Peter von Kaehne wrote:
re 1 line vs 2 line menu bar.
I have been given some grief regarding my choice of a single menu bar.
I think I have an acceptable solution - the real problem is to have
narrow screens and shallow screens (wide screens or even worse netbooks)
equally well accommodated. Some compromise is probably inevitable
The previous solution with 2 bars in a table design creates a lot of
redundant space which is a real nuisance and space hog on a shallow
screen, while working pretty well on a narrow screen. I am working a lot
on acer aspire and this annoys badly on there. It is also totally non
standard.
My last solution of a single table row works well on shallow and normal
screens, but causes scrolling on very narrow screens.
I checked the crosswire.org site on a desktop with a nice large screen
resolution, an iPhone (320x480), the same iPhone in landscape (480x320),
and an EeePC (640x400).
It looks okay on a desktop, but the 2-line version was significantly
more attractive.
On the iPhone in portrait mode, it's unreadable in standard (non-zoomed)
resolution and expands itself to lines because "Volunteers...", "The
SWORD Project", and "Bible Societies..." all wrap to two lines. In
landscape mode, the same wrapping occurs, but the text is at least
legible (unzoomed).
The EeePC is worse yet because "Bible Societies..." wraps to 3 lines.
So I don't think the argument on the basis of screen
resolution/dimensions is valid. I couldn't find any of the 2-line pages
still alive to confirm this, but I'm willing to bet they look better.
I still think the 2 line version is better on the basis of aesthetics
and utility. And it's one of a number of things that were not broken,
but were nevertheless "fixed".
---------------------------------------
re styling and coloring.
This remains a contentious issue clearly. I do not expect anyone to like
my design choices - though some seem to do so.
The color scheme and overall design are another thing that were not
broken, but got "fixed".
Basically I am moving as much as possible out of hardcoded "styling" -
added white space, forced formatting, table designs - etc into CSS
styles. In the process I implement CSS styles as I think is
appropriate, but hopefully someone else can eventually create some
alternative styling which has more widespread resonance. The point of my
rewriting is not so much to make it pretty but to make it widely usable
(see below two examples) and make it easy to make better. A one page A4
more or less universal style sheet is a lot easier to fix and improve
than the previous hardcoded way.
CSS is another way of expressing the same information that can be
hardcoded. I think moving to CSS is perfectly admirable (although there
are certainly arguments against it, such as incompatibility with older
browsers). Moving to CSS is, however, not a reason for changing design.
The current/old design is breaking badly on narrow devices while being
annoying on shallow devices (see above) - the module library page
requires sideway scrolling from 800 px downwards, while mine currently
will display well on ~400 px or probably less - particularly once I fix
the menu all over in the way I suggest above. At the same time my pages
are largely not more than a single screen on a normal screen.
On the EeePC, the Sword page looks fine on the EeePC. It's legible from
about 8 inches on the iPhone in portrait, 15 inches in landscape. The
menu bar on the new Sword page actually wraps currently, which is
unattractive and extremely confusing.
I agree that the download section should be redesigned, but don't
believe that it's fair to compare the old page with a new one in which
the primary differences are removal of the module ID & a download link
and a shrunken font. That's not due to changed styling or CSS.
The other aspect I tried to take care of is color blindness - and I do
not mean the inability to choose nice colours, under which many of us
men including probably me suffer - but red-green blindness which makes a
lot of designs hard to follow. A huge proportion of all men have some
degree of red-green weakness, some minor, some profound.
One of the list members with significant weakness has advised me
privately of my color choices until the links etc work for him
(invariably it is a "him"). Wrong choices make links invisible and text
unreadable. Interestingly - and I speak as a doctor here - most men are
simply unaware of their own weakness in this area - you need fairly
profound levels to actually notice, but even weaker levels cause grief
on websites. So, you might not like my choices, but they seem to work
for the brother concerned (and the millions like him) and you need to do
better on this count before you criticise.
You might find this color-blindness simulator helpful:
http://colorfilter.wickline.org/
If there are issues with hue in the current site, then we can adjust
them. I can't see anything after a quick check against the primary types
of colorblindness--and I would not expect to, given that we don't use
text and background colors with similar saturation & brightness levels.
I cannot say the same if the new design. The current menu bar has narrow
green text on a low-brightness gray, which make the text very difficult
to read. The news headlines all have black on very dark green, which is
nearly illegible unless you highlight with the mouse.
You raised the issue in an email to me of the CrossWire site, Sword
site, forums, and wiki all having different designs. My position is that
the CrossWire and Sword sites should have different designs. The Sword
site, the forums, the bug tracker, and the customized Google search all
have different layouts, but they have identical color schemes. (NB: I do
think the background on the last of these should get a change for
readability.) This is pretty typical. Different applications (like
wikis, forums, & bug trackers) typically have different layouts based on
what the application provides. But they keep consistent color schemes,
as we do. I suppose the wiki is the exception for us. But if we want to
adjust the wiki color scheme, that is certainly an option that is
available to us.
--Chris
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