Máirín Duffy wrote:
I wanted the middle area to take up as much width as possible because I would like this template at some point to maybe be usable for the wiki. The wiki needs a great amount of horizontal space. I also wanted to leave the option open for a right-side banner/control bar.
Aha, I was actually wondering if this would also be used on the wiki- if we add a right banner/bar, then this is no longer an issue.
The text color was changed to grey to give a slightly less-jarring, lower contrast between the white background which is supposed to me more readable and I think looks a little slicker.
I see where you're coming from with this- perhaps we can use a slightly darker grey?
The text style has been made much smaller which makes it more difficult to read, and the spacing is off so some of the elements on the page feel like they don't have enough breathing space.
Strange.. I actually intended to make the text slightly larger (as it displays on my computer)- may I ask what browser/resolution, etc. you're viewing it in?
The image banner is not scalable, it would not look as good if it was, and honestly scaling a banner like that is not useful; it doesn't add any value if it's wider because you'd just be adding empty spcae, not content if you expanded it.
I didn't want the image itself to scale- I just didn't want to allow it to fix the width of the sidebar. Basically, when the user adjusts the font size, I would like for the width of the sidebar to change to accommodate.
The moz border radius is extremely light though, requires less hacky html, and takes up no space in images.
I definitely prefer it over images, but I really like the rounded corner effect and would just like to have it in non-gecko browsers too (it looks out of place in other browsers).
I just have one extra div container on the body to implement it. I like the shadows being very thin, the content area takes the stage more then, there's more space to work with in the main content area, and I think the shadows are a nice element. I wanted them to make the content area pop out more. It's a style that is popular on a lot of websites these days.
As it currently, stands, I feel that the shadow image itself pops up a as opposed the the content. I don't think emphasizing the content is purely about the area that it takes up- when you have some space around the content, it's emphasized as well, in a different way.
This is a pretty standard web page layout style. The space underneath the navigation bar can eventually be used for banners and little info feeds (eg you could have a little widget that displays the latest few Fedora News items, etc.)
Those additions would definitely take away from the impact of the problem. On the front page, though, I'd probably want news to take a more central role than a sidebar widget.
The width of the banner and navigation bar looks too wide in your page layout because the main content area only takes up 80%. There's 20% wasted space + the wasted space under the navigation you're referring to.
Yes, but that 20% doesn't *look* wasted- I think it serves to emphasize/contrast the content instead. In http://people.redhat.com/duffy/fedora/web/static-page-2.html, that space appears right in the middle, between the sidebar and the content, making it very obvious to the reader. As I said earlier, none of this will be an issue once we add right banner/control bar (although we still might have to reduce the size of the left bar to make more room for it). In this case, maybe I should have used a unit other than %, displaying the middle based on the text, not the size of the viewport.
The links on that page then point to the anchors for the specific things (eg clicking on bittorrent brings up the bittorrent anchor on the page.)
Ah, perfect, then.
Based on some of your comments, I've made some changes (and a copy with a wider page, if that looks better): * http://fedora.riczho.dyndns.org/static/index.html * http://fedora.riczho.dyndns.org/static/index.wide.html To illustrate what I was saying with the space under the sidebar, I've copied the paragraph a few times to make a longer page.
If you have any quick comments, etc. I should be listening in #fedora-websites/#fedora-admin/checking my e-mail obsessively as always.
Thanks for the comments, Ricky