Re: [Freedos-devel] Update on website redesign
> > > What do you mean "the screen flickers"? Do you mean you get a "flash" > > > of unstyled content, or something else? > > On Sun, Feb 20, 2022 at 12:54 PM shian wrote: > > > > Looks like it happens because the browser renders overlapping layers, first > > in dark color > > and then in bright color, (maybe because width or height are not declared > > somewhere, > > or because of rendering priorities, etc...) > > > > This flickering exists also in www.freedos.org, exactly the same. > > If you switch between the top menu items quickly then the screen is > > flickering. (on my i3 PC). > > It's not so bad and it doesn't happen each time, but it looks like some > > conflict > > in the css file that can be solved somehow. > February 24, 2022 12:25:01 AM CET Jim Hall wrote: > > Ok, thanks for mentioning that. I can write pages in HTML, but I don't > consider myself an expert in web page design. I think there are a few > possible solutions for this, such as adding a bit of javascript that > forces the browser to finish loading everything before displaying it. > That could fix the "flash" you mentioned. [..] On Thu, Feb 24, 2022 at 11:03 AM shian wrote: > > I found the reason why the screen flickers in freedos.org (on my PC): > > I'm using Firefox 89 on Linux Mint with Dark theme. The screen flickers > because Firefox is using the dark system's theme as well. > > I switched to Bright theme on Linux Mint, restarted Firefox, and the problem > disappeared. > > I guess that the Firefox developers need to address this problem with Dark > system themes - not the FreeDOS developers. Good to know, thanks for checking. I'll still look into "dark mode" support and see if there's something I might do in the web page to make this easier for dark mode viewers. You can't be the only one using dark mode. But since I know this is a browser-specific thing and not something "broken" on the website, I'll make this a low-priority fix. Jim ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Update on website redesign
Hi, I found the reason why the screen flickers in freedos.org (on my PC): I'm using Firefox 89 on Linux Mint with Dark theme. The screen flickers because Firefox is using the dark system's theme as well. I switched to Bright theme on Linux Mint, restarted Firefox, and the problem disappeared. I guess that the Firefox developers need to address this problem with Dark system themes - not the FreeDOS developers. Thank you, shian February 24, 2022 12:25:01 AM CET Jim Hall wrote:On Sun, Feb 20, 2022 at 12:54 PM shian via Freedos-devel wrote: > > "What do you mean "the screen flickers"? Do you mean you get a "flash" > of unstyled content, or something else?" > > Looks like it happens because the browser renders overlapping layers, first in dark color > and then in bright color, (maybe because width or height are not declared somewhere, > or because of rendering priorities, etc...) > > This flickering exists also in www.freedos.org, exactly the same. > If you switch between the top menu items quickly then the screen is flickering. (on my i3 PC). > It's not so bad and it doesn't happen each time, but it looks like some conflict > in the css file that can be solved somehow. > Ok, thanks for mentioning that. I can write pages in HTML, but I don't consider myself an expert in web page design. I think there are a few possible solutions for this, such as adding a bit of javascript that forces the browser to finish loading everything before displaying it. That could fix the "flash" you mentioned. I'll look into some options. If I can add that to the www.freedos.org website, I will. Otherwise I'll test some things on the test.freedos.org after usability testing is done, and apply the fix after that. Jim ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel -- Sent with https://mailfence.com Secure and private email___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Update on website redesign
On Sun, Feb 20, 2022 at 12:54 PM shian via Freedos-devel wrote: > > "What do you mean "the screen flickers"? Do you mean you get a "flash" > of unstyled content, or something else?" > > Looks like it happens because the browser renders overlapping layers, first > in dark color > and then in bright color, (maybe because width or height are not declared > somewhere, > or because of rendering priorities, etc...) > > This flickering exists also in www.freedos.org, exactly the same. > If you switch between the top menu items quickly then the screen is > flickering. (on my i3 PC). > It's not so bad and it doesn't happen each time, but it looks like some > conflict > in the css file that can be solved somehow. > Ok, thanks for mentioning that. I can write pages in HTML, but I don't consider myself an expert in web page design. I think there are a few possible solutions for this, such as adding a bit of javascript that forces the browser to finish loading everything before displaying it. That could fix the "flash" you mentioned. I'll look into some options. If I can add that to the www.freedos.org website, I will. Otherwise I'll test some things on the test.freedos.org after usability testing is done, and apply the fix after that. Jim ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Update on website redesign
