Browser compatibility testing (in this case, for Spins pages)

[Al Thomas]

On Sat, 29 May, 2010 7:38:17, Sijis Aviles <sijis at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> We should have some minimum requirements defined on
> what our sites should work in. In fact, mizmo and I were talking about
> it about a week or so ago. I just uploaded my notes to this wiki page
> (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Websites/Fedora_Design_Document) based
> on a few ideas we were talking about.

Hi, 

I read the document and immediately several ideas came to mind! Hope these are useful:

- Add sub-headings under 'Basic Usability Standards' to organise information. These could be:
Aims, Screen Sizes, Text(Markup), Links(Navigation), Images, Enhancements(Javascript)

- 'The site should be optimized for 1024 x 768'. Probably controversial, but to my mind 'optimized for 1024 x 768' harks back to the days of 'Optimized for Internet Explorer 5.0 at 1024 x 768', etc. I would go for something more like 'Layout should be flexible to adapt to the wide range of modern devices used to access the site. The page should be readable at a minimum 800x480(? - landscape mobile browser) upwards, with 1024 x 768 assumed to be the most common browser window size.' There have been a couple of posts recently about column drop down in smaller window sizes.

Recommend 'Horizontal scrolling should be avoided on all pages at the minimum screen size. Vertical scrolling should be minimized on the common screen size. A long page format can be used, but in-page navigation should be provided at the top of the page.'

- Add 'All images should have height and width attributes to optimise page rendering time' - I think page latency is a very important, but often forgotten, usability issue. 

- Add 'All images should be optimized for download size. Recommend PNG for logos and other images with large areas of single colour and sharp borders between colour areas. Recommend JPEG for natural world pictures and other images with wide range of colours and soft transition between colour areas. Don't be afraid to use JPEG for screenshots where the purpose is illustrative.'

- Maybe change 'The site should be optimized for the latest version of Firefox' to something like 'The site should follow HTML 4.01 Transitional and CSS 2.1 standards. Enhancements for the latest browser versions, such as HTML5 and video tag, should degrade gracefully.'

- Change 'The site should use Javscript' to 'The site may use Javascript'

- Make the meaning of accessibility clearer 'The site should be accessible to non-visual browsers, such as speech readers and text-only browsers.' Could also add  'To achieve this content should only be marked up using HTML and not dynamically inserted using Javascript, etc.'

Look forward to any interesting points in response,

Al