> Public discussion -> moved to the list. Also let Holget join in :))
> > > Did you actually looked at the content? There has also > > > changed a lot. And it has already been discussed in the past > > > the the design is not optimal. > > > > No, but i thought we only were talking about design. > > Wrong assumption. Qouting the text from the newCHM page: | We ask you to try out the new format, and post your comments to | [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject "New CHM manual opinions". | A link to help you do so: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=New | CHM manual opinions. Please write down your opinions about the design, | the new function page scheme, note, see also, warning and caution | boxes, etc. Any other tips, ideas, bug reports are appreciated. | Note that there are many more improvements, not just the design. | We would like to hear your opinions about the improvements and | the design as well. Isn't it clear that we are not talking about the design only :) > > Rethinking the design from the beginning is vital. If you want to keep the > > Gabor's one, please implement skins ! > > No one said that. I repeat myself, even Gabor himself said > its not perfect and he seeks forward for some designers. This > was a few weeks ago and a few people already contacted him > but it will take time (Gabor, I hope I'm right here ;) We are actually going to implement some sort of "skins" as you said. The plan is to let the user choose from three skins: - plain text, black and white - colored apperance - graphics intensive. A newbie probably will start from the third one, and as he is going to be more professional, he will change to the second or first... The interface will be the same on all the three versions, but the used graphics elements and color will differ. Again, we can only make this using DHTML, particularly CSS and some JS magic to print out the right CSS <link> tag. Now as you can see we are asking people to complete a survey. Our new professional interface designer, Holger Eggert will use the information to design a unified interface, and the three skins up on them. At least this is what we plan, and I hope we can complete the task... > > The use of layers increases dev. time compared to pure HTML, and you'll > > always have things that won't work as they should, because even if your > > target is only IE, there are always bugs or changes from one version to > > another that introduce problems. > > You won't notice them immediately but there'll be. Always. > > Just have a look at http://webreference.com/dhtml/column26/width.html and > > see how Microsoft don't care about changing the way IE interprets > > HTML/DHTML. There are other pages in that article, look at the links at > > bottom. It shows differences between IE4 and IE5, but there are also > > differences between 5 and 5.5, between 5.5 and 6... The best thing is to use > > basic features, so you won't get serious problem. > > I know, i may seem to be paranoiac, but... Anyway, what improvements DHTML > > could bring to PHP's doc ? Choosing skins yourself for example :) It is also possible (although not planned) to get skin information from files outside the CHM, so you can program your own skin defining some JS functions, and put the files in the same directory that the CHM file is in, so being able to present the look and feel of the manual as you want. This is a nice idea, though IMHO we are not going to go on with it, as we would like to have a unified look and feel (even as we have three unified "look and feel"s). Yes, probably we will have problems with browser compatibilty. This was the main reson, why php.net dropped the popup boxes, and started to use much less DHTML. But here we know that our browsers are IE4+, and that helps much while designing the DHTML code. I used layers to show menus because it spares the less space from the screen. PHPDoc text should dominate above any navigational or design content sure. We are open to any suggestions, help, test results. Anything that can move this project forward. Goba
