Re: W3C CSS Home Redesign RFC

JASON CRANFORD TEAGUE | BrightEye Media
* jason@brighteyemedia.com |  www.brighteyemedia.com


On Nov 20, 2007, at 1:46 PM, Bert Bos wrote:

>
> On Tuesday 20 November 2007 16:31, Jason CranfordTeague wrote:
>> I'm collecting the feedback and working on wireframes that I hope to
>> have ready to show next week. I'll work up three different concepts
>> for the information structure to be considered. These will NOT be the
>> visual designs, though, only the page structure and IA.
>>
>> As for making it "pretty" a low priority over making it "usable", in
>> my a opinion usable has to be "pretty".
>
> The best design is one that you don't notice. On the other hand, given
> that these are pages about a style sheet language, I don't mind
> including some gimmick that people *do* notice.

I agree about not noticing the design, which is why it should not be  
unattractive :)

>
>
>>
>> I do like the idea that we may want to consider making our home page
>> new CSS Zen garden for designers to play with. Any other votes for
>> that?
>
> There are some rules for W3C pages, a few on the style and some others
> on the content. The rules on the style are basically that the W3C logo
> must be in the top left corner and must be linked to the W3C home page
> and that the page must be accessible. There may be more fixed style
> elements later... if the W3C team can agree on them :-) (For example,
> our communications team is working on a common set of colors.)
>
> The content must include, apart from the link to the home page, also  
> the
> name of the page's owner at the bottom and an indication of the age of
> the page. The main page must link to a page about the WG, which in  
> turn
> must link to the WG's charter.
>
> Of course, all pages must be valid. And they should conform reasonably
> well to the guidelines for the mobile Web.
>
> There are also translations of the page into various languages that  
> must
> be linked. (I've set up language negotiation for some pages, but not
> for the CSS overview page yet.)
>
>
> Traditionally, the style for the CSS pages has included something that
> most browsers didn't yet render correctly, as a kind of challenge to
> the browsers. Of course, in the browsers that render the style
> incorrectly, the page must still be readable. We don't want to lose
> readers.
>
> The CSS overview page and some other nearby pages are quite popular,  
> so
> we shouldn't make them dynamic (no PHP, JSP or similar). Otherwise we
> will have to set up a caching proxy system and that means extra work,
> more maintenance and higher risk of failure. Some pages could be
> created by cron jobs, but that also means more maintenance work and
> more difficulties if somebody else than me has to edit the pages
> occasionally.
>
> Also, I'm the one editing the pages and there is little chance in the
> short or medium term that I will get any help with that. I'm quite
> happy to add news and other links, but that should not take more time
> than the time to type those links and save the file. (The Atom feed of
> the news items is automatically generated from the HTML. I will
> probably have to rewrite the script that does that, and that is OK,  
> but
> the mark-up of the news items has to be such that it is *possible* to
> write such a script.)
>
>
> Making the pages into a Zen garden-like laboratory will, I expect,  
> lead
> to many designs that are not good enough, that I will have to review,
> reject and send e-mail about, so I'd rather not do that.
>
>
> Still on the topic of maintenance: I don't know when we will find time
> and people again to redesign the pages, so the pages should be able to
> last for a couple of years at least. Better not to use the latest
> fashion, because it risks becoming oldfashioned in a short time.
>
>
> The semi-official font of W3C is Gill Sans. We use it on paper
> publications and business cards. It is not required to use it on Web
> pages (because not everybody has the font and embedded fonts don't  
> work
> yet), but I like to do so anyway. W3C *does* use sans-serif on all
> pages.
>
> (I actually have a second reason for using Gill Sans and that is  
> that it
> is also the font used in Håkon's and my book. So it is the CSS font  
> in
> a way. And I like Gill's designs in general.)
>
>
>
> Bert
> -- 
>  Bert Bos                                ( W 3 C ) http://www.w3.org/
>  http://www.w3.org/people/bos                               W3C/ERCIM
>  bert@w3.org                             2004 Rt des Lucioles / BP 93
>  +33 (0)4 92 38 76 92            06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France
>