Fedora online doc utility

[Felix Miata]

On 2012/05/09 13:25 (GMT-0400) Tom H composed:

> Felix Miata  wrote:

>>  4-I filed a bug (still unfixed) 19 months ago about this:
>>  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=638726 Like most of the web,
>>  *fedoraproject.org is styled to be hard to use, with pale, tiny type
>>  pervading.

> fedoraproject.org's css isn't rude naive or stupid! The site's
> beautiful and very well designed (except for the lack of a search
> box!). It's also very clear and easily legible.

Obviously you didn't digest the provided references explaining my statements. 
Clear and easily legible they may be under certain conditions, such as:

1-giant display
2-low resolution display
3-viewer's eyes closer than average to display
4-display remains maladjusted as delivered by (most) display factory(s), with 
brightness and contrast set at or near 100% for maximum appeal on brightly 
lit store shelves with other displays nearby
5-viewer's visual acuity above 50th percentile

However, many have:
1-acuity below 50%
2-optimally adjusted brightness and contrast
3-high resolution
4-reasonable viewing distance
5-non-giant displays

This is what it looks like here:
http://fm.no-ip.com/SS/SC/sc-fedproj01.png (the shot)
http://fm.no-ip.com/Tmp/sc-fedproj01.html (contextual setup URL for the shot)

Rude: discourteous or impolite, especially in a deliberate way. 
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/rude

Here rudeness is manifested in multiple ways, but the fundamental one is this 
styling near the top of /static/css/fedora.css:

	body {font-size: 76%}

First off, 76% is a CSS size, a nominal size, not a real size. Real size on 
every web page is a function of two dimensions, height and width, so a % size 
must be squared to get the real size: .76 * .76 = .5776. That's just over 
9/16 of the browser default that the site's CSS makes most text on the pages. 
The browser default is presumptively the perfect size for legibility and 
reading comfort, adjustable by any owner-user who needs or wants it to be 
different than shipped by the browser vendor. Such an override in effect says 
to the user "your default size, whatever it may be, is (73%) too big", 
regardless that the site designer can't know any such even if true. So, a 
body font style of 76% is an excellent definition of rude.

Next the 42.24% legibility reduction via size is compounded by various 
degrees of reductions in contrast, a major one of which is:

	#content {color: #666666}.

These two alone match up as an example of #1 on usability expert Jakob 
Nielsen's Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2005: "Legibility Problems: Bad 
fonts won the vote by a landslide, getting almost twice as many votes as the 
#2 mistake. About two-thirds of the voters complained about small font sizes 
or frozen font sizes; about one-third complained about low contrast between 
text and background." http://www.useit.com/alertbox/designmistakes.html

Beautiful only counts as bonus points if the basics are met, like being 
legible. The screenshot shows (if properly viewed according to the included 
instructions) this condition is _not_ unconditionally met on 
fedoraproject.org. In it you can see most content as seen (in the fullscreen 
window) without any compensation via browser defense mechanisms like zoom, 
color override, or user styles, is a fraction of the size of the browser (and 
other app) UI text, which in turn is smaller than the default browser size, 
as seen in the smaller browser windows, one of which is showing content from 
a web standards best practices page, and the other showing the same 
fedoraproject page as the fullscreen window but with user styles applied to 
undo the worst offenses in the site's rudeness.

Fedoraproject's styling may be well designed in the eyes of its naive 
designers or other ill-informed, but not among those who actually understand 
what makes any web design good, or those who understand and practice the 
concept of respect in web design, those who make pages that don't induce 
visitors to either hit the back button or close tab button, suffer, or employ 
defensive measures in order to use the pages without suffering.
-- 
"The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant
words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation)

  Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/