Re: Validated HTML/CSS

[digitect mindspring com]

> Okay, here are some comments I have on the current design - random stuff
> I've thought about when playing with the mockups we have so far.
> 
>   - Why is the sidebar block built with the page background? Couldn't we use
>     a noice div or something? ("What is MS using on their sidebars?", he
>     asks, not quite believing his own question.) 
>
>     I say this because I think it would be cool to change/remove this in
>     different areas. For example, we'd remove it on the main news page, we
>     could change it to have the gnome feet background on d.g.o, etc.
>     Basically just more flexibility. :)

I think the sidebar-making tile is because there aren't any browsers that properly support z-index and PNG transparency. (That I am able to wrangle, anyway.) Without it, the foot's transparency overwrites the CSS sidebar grey with white in both IE5.5 and Moz9.3.

msdn.microsoft.com uses an in-line style to accomplish the sidebar. It uses just a simple background color instead of a graphic, which I like. Lemme see if I can't eliminate our graphic, because the flexibility would be nice, as you say, and it would be a bit faster, too.


>   - That orange line is *really* orange, so is the red on the initial-tables
>     version. Perhaps we could use subtler colours here?

Yeah, I re-worked the original template so that the stripe is actually an element all its own. Whoever makes the background images won't have to worry about including it with the same image, which again, gives us some more flexibility.

I hope we still have more time to resolve colors and compositional elements. I really don't think the background image, background color or stripe are even my second choice, their just something to work with. Frankly, I always liked Joakim's first design better:

http://www.mindspring.com/~digitect/gnome/comp-joakimziegler-02a.htm 

I've been corralling many other images that (I think) are better possibilities, so I hope no one is in love with the green hillscape yet. :)


>   - I think Steve's latest gnome foot is cool, because it's correctly
>     transparent - ie. doesn't use colours from stuff behind it, so we can
>     change the top bar as much as we want. 'twould be nice if this were done
>     with PNG alpha, so we still had cutesy shadows, etc.

Accept that browsers don't support it. (Check out http://entropymine.com/jason/testbed/pngtrans/ -- I'd be interested in knowing if anybody has a browser that tests perfectly here.)


> There's a bunch of great images I'd like to use for d.g.o on Garrett's site.
> He's waaay happy to have his images used, too. :)

Don't know Garrett or his web site. URL?


> > Something else I'd like to see in static form soon is a static style
> > sheet and test page that specifies/displays most of the HTML everybody
> > will need. Anybody know if the documentation folks have something like
> > this as a start? Or should we start fresh? Is this even needed?!
> 
> Not sure, but this is fully useful. If this is your area, jump in fast and
> kick ass! :) Having a really solid stylesheet for the site will go a long
> way towards documenting a style guide for publishing stuff, which will help
> enormously when people find out it's not so hard to put their pages up
> there!

I'll start one and then solicit input. I'm sure their will be a lot of styles everyone will want. I'll try to ask some people in the documentation project if they have started anything that we could use, too.


Steve Hall  [ digitect mindspring com ]