Theming and design issues
Feb 26 2007
Is it too early to be talking about this stuff?
Anyway here's a few things I think:
- page titles are a bit too big, should be taken down a few sizes
- cases - we need to sort out consistent capitalisation policy, should try to be as lower case as possible i think. all section titles should be lower case though, and all kinda of site menu titley things should be lower case as well, like my inbox, my account, who's online, etc. i will make forum titles lower case unless they're proper nouns now.
- bullet points need standardising. gaps between left side, bullet point and titles are different. points are left aligned in new articles box on right, say, but indented in latest library articles box. maybe inside articles we should just use the libcom triangle bullet point "smilie" like on old forums? cos using bullet points is annoying for formatting, in terms of indentation and it puts a linebreak in where you may not want one.
- i'm quite liking the blue text and stuff... do we intend to keep it? the site was a bit too grey before i think
- title bar has | between top ones but not ones below. this deliberate?
- would be good to distinguish formatted from non-formatted content in some way? maybe put them in order of news, history, organise, thought then library, forums perhaps?
- i think maybe the white space on the left is a bit too big. the star could cross over the middle column a bit with no probs i think.
- I like articles' tags being displayed in tag indexes... can we keep that?
- sections should have page header title things. at the mo they all say libcom | 5.0
- thumbnailing in tag indexes is good, it seems to resize a little bit and crop a lot. at the mo it's cropping too much and not resizing enough. would be good to shrink more and crop a bit less.
- articles put into book outlines still have "article", "introduction" etc. on them, and now they have "image" as well. e.g. http://libcom.org/thought/environment
- articles put into book outlines don't seem to display their parent book. see enviro shows parent as thought, not everyday manifesto
- are we still using book pages? can we use thumbnails and shit for them too now? would be good
- in tag indexes would be great to display what content type the articles are. Maybe alongside the title, or by the tags/date/author info.
- transparency in tag suggestion drop downs makes them impossible to read
Feb 26 2007
#2
Can we get the post page numbers back under the first post?
Feb 26 2007
#3
Just wanted to say I really thought the main libcom.org page in v4 beta looked sensational, and so did a few friends of mine who do web design for a job, and were quite astonished it was a drupal base.
I know it's a teething phase with v5 right now but I just wanted to say that I hope something close in resembalance to v4 comes back on the front page. Twas terrific.
I liked the drop down fields for 'Forums' too, hope that comes back, although it may not work since those top two menu lists are in two rows..
I think the transparency looks great 
Great work though guys!
Feb 26 2007
#4
aketus wrote:
Just wanted to say I really thought the main libcom.org page in v4 beta looked sensational, and so did a few friends of mine who do web design for a job, and were quite astonished it was a drupal base.
it'll look way better than that... but thanks!
Feb 26 2007
#5
Quote:
Just wanted to say I really thought the main libcom.org page in v4 beta looked sensational, and so did a few friends of mine who do web design for a job, and were quite astonished it was a drupal base.
You know i cant actually remember what it looked like anymore 
I'm on FF at the moment on a small monitory at 1024x768 and the main coloumn is very very thin compared to the right coloumn which is like 2/3rds of the size. Also there is crossover when logged out between the login box and main coloumn.
And yeah just had a look with ie6 and the site is unusable
Feb 26 2007
#6
rkn wrote:
I'm on FF at the moment on a small monitory at 1024x768 and the main coloumn is very very thin compared to the right coloumn which is like 2/3rds of the size. Also there is crossover when logged out between the login box and main coloumn.
Just upgraded to IE7, and it looks a bit too big here, too in 1280x1024. Altho not hugely, could do to lose about a quarter.
Quote:
And yeah just had a look with ie6 and the site is unusable :(
Yea, it's really bad. However, I just checked on another machine, and articles look fine, so it should be okay for people who find through google etc - it's just the front page and forums that looked fucked.
Feb 26 2007
#7
rkn wrote:
I'm on FF at the moment on a small monitory at 1024x768 and the main coloumn is very very thin compared to the right coloumn which is like 2/3rds of the size.
yeah they're fucking huge. only reason i can see them being that big is to put thumbnails in latest boxes. but then they could still prob be 230-250 and have that.
Feb 26 2007
#8
- was thinking, with the little About bits on each main index, would it maybe be best to put them in a block on the right side at the top? so latest content/index stuff can be prioritised in the centre?
Feb 26 2007
#9
I agree with aketus, I loved the way it looked previously. And that big star on the left has got to go, since it causes there to be too little horizontal space for the messages.
