apology

[Neil Stevens]

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On Saturday October 19, 2002 03:47, Sebastian Faubel wrote:
> > 2. We moved to a single menu, so that the user doesn't have to search
> > toom uch to find links, and so that even on small screens there is
> > room for the main text to be shown.
>
> depends. i don't think that you have to search for the links longer in
> the two panel version than the other...as you don't have to scroll down
> five times your monitor to find them.

It's easier to scroll down, than to play hide-and-seek.  When you have to 
look on the left column, on the right column, and on the upper right row, 
that takes more mental effort and time to search than one hierarchy.

> moreover it's somehow practical to have them "right" at the eye...
> and i think all pages should have their indivialised linkspanel.

Why?  You agreed below that it's the main site content that's most 
important, so why not put the main site content right at the eye?

> regarding the small screens - somewhere you have to make a compromise.
> either you give the avarage user a more usable or more practical layout
> like mine, and take the decreased readability in really small screens
> width a graphical browser - or you really take it very ideologic.

But that's just it:  I don't think it's a tradeoff of usability to get one 
menu, for the reason I just gave above.

> i came to the conclusion that either when people have a really small
> resolution, they normally do not have a mordern graphical browser
> supporting css or they are already used to have problems surfing the web
> as really many sites to not make the effort anymore these days.

Oh come now.  This is the KDE site we're talking about here.  And remember, 
KDE officially supports an 800x600 screen resolution.  So this site *must* 
be usable with Konqueror on such systems.

> also think about the current poll on kde-look: i think it couldn't point
> out our expected user group / resolutions better.....
> somewhere you have to make a clear line.

I don't care about polls.  KDE never has been, and never will be, 
democratically run when it comes to deciding technical merit.  It would go 
against KDE's core principles to sacrifice usability and a whole segment 
of users (small screens) because of a unscientific poll that could easily 
be abused.

> > 3. We moved the search to a less prominent place, because being in the
> > middle is in the way, especially on a small screen.
>
> but isn't the content the most important thing on a page?

Yes, exactly.  That's why we need to get the search out of the way, put it 
off to the side, to give the main content more room and more prominence.  
I think your layout highlights the search form too much.

> > 4. We modified the logo graphic to fit in with the CSS better
>
> i don't think so. you just put it somewhere as background-image, which
> is not really an bad idea but i think this is only reasonable togehter
> with an alternate not displayed <h>title</h> for non graphical or non
> css browers...

I did do that.  Look at the code; there's an <h1> in there. :-)

> > 5. We removed all hard-coded fonts, as some users *need* to have sites
> > honor their own fonts.  Small fonts are simply illegible to some
> > people!
>
> i intended to make the font-size relative. but i don't agree by removing
> the font-family - this just doesn't fit any style or design..
>
> for promoting a desktop environment it is really important to have the
> visual style perfect these days...

Three objections to this:

1.  No, usability and accessability are most important.  It doesn't matter 
how shiny your style is, if whole classes of users can no longer read it.

2.  Your stylesheet had proprietary fonts in it, adding a dependency that 
is inconsistent with KDE licensing standards.

3.  The scope of the KDE site design is much larger than you may realize.  
We need to mkae a design that will work for every language, so if your 
design depends on a particular font, and your font doesn't support every 
language KDE supports (See the i18n combo box on the site for some 
examples), your design will fail.

- -- 
Neil Stevens - neil at qualityassistant.com
"The nearest I can make it out, 'Love your Enemies' means, 'Hate your
Friends'." - Benjamin Franklin
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