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Author Topic: New design template  (Read 13694 times)

alfin

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« on: July 08, 2006, 02:21:08 pm »

Congrats to Henrik Paul for winning the CSS contest! However, even with serif typeface, I still find the text a bit difficult to read, maybe that is my aging eyes, but isn’t there any other typeface that’s more easy to read? The dark background calls for an really easy-to-read font.

BR/Lars
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Lars Mollerstrom

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« Reply #1 on: July 08, 2006, 04:05:45 pm »

All I can say is....wow.  One would think such an important decision would have taken longer than a day to make.  

While the overall accessibility looks to benefit from this design concept, I am really disappointed to see yet another "blog-inspired" layout.  It's a good start, but let's flesh out some of the typeface and color scheme issues.
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michael

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« Reply #2 on: July 08, 2006, 04:09:16 pm »

Just to clarify further. The page shown as an example happens to be based on What's New, for no other reason that there needed to be "something: chosen.

The final look will likely end up being quite different, but the overall feel and colour scheme will be based on what we see now.

Michael
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alfin

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« Reply #3 on: July 08, 2006, 04:55:27 pm »

Michael,
That’s clearly understood, and the overall feel and color scheme look really good. I just want to point out that since you produce so many good and long articles, it’s important that they are easy to read for everyone. The dark background put some extra demand on readability.

BR/Lars
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Lars Mollerstrom

jule

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« Reply #4 on: July 08, 2006, 06:35:11 pm »

The feel of the new design is really good except that I find it really difficult to read. The font seems too small, especially on the black background. For me, a step backwards I'm afraid. I would rather a 'tired design' that I can read more easily, than a 'new feel' that is difficult to read.
Julie
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ricwis

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« Reply #5 on: July 08, 2006, 06:47:56 pm »

Looks nice but it seems on Safari, it is not rendered well.  The left side is cut off and I cannot scroll to see what is there.
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Rich Wisler
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Scott_H

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« Reply #6 on: July 08, 2006, 10:04:39 pm »

It has been a long day, I am tired, etc but I agree on the font being difficult to read.
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DarkPenguin

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« Reply #7 on: July 08, 2006, 11:07:04 pm »

Looks awesome.
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jliechty

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« Reply #8 on: July 08, 2006, 11:39:40 pm »

The layout is fine; I like that aspect. Unfortunately, the font doesn't work quite as well for readability in Firefox on XP. Also, light text on a dark background isn't what works best for reading long articles, but I guess form over function is the preferred method of design these days, so it's not surprising.
« Last Edit: July 08, 2006, 11:40:08 pm by jliechty »
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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« Reply #9 on: July 09, 2006, 12:00:03 am »

I agree. The layout is fine, but I, too, find the font still hard to read.

There is a (rather awkward) work-around that reverses the text to black on white: Just use the Print Preview option. This works with Opera, Firefox, Netscape, and IE. I would guess it does in Safari, but I don't have that one.

The proposal is a step in the right direction, but I feel that dark text on light background is much better, especially for long articles. If desired, photographs could be set off in a black frame.

Eric
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john beardsworth

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« Reply #10 on: July 09, 2006, 06:38:57 am »

Michael

The redesign does just about address the excessive width issue, but the white on black is still rather tough on the eyes.

Quote
Ps: I well realize that there's more needed that just a change to the CSS, but it'll serve as a first step once an acceptable design is put forward.
Can I also utter a gentle cry of "foul" here? The contest was for a style sheet, quickly fixing the legibility issue, not for the long term redesign of the site. Maybe Henrik did only submit a style sheet - in any case well done to him - but I hope you've not compared apples and fruit salads here.

John
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Dennis

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« Reply #11 on: July 09, 2006, 07:17:21 am »

Very nice design! And a huge step according to the readability.

I find this a bit funny:
Some years ago, I 'nagged' about the bad readability. One of the first things, you learn with software engineering or UI design, is about the contrast and the eye fatigue. So white text on a black background is a plain no-go. I am 37 years young, not wearing glasses with a very good sight. Not later than reading of two screens of text of LL articles, I start seeing horizontal lines and the reading becomes very uncomfortable. Of course a close inspection of an image is almost impossible.