"What do you mean "the screen flickers"? Do you mean you get a "flash" of unstyled content, or something else?" Looks like it happens because the browser renders overlapping layers, first in dark color and then in bright color, (maybe because width or height are not declared somewhere, or because of rendering priorities, etc...) This flickering exists also in www.freedos.org, exactly the same. If you switch between the top menu items quickly then the screen is flickering. (on my i3 PC). It's not so bad and it doesn't happen each time, but it looks like some conflict in the css file that can be solved somehow. Thank you, shian February 20, 2022 1:50:10 AM CET Jim Hall wrote:Thanks for the feedback! I know about the vertical spacing issue. I need to do some tweaks to the layout/design but I figured I'd wait to get usability test results before I did anything there. So yes, that one is on my list too. What do you mean "the screen flickers"? Do you mean you get a "flash" of unstyled content, or something else? I also saw Tom's comments and I'll make a few minor changes to the content. I met with a student group yesterday, and shared an email update with the other groups too, and let them know I'm making a minor tweak to content based on freedos-devel feedback. Sounds like the timing is okay for them (they are designing Personas and Use Scenarios now) but I'll need to "lock in" the website very soon. But I definitely want to make sure we advertise the included dev tools (compilers) on the "programming" page. On Thu, Feb 17, 2022 at 9:11 AM shian via Freedos-devel wrote: > > Hi, > > https://test.freedos.org looks great - two things I noticed immediately: > 1. the search box on top is scratching the underline of [About] [News] ... > 2. when switching between [About] [News] [Contribute] ... the screen flickers (using Firefox 89.0.2 (64-bit)). > > It's a very nice and clean design for FreeDOS. 5 stars. > > shian > > > February 16, 2022 11:31:22 PM CET Jim Hall wrote: > > Hi everyone! > > It's been a while since I talked about the website redesign. It's been > a slow process, but I finally have an iteration live on the test site: > https://test.freedos.org/ > > > This design is definitely an improvement on the current design at > https://www.freedos.org/ but it's not perfect. To make it better, I'm > asking for your feedback. Please take a look and follow up here to let > me know what you think. > > Not all of the content is on here (more on that in the next email) but > the structure and arrangement is all there. I might make changes to > the design (layout and colors, etc) but it's good enough to get > feedback now. > > > Jim > ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel -- Sent with https://mailfence.com Secure and private email___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Update on website redesign
Thanks for the feedback! I know about the vertical spacing issue. I need to do some tweaks to the layout/design but I figured I'd wait to get usability test results before I did anything there. So yes, that one is on my list too. What do you mean "the screen flickers"? Do you mean you get a "flash" of unstyled content, or something else? I also saw Tom's comments and I'll make a few minor changes to the content. I met with a student group yesterday, and shared an email update with the other groups too, and let them know I'm making a minor tweak to content based on freedos-devel feedback. Sounds like the timing is okay for them (they are designing Personas and Use Scenarios now) but I'll need to "lock in" the website very soon. But I definitely want to make sure we advertise the included dev tools (compilers) on the "programming" page. On Thu, Feb 17, 2022 at 9:11 AM shian via Freedos-devel wrote: > > Hi, > > https://test.freedos.org looks great - two things I noticed immediately: > 1. the search box on top is scratching the underline of [About] [News] ... > 2. when switching between [About] [News] [Contribute] ... the screen flickers > (using Firefox 89.0.2 (64-bit)). > > It's a very nice and clean design for FreeDOS. 5 stars. > > shian > > > February 16, 2022 11:31:22 PM CET Jim Hall wrote: > > Hi everyone! > > It's been a while since I talked about the website redesign. It's been > a slow process, but I finally have an iteration live on the test site: > https://test.freedos.org/ > > > This design is definitely an improvement on the current design at > https://www.freedos.org/ but it's not perfect. To make it better, I'm > asking for your feedback. Please take a look and follow up here to let > me know what you think. > > Not all of the content is on here (more on that in the next email) but > the structure and arrangement is all there. I might make changes to > the design (layout and colors, etc) but it's good enough to get > feedback now. > > > Jim > ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Update on website redesign
