[Samba] samba.org has been revised!

[John H Terpstra]

On 05/19/2010 09:48 AM, Felix Miata wrote:
> On 2010/05/19 09:12 (GMT-0400) David Eisner composed:
> 
>> On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 11:22 PM, Felix Miata <mrmazda at earthlink.net> wrote:
> 
>>> Not even close. Arguably it's attractive, as long as you don't actually need
>>> to use it or read anything on it. Pray your eyes are as good as a 15 year old
>>> or you aren't using a high resolution device to access it if so.
> 
>> I like the new design.  I'm not particularly young, and I don't have a
>> particularly fancy monitor.  I do wear glasses, though.
> 
> Many people, regardless of age, even with correction, don't see particularly
> well, but quite well enough to use web pages that respect their defaults.
> These aren't the only people now being disrespected. All, regardless of
> eyesight, should be respected. Web designers as a group either don't
> understand the meaning of that word, or don't think it a necessary part of
> designing for the web.
> 
> http://fm.no-ip.com/Inet/shame.html

Felix,

I respect your right to have and express your opinions regarding the new
look of the Samba web site.  I also wish to point out the great freedom
we have and exercise in the open source community - that of contributing
something better.  Remember though, that since we are predominately
consensus-driven, what you I view as best may not meet with unanimous
agreement from the greater community. This gets us back to respect for
the right to disagree.

Seriously, if you have a strong conviction that the Samba project would
be better served with a different look-and-feel, and a more appropriate
logical layout, please pursue your concerns - and contribute at least a
proof of concept.

We are currently short of resources to help manage the web site and the
wiki, so if you have an interest and a passion, and plenty of time on
your hands, please let us see your hand raised to volunteer to get on
with the work needed.

I love feedback - good and bad!

Cheers,
John T.

>> The CSS sizes the fonts in px, though, which is a problem.
> 
> Exactly.
> 
>>  The issue
>> isn't that your monitor has too low a resolution, it's that it's "too"
>> high.
> 
> Hogwash:
> 
> 1-The technology to design web pages with resolution independence is more
> than a decade old. http://fm.no-ip.com/Auth/Sites/Ksc/ is a very simple
> example of how it can be done. Apply zoom, or change your default larger or
> smaller to see how well it can work.
> 
> 2-High resolution == high quality. Therefore, higher resolution _should_ mean
> a higher quality web experience. Web fonts are famous for marginal to poor
> quality. That lack of quality is proportional to DPI. The higher the DPI, the
> higher the quality, as each character of any given physical size has more px
> to be rendered with. My default of 24px has nominally 576 px per character,
> compared to samba's 13px at nominal 169px, which is several orders of
> magnitude higher quality.
> 
> 3-A major reason still higher resolution isn't widely available yet is the
> usability factor. Web pages and software are still being designed as if
> people were using display hardware manufactured two decades ago. Were page
> and software designers incorporating resolution independence, even more
> advanced (still higher DPI) hardware to take advantage of it would be here
> already. IOW, hardware technology is being held back by anachronistic
> software and web page design.
> 
>> Have you tried Ctrl-+ a few times?
> 
> Of course. But it's necessary on virtually every page, because virtually
> every page is designed either without regard to user defaults (in px), or by
> setting some base size at a fraction of the defaults (assuming the defaults
> are incorrectly set "too large").
> 
> Both behaviors (without regard, and assuming wrongly large) are offensive.
> Ctrl-+ (and minimum font size) are _defensive_ features provided by browser
> makers. Absent an offense, a defense needn't be applied.
> 
> Poor legibility, caused primarily by too small fonts, besides being
> offensive, is a widespread usability problem:
> 
> http://www.useit.com/alertbox/designmistakes.html