Re: design update

[Charles Goodwin <charlie xwt org>]

On Tue, 2004-02-10 at 19:17, Oliver Burnett-Hall wrote:
> Some comments on your design - basically it's pretty good but I've got a
> few quibbles...

Quibbles are good.  We want the site to be perfect. ;)

> s/Abiword/AbiWord/g

Ah ok.

> Drop the doctype from XHTML 1.1 to XHTML 1.0 Strict.  According to the
> standards [1] XHTML 1.1 must be served as application/xhtml+xml and MSIE
> won't render it if you do.  XHTML 1.0 can be served as text/html which
> all browsers will be happy with.

Hmm ok.  Doesn't matter much to me - I just tend to go with the latest
version of these things.  (Nice, solid reasoning.)

> Stop messing with my font sizes.

MWuhahaa! </evil-laugh>

> Incidentally, if you are setting absolute font sizes you should be 
> points not pixels

Ok we'll work that in, not a problem. :)

> When I override your font sizes ... the blue background of #nav and
> #mainlinks divs flows into the top of the h3 elements.  Setting a single
> colour background will fix this and subtract almost nothing from the
> design.

Ok.

> The AbiWord/Gnumeric/Planner icons should all have alt="" since the
> application name is in the heading next to them.

Not really... alt is for when the image cannot be displayed moreso than
it is for people to mouseover a displayed image for extra info.

> The screenshots are way too small to be any use - either get rid of 
> them or make them links to full size images.

Were going to be links to relevant screen shot pages.

> I'm pretty sure having the search box at the bottom of the page is
> against usability guidelines (it's best to make sure it's visible when
> the page is first loaded - I'll see if I can dig out a URL for this). 
> I'd suggest either putting it in the header or adding another section on
> the right for it, above the 'GO Users' section.

I've been thinking about changing it all day anyway.  Thanks for
confirming it's inappropriateness. ;)

(And, as Alan pointed out, top-right.)

> I don't think the User Portal/Applications/Community/etc. headings
> should be links.  What would they be pointing to?  Also I assume that
> this page is the 'About GO' one, in which case that shouldn't be a link.

This was in response to a request by somebody else.

> The valid XHTML/CSS icons don't work with the rest of the design and
> only impress geeks like me - most people don't care about this sort of
> thing.  If you want to keep the links to the validators then I suggest
> you swap them for text-only links - much more subtle.  And you really
> shouldn't have them if your page doesn't validate :)

The page will validate.

> The black -> red rollovers on links is yuck.  I can't believe you could
> do this after criticising my yellow backgrounds :)

Red does imply hot/active - bright yellow just looks gross!

/me ignores this one. ;)

Thanks for the feedback.  I'll incorporate it when I get time.  (I'm
busy until Thursday now.)
-- 
- Charlie

The future of the net - www.xwt.org

Charles Goodwin <charlie xwt org>
  Member of the XWT Foundation