Hi, https://test.freedos.org looks great - two things I noticed immediately: 1. the search box on top is scratching the underline of [About] [News] ... 2. when switching between [About] [News] [Contribute] ... the screen flickers (using Firefox 89.0.2 (64-bit)). It's a very nice and clean design for FreeDOS. 5 stars. shian February 16, 2022 11:31:22 PM CET Jim Hall wrote:Hi everyone! It's been a while since I talked about the website redesign. It's been a slow process, but I finally have an iteration live on the test site: https://test.freedos.org/ This design is definitely an improvement on the current design at https://www.freedos.org/ but it's not perfect. To make it better, I'm asking for your feedback. Please take a look and follow up here to let me know what you think. Not all of the content is on here (more on that in the next email) but the structure and arrangement is all there. I might make changes to the design (layout and colors, etc) but it's good enough to get feedback now. Jim ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel -- Sent with https://mailfence.com Secure and private email___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Update on website redesign
> It's been a while since I talked about the website redesign. It's been > a slow process, but I finally have an iteration live on the test site: > https://test.freedos.org/ for me, it's usually to download a single utility; I have not interest to download 0.5 GB AND INSTALL THIS TO A NEW MACHINE, just to get the current source of FDISK, or the kernel. ok, finally located it behind Contribute->write some code->get the source code->https://gitlab.com/FreeDOS did I ever mention that GIT doesn't exactly shine when managing multi project projects? just count the klicks required to download the kernel sources. or try how much time it takes to find out if anything has changed the last 2 years... just recently, am Montag, 14. Februar 2022 um 21:47 schrieben Sie: > Hi > The only thing I noticed is that Ansiplus scrollback does not work if > Dougmenu 1.77 or Domenu (1.72) is running or has been running but fine > before I run dougmenu. >It worked fine in dougmenu with Fdos 1,3 RC4 can please someone of the usability testing group give me instruction how to locate Dougmenu, any version, from any.freedos.org? Also: there are ~ 3 'official' programming tools for FreeDOS: NASM, WatcomC, GCC16 why https://test.freedos.org/about/devel/ mentions none of them, but offers TP and SmallerC remains a mystery to me. also, https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/1.3/FD13-LiveCD.zip points to nowhere ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Update on website redesign
For me, the thing I usually do is look for one particular utility program to download (e.g., the latest version of SWSUBST or KEYB or something like that). I'm not looking to install FreeDOS as a whole. Finding out where/how to do that is complicated and confusing. In your usability personas, you may want to include something like that. Basically a highly experienced user looking for some very specific "subset" of FreeDOS. ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
[Freedos-devel] Update on website redesign
Hi everyone! It's been a while since I talked about the website redesign. It's been a slow process, but I finally have an iteration live on the test site: https://test.freedos.org/ This design is definitely an improvement on the current design at https://www.freedos.org/ but it's not perfect. To make it better, I'm asking for your feedback. Please take a look and follow up here to let me know what you think. Not all of the content is on here (more on that in the next email) but the structure and arrangement is all there. I might make changes to the design (layout and colors, etc) but it's good enough to get feedback now. Jim ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
Re: [Freedos-devel] Update on website redesign
*This email is about usability testing process. If you aren't interested in this topic, you can skip this message. [..] > I've been working on the website redesign as a "slow burn" project for > the last several months. What drove me to get this iteration finished > is that I'm working on a usability test of the updated design. > > "Usability" means that real people can do real things in a reasonable > amount of time. A website has good usability if real people can use > the website to learn about FreeDOS in a reasonable amount of time (a > few clicks to find the right content). > [..] I wanted to share a preview of the process in usability testing. As I mentioned in my other email, I teach a graduate level course in Usability and Human Factors. Several years ago, I also taught an undergraduate course in Usability Testing at a different campus. So I'm familiar with what the students need to do to design, build, execute, and analyze their usability tests. If you want to learn more about usability testing, you might be interested in my presentation to GUADEC last year. Skip ahead to 3:33:00 in this video for my presentation about usability testing in open source software: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28junhvu6EQ Here's the process the students will likely follow: 1. The first step in any usability test is to understand the users of the system, and what those users do on the system. The standard way to do that is to interview the client (that's me) to ask questions, then create what are called "personas" and "use scenarios." I'm meeting with one of the student groups tomorrow; the other student group is still figuring out a time to meet, but probably in the next few days. A persona is a fictional - but realistic - description of a typical user on the system. A project will usually