Re: (late follow-up on) New proposed styling

Terje, all.

As discussed at our last meeting... I think I had addressed most 
comments from this mail in subsequent changes commited to the HEAD CSS 
files, but a mail answer may be in order. See inline for my answers, 
and see the current http://qa-dev.w3.org/wmvs/HEAD/ for the latest 
style status.


On Jan 6, 2005, at 18:54, Terje Bless wrote:
> For lots of reasons enumerated previously, I am absolutely and 
> completely
> against artificially constraining the width of pages.

That was only present in an early sketch, the current version does use 
some margins around the main body of information, but the page width is 
not fixed. Des that put your concern to rest?

> Yes, use of units in px immediately lands you on the 
> bad-boy-no-dessert list.

At the moment px units are only used for a few 
margin/padding/positioning rules, and not for font sizes. I assume you 
meant "px bad" for fonts only, right?

> Also, the new boxed design breaks the previous design for headers and 
> footers;
> which were designed to fade into the edge of the window and the 
> background.
> With the new boxed in design this just looks jarring.

There is room for improvement, here, I agree, although I don't find the 
current situation too horrible.


> The fonts have suddenly become «fly-shit» (isn't that the term Nick? 
> ;D) and
> hard to read (as they usually do when “designers” get their hands on 
> them).

Probably not applicable anymore, as the main CSS now has:
     font-size: 1em; /* setting base font to user's prefered size */
     line-height: 130%;
which is, by my standard at least, far from "fly shit"-y.


> The blue navigation bar looks weird; just screaming at you.

I already answered this, I think it's a feature, not a bug. We'll see 
what the feedback gives.

> The bakground picture is of dubious value compared to a simple solid 
> color for
> the background (or even the original white).

yes, and it's been removed. Case closed?

> The orange headings on white are hard to read, and the orange seems to 
> be
> picked out of the air (where do we use that color in our color scheme)?

I have taken the color scheme from the new WAI design. I don't find it 
illegible, but if it is, I do appreciate the irony of it :)


All considered, I agree that the first attempt at a "new design" might 
have been excessive, but I think the current result is visually more 
appealing that what we have on vwo, without being miles away from it 
(for those allergic to change), and it also tries to be consistent with 
the style being worked on in several areas of the W3C web site. And as 
I said at the meeting yesterday, except for the comments on this 
mailing-list (almost all of which I have taken in consideration in 
subsequent changes), the response to the design changes have been 
unanimously positive.

I think this is a good change. It was not, as you noted, a change  we 
had initially planned for 0.7.0. So what? The plan for 0.7.0 was a 
hopeful quick merge, a few fixes, and move on, and in that context, I 
agree that adding time to tweak and test a change in design would not 
have been wise.
Unfortunately,
1) it took an awful lot of time to get 0.7.0 back on its feet after the 
merge,
2) in spite of a few reminders sent, help from "pros", that would have, 
according to "the plan", allowed us to rework the style entirely after 
0.7.0, never came.
Therefore, after almost a year, the idea of a style update is not, 
IMHO, ridiculous, I find it rather appropriate.

Regards,
-- 
olivier

Received on Wednesday, 11 May 2005 07:20:29 UTC