[Samba] samba.org has been revised!

[Felix Miata]

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

> 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
-- 
"The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant
words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation)

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/