Edit: Also, where's the generic tracker link that used to be on the right-hand side?
PS: No, making the text much smaller isn't helping. Banish the evil Star of Satan!!! 
Edit edit: Never mind, found it under explore. Don't like drag-downs much.
Feb 26 2007
#10
Hmmm - what did the index look like before? I mean in your view - that made it better
Feb 26 2007
#11
it was just the 4 blocks for news, history, library, forums with 3 latest stories for each, with the about block on the right.
Feb 26 2007
#12
You can see it (for now) small here - http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=www.libcom.org
Feb 26 2007
#13
Yup thats jogged the memory. hmm i might be going off the header blocks we are using
Feb 26 2007
#14
It looked cack, and the new one is better in every way, don't worry.
Altho the text is too small - it might look good, but it's shit for anyone visually impaired...
Feb 26 2007
#15
which text? pretty sure no font sizes have changed
Feb 26 2007
#16
It might be IE7 displaying differently, then.
Hm, actually I think it's mostly the text in the text box when you type - it looks much smaller.
Feb 26 2007
#17
John. wrote:
Is it too early to be talking about this stuff?Anyway here's a few things I think:
- page titles are a bit too big, should be taken down a few sizes
Yeah a little bit.
Quote:
- cases - we need to sort out consistent capitalisation policy, should try to be as lower case as possible i think. all section titles should be lower case though, and all kinda of site menu titley things should be lower case as well, like my inbox, my account, who's online, etc. i will make forum titles lower case unless they're proper nouns now.
some of these are hard-coded, so hard to change. We can probably do it with localisation module but it's playing up at the moment.
Quote:
- bullet points need standardising. gaps between left side, bullet point and titles are different. points are left aligned in new articles box on right, say, but indented in latest library articles box. maybe inside articles we should just use the libcom triangle bullet point "smilie" like on old forums? cos using bullet points is annoying for formatting, in terms of indentation and it puts a linebreak in where you may not want one.
Can fix with css - it was always pretty bad before, and is bad in a different way now. So yeah needs sorting out.
Quote:
- i'm quite liking the blue text and stuff... do we intend to keep it? the site was a bit too grey before i think
I like it, definitely not back to grey anyway.
Quote:
- title bar has | between top ones but not ones below. this deliberate?
They're coded a bit differently, should be possible to do it and yeah it'd make sense.
Quote:
- would be good to distinguish formatted from non-formatted content in some way? maybe put them in order of news, history, organise, thought then library, forums perhaps?
I think order of updating is important as well though tbh - organise and thought are always going to change slower than library/forums/news.
Quote:
- i think maybe the white space on the left is a bit too big. the star could cross over the middle column a bit with no probs i think.
Yeah I reckon it could be smaller by at least 15-20%.
Quote:
- I like articles' tags being displayed in tag indexes... can we keep that?
Yep. Maybe theme a bit different but I think it's good to have that.
Quote:
- sections should have page header title things. at the mo they all say libcom | 5.0
that's a combination of either nodewords not working, or me not sticking titles on the panels. You can test by going into admin >> build >> panels, editing one, and putting a title in.
Quote:
- thumbnailing in tag indexes is good, it seems to resize a little bit and crop a lot. at the mo it's cropping too much and not resizing enough. would be good to shrink more and crop a bit less.
Yeah I was just testing it. It's in imagecache settings. Feel free to play around with the numbers/dimensions a bit in those settings, should hopefully be self-explanatory.
Quote:
- articles put into book outlines still have "article", "introduction" etc. on them, and now they have "image" as well. e.g. http://libcom.org/thought/environment
To fix that, go to admin >> content types - then view fields on the content type you want to edit. History and News have workable settings. It's pretty easy.
Quote:
- articles put into book outlines don't seem to display their parent book. see enviro shows parent as thought, not everyday manifesto
Book navigation menu is off. Do you mean breadcrumbs? Now/Next links??
Quote:
- are we still using book pages? can we use thumbnails and shit for them too now? would be good
Pretty sure we can add stuff like that to all content types now yeah. 5.0 goodness.
Quote:
- in tag indexes would be great to display what content type the articles are. Maybe alongside the title, or by the tags/date/author info.
Problem with this, I think, is that if we do it in /tags/tag then we'll also be doing it in /news/tags/tag or history/tags/tag which could get annoying seeing history, history, history, history all the way down a page. It's probably quite easy to do though. The other option would be some kind of little icon or something which indicates which content type. Worth looking into but this one for a little bit later I think.
Quote:
- transparency in tag suggestion drop downs makes them impossible to read
I'm not seeing transparency in ff.