Well, literally NOBODY was on my side. So I made my own color scheme for this site. Using Mozilla with add-on's, it's only a click to change the colors to a friendly grey background with darkgrey text.

So, it's nice to see, that the readability is an issue, though. The dark grey background with light grey text is much, much better!
« Last Edit: July 09, 2006, 07:19:13 am by Dennis »
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john beardsworth

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« Reply #12 on: July 09, 2006, 07:20:09 am »

Exactly - using Firefox's Web Developer extension I often knock out the LL stylesheet altogether.

John
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franta

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« Reply #13 on: July 09, 2006, 07:27:59 am »

This is my first post here, so I'll try to be helpful rather than just complain

I think the (un) readability issue is due to the current trend of making the
text gey on a grey background rather than font choice
The easy workaround is to use Opera and choose the "High Contrast (b/w)" mode, this keeps all of the style but renders the text as black on white.

I do not know whether firefox has a similar option, I guess there must be an extension for it somewhere.

Fra
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bcf

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« Reply #14 on: July 09, 2006, 07:49:12 am »

Quote
Looks nice but it seems on Safari, it is not rendered well.  The left side is cut off and I cannot scroll to see what is there.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=70107\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

No problem here on Safari, except when reducing the width of the window to less than the central column (box) width: I guess you are using a very small screen.

The css uses a width of 950px for the main, central box. So the design assumes a screen witha  width of 1024 pixels or more, which I think is fine nowadays. Looking at a graphics-oriented site on a 800*600 screen is pushing it, imo.
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bcf

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« Reply #15 on: July 09, 2006, 07:51:51 am »

I for one like the dark (bit not black) background, and the light (but not white) font, I find it very comfortable to reaf, and very elegant too.

However I think that a sans-serif font would make for an even easier read, something like:
font-family: "Lucida Grande", "Trebuchet MS", "Bitstream Vera Sans", Verdana, sans-serif;
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john beardsworth

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« Reply #16 on: July 09, 2006, 07:54:29 am »

Quote
However I think that a sans-serif font would make for an even easier read, something like:
font-family: "Lucida Grande", "Trebuchet MS", "Bitstream Vera Sans", Verdana, sans-serif;
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=70150\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Classically, serif fonts can be read at a smaller size than sans - the serifs hook you.

John
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Mike Louw

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« Reply #17 on: July 09, 2006, 09:14:23 am »

I like the design, but agree with others regrding the readability issue. Also, I hope the pages will be spread/expanded over a full Mac 23" screen, as the current site is! I don't know the technical term for this, but on my screen many sites occupy only part of the screen.
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john beardsworth

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« Reply #18 on: July 09, 2006, 09:29:59 am »

Quote
Also, I hope the pages will be spread/expanded over a full Mac 23" screen, as the current site is! I don't know the technical term for this, but on my screen many sites occupy only part of the screen.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=70160\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

This is one of the two problems I see with the current site's legibility. Wide paragraphs make the content tougher to read as the eye tends to drop off the line as you move from left to right, and scrolling back onto the next line becomes awkward too. Henrik's 950 pixel width is ideal. Classically, wide lines only work when you have more space between each line. So the last thing to do is spread text screen wide - other content can go there.

By the way, the site's content is great - I just find long articles hard to read here.

John
« Last Edit: July 09, 2006, 04:32:02 pm by johnbeardy »
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Jay Kaplan

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« Reply #19 on: July 09, 2006, 10:47:32 am »

Design OK readability tough on the eyes.

There is a reason books are printed using white paper and black type, readability.

The last color combination I found reable was in WP 5.1. That is pre windows for us older folks, a blue screen with white type. Of course back then, I did not need   bifocals.

As it stands today, if an article is of interest and quite long, I find it useful to just print the thing, sit back in my easy chair and read it at my leisure. Since I work in an office all day and most of the time is in front of a computer screen, the last thing I want to do after work is read an interesting, but lenghty article on my computer.

Maybe I am old fashioned, but readability is very important to me and white on a colored background just does not do it.
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