Re: sample CSS property page: font-size

On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 10:01 PM, Alex Komoroske <komoroske@google.com> wrote:
> I sat down to provide detailed commentary on this page, and... I don't
> really have much. :-)
>
> It looks great overall to me.
>
> Here are a few random thoughts:
>
> How does the very short right-aligned description relate to the one-line
> overview? They seem to substantially overlap in terms of information in this
> case, although I could imagine the overview might have more information for
> more complicated properties.

You see this in a lot of man-page doc: a one-line sentence fragment
used for at-a-glance listings, and a longer summary allowing any other
necessary core context. Look at the z-index property for a
distinction. "Controls elements' stacking order" should appear in the
summary, while the other sentence about how z units work are
appropriate in a longer summary. Granted, this might overlap with what
we're calling the "Usage" category, but I think of that as less having
to do with core info. E.g. in this case "Usage" might discuss how z
relates to the same concept in 3D transforms. If "Usage" provides core
info along with extraneous info, you're in trouble because it's
already way down the page after the Syntax/Values sections.


> The "See CSS Text Styling Fundamentals for an overview." looks a bit out of
> place as a prose parenthetical tacked on the end. Should that be presented
> in a more structured way?

I took out the parens & added a bit more of Chris's text.

> The green check marks draw a bit too much attention because that all of the
> other cells in the overview table are just text.

I shrunk them to the same size as in the compatibility table,
otherwise I'll punt to a designer.

> We need to carefully think about the compatibility table design; this is a
> complex area and we shouldn't jump into a given design without considering
> the consequences. Font-size is a pretty straightforward property, but other
> complications to consider include: how to show that support started prefixed
> at one version and unprefixed at another, as well as how to include
> information about sub-compatiblity information. For example, MDN's
> box-shadow page [1] has four separate rows for basic support, multiples,
> inset, and spread radius. That said, I like this compatibility design a fair
> bit; the use of color for supported status makes it work both at a glance
> and when you want specific versions.

There was no issue of prefixing here, but I see no reason not to use
that same convention: both prefixed & un- in the same cell, like so:

5.0<br/><span class="tinyWebkitPrefix">3.0</span>

One issue I didn't address is whether to include a line for tablet browsers.

> Thanks for doing such an awesome job on this!
>
> --Alex
>
> [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/CSS/box-shadow
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 1:23 AM, Chris Mills <cmills@opera.com> wrote:
>>
>> Thanks for your continued work on this Mike - your comments all make sense
>> to me. Just one specific thing you asked for comment on:
>>
>> The question of font-size: 62.5% versus font-size: 10px - this is a good
>> point, and I think that these days it makes very little difference; it used
>> to be that in the old days, using pixel sizes was bad because old IE
>> versions couldn't zoom content sized in this way. But that is a problem of
>> the past, pretty much.
>>
>> Chris Mills
>> Opera Software, dev.opera.com
>> W3C Fellow, web education and webplatform.org
>> Author of "Practical CSS3: Develop and Design" (http://goo.gl/AKf9M)
>>
>> On 22 Jan 2013, at 22:20, Mike Sierra <letmespellitoutforyou@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 3:34 PM, Mike Sierra
>> > <letmespellitoutforyou@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 2:22 PM, Mike Sierra
>> >> <letmespellitoutforyou@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>> Great comments. Replies inline marked SIERRA below.  I think it's wise
>> >>> to keep a tally of the major template/skin enhancements necessary to
>> >>> produce this suggested design -- will do that.
>> >>
>> >> As promised, a list of features needed to fine-tune the design:
>> >
>> > At Julee's suggestion, I captured these suggestions as a proposal here:
>> >
>> > http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/WPD:Proposals/css_prop_enhancements
>> >
>> > --Mike Sierra
>>
>>
>

Received on Thursday, 24 January 2013 16:13:32 UTC