Feb 26 2007
#18
John. wrote:
- was thinking, with the little About bits on each main index, would it maybe be best to put them in a block on the right side at the top? so latest content/index stuff can be prioritised in the centre?
Yeah that's a good idea - could stick them there on every news/* etc. page as well if we did that.
Feb 26 2007
#19
yeah the right sidebar is too big. I've just reduced it to 250px to see how it looks.
I've got an idea about some of the major IE6 problems - involves merging the zen template.php with flat-forum.tpl.php and restoring some of the original css though, so on a good day.
Feb 26 2007
#20
hmm, let's try 230.
Feb 27 2007
#21
is this upgrade an attempt to get me the boot from work? The text is far too big, the star needs shooting, the automatic subheading is crap and in general i'm not liking all this white, it's like living in an Applestore.
Bitch over, and an acknowledgement to the hardwork but you know me I have whinged about every change there has been so no point changing a tradition.
Feb 27 2007
#22
alright, to make the left whitespace smaller, but still have the star in the same place, we have to somehow apply the star as a background to body - have done this by switching bgs around between page/body and removing padding from #logo
this means logo is used twice in two divs, which allows #logo to be 60px high, which allows the centre column to be wider without being messed up by the clickable-ness. It's messed with other stuff (opacity), but will leave for now for people to see.
Feb 27 2007
#23
revol68 wrote:
is this upgrade an attempt to get me the boot from work?
i'm sure you can turn off images like the rest of us 
but yeah there's a work-safe theme on the way in the next couple of months
Feb 27 2007
#24
ok that width thing didn't work - the image hides behind other elements. Either have to take a look at fridge code a bit more or think about moving star upwards so we can put #container under it if we want to make left column thinner.
Feb 27 2007
#25
right i stopped the cropping of images, cos they're all well small anyway.
now it's index ones - 120x50, thumbs 80x 80. dunno if i should make it say 80x50 and 120x80 though. hmmm will play later.
have named panel pages, non-panel ones need putting in lower case.
Feb 27 2007
#26
The layout of this page is fucked, btw. right blocks are all shifted to the bottom, there's big text in your post at the middle and if you quote it then the text entry box ends up behind your quoted post.
some of these are hard-coded, so hard to change. We can probably do it with localisation module but it's playing up at the moment.
ok cool
[b]I think order of updating is important as well though tbh - organise and thought are always going to change slower than library/forums/news.yeah true. hmmm.
- articles put into book outlines still have "article", "introduction" etc. on them, and now they have "image" as well. e.g. http://libcom.org/thought/environment
To fix that, go to admin >> content types - then view fields on the content type you want to edit. History and News have workable settings. It's pretty easy.
shit i just noticed in FF clicking the buttons doesn't send you back up to the top of the box. fuckin a!
anyway i had a look, history and organise both look just the same there. i think it's moving things into book outlines that fucks them.
so either - we fix it. or could we just take them out of book outline and put them in a tag we'll only use for that organise guide/everyday manifesto or whatever? then within that tag we sort things alphabetical and by weight?
- articles put into book outlines don't seem to display their parent book. see enviro shows parent as thought, not everyday manifesto
Book navigation menu is off. Do you mean breadcrumbs? Now/Next links??
i meant breadcrumbs
- are we still using book pages? can we use thumbnails and shit for them too now? would be good
Pretty sure we can add stuff like that to all content types now yeah. 5.0 goodness.
would that work retrospectively for old library articles? can we just do that now then? though we'll still have the above error for things in books...
Also, can we now have the teaser automatically be used as the meta tag as well?
Problem with this, I think, is that if we do it in /tags/tag then we'll also be doing it in /news/tags/tag or history/tags/tag which could get annoying seeing history, history, history, history all the way down a page. It's probably quite easy to do though. The other option would be some kind of little icon or something which indicates which content type. Worth looking into but this one for a little bit later I think.
Quote:
yeah good point.
I'm not seeing transparency in ff.
me neither now... hmmm.
Mar 1 2007
#27
Found where the margin between titles and taxonomy is set and reduced it, and played around with min-height and padding for taxonomy/news lists. Reckon it's a bit better although still work to do.
Mar 1 2007
#28
have fixed padding for arrows a little bit as well.
Mar 1 2007
#29
cool.
er has line spacing been changed? now gap between paras seems smaller and gaps between lines seems bigger, makes paras very hard to see, and stuff hard to read generally. can the lines be closed up a bit?
Mar 1 2007
#30
not on purpose no. Might have changed something which messed it up though.
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