Re: Working on New Styles for W3C Specifications

Hi Robin,

Thanks for your feedback.

It is collected at:

http://wiki.csswg.org/ideas/spec-styling#robin-berjon

Do you have an example of styling you think is suitable for WebIDL snippets?

Cheers,
Vincent.

From: Robin Berjon <robin@berjon.com<mailto:robin@berjon.com>>
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2011 03:13:43 -0800
To: Adobe Systems <vhardy@adobe.com<mailto:vhardy@adobe.com>>
Cc: "chairs@w3.org<mailto:chairs@w3.org>" <chairs@w3.org<mailto:chairs@w3.org>>, "spec-prod@w3.org<mailto:spec-prod@w3.org>" <spec-prod@w3.org<mailto:spec-prod@w3.org>>
Subject: Re: Working on New Styles for W3C Specifications

Hi Vincent,

thanks a lot for putting the work in to get this started.

On Nov 28, 2011, at 17:52 , Vincent Hardy wrote:
If you are interested in providing feedback on the styles or wish to participate in this project, please contact me, otherwise no actions are required of your group. In a few months, in coordination with the W3C Comm Team, we will assess the feedback we receive and determine whether we should seek broader adoption of the styles.

I won't repeat what others have already said, except to say that I agree on wider layout and better contrast.

I like the overall new ToC layout. I would recommend testing it out with at least two-three extra depth levels since those do indeed occur once in a while. I also think that sections at the end that have no number should be lettered as appendices.

It is confusing to have the same colour for <code> and links — I actually tried to click on a code piece.

Issues text should definitely not be light grey — issues are important! As they stand, I find them hard to read and I'm (relatively) young with 20/20 eyesight. It would be good to test the style with issue titles as some specs use them (e.g. "Issue 1: Light grey unicorns are hard to spot in the winter"). I like the issue floating as an aside, maybe that should be the default, with an option to expand?

It would be good to try out a style similar to that of issues but for Notes. Some specs also use a related style for Best Practices.

I find the first code example really hard to read. I think that they should be called out more clearly with an "Example" header (not in light grey and light grey lines), followed by an optional example title. A lot of specifications nowadays also use syntax highlighting — it would certainly be useful to have a common style for those (I can provide examples).

In the same vein, a style for figures (which may be numbered and may have a ToF as an appendix) that is somehow consistent with the style for examples probably makes sense.

I would expect a clickable link on the W3C logo at the top left.

It would be good to test the style for <dfn> in text body and not just in property definition tables. A lot of specs also have specific styles for links to definitions.

A lot of specs now use highlighting, links, etc. for WebIDL snippets. That would be good to have some agreement on as well. Yes, I know that it's a lot of style :)

All of this is negative of course and adds more work to the existing pile, but overall I think you're moving in the right direction with increments and experimentation, and I certainly look forward to more progress on this! Thanks!

--
Robin Berjon - http://berjon.com/ - @robinberjon