline style > attributes. Also, unscoped style blocks within the body are invalid HTML. Yes, I have that on my To-do list. I was initially more interested in comments on the overall look and feel, and not so much whether it's valid HTML - those things can always be fixed, and any modern browser will work with it in any case. > - Btw: There are many !important styles. Why is that? It's an easy way to override other style settings one disagrees with in Bootstrap. > > - The align attribute for the img element is deprecated in HTML5 > - Empty elements have bad semantics: <b class="caret"></b>. I know, it's a > neat CSS trick, but that doesn't make it better. A background image would > be a better choice here. > - <span class="glyphicon glyphicon-chevron-right"></span> is similar. Just > put the font character inside the link and set the font properly. However, > not everybody executes remote font files (I usually don't by default). > These people see strange letters instead of carousel arrows. > > There are a few tricks involving putting real arrow characters inside > another container and adding font defining classes / display: none for the > arrow after a modernizr-like detection for font-face support. > Or just use SVG images as link content. > > I did not dig deeper so far, as said, that was a quick view. > > -1 at the implementation, sorry. > > nd >