create many personas to describe lots of different people - because you don't have just one kind of person using the system. If you were doing a usability test of a word processor program, you might have personas that described a business person working in an office, an independent author, a university student, a home user, and other personas that describe typical people who use a word processor to do anything. For the website, I imagine the students will create personas like an expert DOS user (someone who has been using DOS since the 1980s or 1990s), a DOS developer (such as any of you), a beginner user (someone who only recently discovered FreeDOS) and probably 4 or 5 other personas. Those personas might do different things on the website. Each "thing" that a persona might want to do is called a "use scenario." For example, a beginner user might want to download the FreeDOS distribution (that's a use scenario) or they might want to learn how to use FreeDOS (that's a different use scenario). Different personas might have the same use scenarios - for example, pretty much everyone will probably want to download FreeDOS. When I teach usability, I have my students review the personas and use scenarios with the client. So I expect to review their personas and use scenarios, probably in about a week. (If the students give their permission for me to share, I'll share copies of these - probably in the wiki.) 2. After you understand the typical users who use the website (by writing personas) and how those users might use the website (by writing use scenarios) you move on to the next step: writing scenario tasks. The scenario task is the heart of a usability test. You use these in a usability test by giving each tester the scenario tasks, one at a time, and observing what the tester does, and how easy or hard it is for them to do it. You need to understand who uses the system (personas) and how they use the system (use scenarios) so you can write scenario tasks that accurately reflect what real people would want to do on the website. There's an important difference from use scenarios: the use scenario describes what the persona might do at a high level - they want to download FreeDOS, or they want to learn how to use FreeDOS. When you think about use scenarios, think about *intent* of that persona. What does that persona intend to do on the website. The scenario task is a specific action or goal that someone might have on the website. The scenario task sets a brief context, then asks the tester to do something specific. For example, if you were doing usability testing on a web browser, you might have a scenario task like this: "The text on this website is just a little too small to read comfortably, and you don't have your glasses with you. Make the text bigger on the website." In this case, the context is clear: the text is too small to read. And the task is also clear: make the text bigger. The tester will know when they have completed the task, because they will have made the text bigger. And as an observer, you should agree that they've finished the task, because the tester will have made the text bigger. When I
Re: [Freedos-devel] Update on website redesign
*This email is about usability testing. If you aren't interested in this topic, you can skip this message. On Wed, Feb 16, 2022 at 4:31 PM Jim Hall wrote: > > Hi everyone! > > It's been a while since I talked about the website redesign. It's been > a slow process, but I finally have an iteration live on the test site: > https://test.freedos.org/ > [..] I've been working on the website redesign as a "slow burn" project for the last several months. What drove me to get this iteration finished is that I'm working on a usability test of the updated design. "Usability" means that real people can do real things in a reasonable amount of time. A website has good usability if real people can use the website to learn about FreeDOS in a reasonable amount of time (a few clicks to find the right content). I teach usability at the graduate level at the University of Minnesota, and my work there has connected me to other faculty who also teach usability. A colleague at the University of Minnesota, and another faculty member at Michigan Tech, are working together to teach an undergraduate course in usability. Students work in groups to design, build, execute, and analyze a usability report of a *real* client website. I volunteered the new FreeDOS website for their usability test. They also have two other clients, and student groups can choose the website to work on. At least two groups have asked to work on the FreeDOS website. So what does this mean? I've essentially "locked in" changes on the test website while the students do their usability tests. Since this is a semester-long class on usability, I won't have results until the end of the semester. The semester runs until May, so that's when I'll get their results back. This seemed like an excellent opportunity to get free usability testing on the new website. I'm really glad to work with them on the usability test. In May, I'll have their usability test results. I'll ask for permission to share their verbatim usability test reports with you - if not, I'll be able to share a summary of their findings. Jim ___ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
