From owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Mar 2 20:02:05 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B719B16A4CE for ; Wed, 2 Mar 2005 20:02:05 +0000 (GMT) Received: from rproxy.gmail.com (rproxy.gmail.com [64.233.170.197]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 009A443D2F for ; Wed, 2 Mar 2005 20:02:05 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from volcimaster@gmail.com) Received: by rproxy.gmail.com with SMTP id 34so226019rns for ; Wed, 02 Mar 2005 12:02:04 -0800 (PST) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:reply-to:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:references; b=jf7rJVCsOoPY+AHZilkENiZq+KcmTHtfzgKK0jkHn8gLopR8mAFDRd60r1KPg5R4DP65NbuQZptivRvpmc5imuOvI8wV9G/4VVT1NoTmJRD+LEKq+ZHYxw7rWJ34NImh5ADiPbDmrWyiYYIgZVMJhmrWPrYnaB+tQDR3eJVTyWE= Received: by 10.38.8.39 with SMTP id 39mr78789rnh; Wed, 02 Mar 2005 12:02:04 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.38.8.29 with HTTP; Wed, 2 Mar 2005 12:02:04 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2005 15:02:04 -0500 From: Warren Myers To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20050302124137.0f2ad860@209.152.117.178> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable References: <9C4E897FB284BF4DBC9C0DC42FB34617641B5B@mvaexch01.acuson.com> <5.1.0.14.2.20050302124137.0f2ad860@209.152.117.178> Subject: Re: Logo idea and FreeBSD.com concept X-BeenThere: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list Reply-To: Warren Myers List-Id: FreeBSD Evangelism List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 02 Mar 2005 20:02:05 -0000 It's not an aspect of laziness. It's in deference to other users of my site. If you have the width uncontrolled, long streams of text become very hard to read on high resolutions. I understand that not many people will view pages maximized at 1600x1200, but I do for basic design principles taught in every web design class I've ever been in or heard of. The width is directly tied to readability. If someone needs to resize the window down just to read what you have to say, they will most likely move on. There's a reason why newspapers and magazines use the column approach: it's not because it's "what we do" it's because the human eye has trouble reading wide streams of text easily. It can be done, but most people tend to start dropping their eye by the end of the line. You see this tendency when someone writes on a chalk or whiteboard. As the line continues across the board, it gradually gets lower and lower, because they do not force their hand up, and as you get further away from the center of your viewing, your eye wants to relax downwards. All good professional web designers know that they need to keep there site a decent width. Sometimes scaling works decently, but not often. Slashdot is a good example of a site that chooses not to set the width of their pages. They fix the size of the menus and ad space, but let the text flow inside whatever space is left over. This means that their pages are not very readable in high resolution windows. For example, at work I run 1024x768 and keep all of my window maximized when browsing. At that resolution, the article space doesn't look too bad. However, when I'm at home or school and running 1280x1024, the articles are more difficult to read, and at 1600x1200, they become nearly impossible to follow. And I have good eyesight. The positioning chosen by most good designers from large companies like Apple, IBM, CNN, on down to personal sites like my own (http://warrenmyers.com) all follow the simple readability rules mentioned above. They also make sure that the most important information is in the first screen of what you see since a large percentage of visitors will not scroll the window if they don't see what they need immediately. Changing the width setting will not make the page look the same in my browser, either. If I let the width float, I would lose the clear borders and margins around the edge of my page. As a general rule, I also don't do all of my layout and formatting with tables. Only one site I maintain uses tables for its layout, and I just haven't had the time to switch over to pure HTML and CSS. CSS was designed from the ground up to provide all of the layout and style handling anyone needs. Look at http://csszengarden.com for examples of identical HTML but different style sheets, and see the drastic differences realized through the judicious use of CSS. As to your question of validity, yes my sites are all valid, to the best of my knowledge. There may be some minor inconsistencies, but they are just that, minor. WMM On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 12:50:26 -0600, W. D. wrote: > At 12:30 3/2/2005, Warren Myers, wrote: > >I always trim my pages to 750 pixels. It gives a small border on each > >side (except in the retardedly stupid css rendering in IE), and makes > >it very readable. I run high res at home (1280x1024, because I only > >have a 17"), and like to have multiple windows open simultaneously, > >and if I could run 1600 or higher, I most certainly would. Having > >multiple windows open is nearly a necessity anymore, and sizing the > >site to fit in a common size of 750 wide (to allow for the window > >borders and such) is a reasonable thing to do, in my opinion.. >=20 > It's reasonable if you are lazy. Go over your HTML code and > replace >=20 > WIDTH=3D"750" >=20 > with >=20 > WIDTH=3D"100%" >=20 > You will have a page that looks the same in your browser, but > will auto-size for other configurations. If you have nested > tables, those will also need to be converted from fixed pixels > to percentages as well. >=20 > Most HTML on the Web is just plain sloppy. This is one > of the reasons browsers have to be bulky--they need to > make allowances for crappy HTML. Are you valid? >=20 > http://www.HTMLvalidator.com/ > http://www.HTMLhelp.com/tools/validator/ > http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator-uri.html >=20 > Start Here to Find It Fast!=E2=84=A2 -> http://www.US-Webmasters.com/best= -start-page/ > $8.77 Domain Names -> http://domains.us-webmasters.com/ >=20 > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-advocacy-unsubscribe@freebsd.or= g" >=20 --=20 http://warrenmyers.com "Don't let the elephants see what the rabbits are doing." --Ben R Rich "He looks like a contented Christian with four aces." --Mark Twain