Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

pcplantdb - Re: [pcplantdb] website

pcplantdb@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: pcplantdb

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Chad Knepp <pyg@galatea.org>
  • To: Permaculture Plant Database <pcplantdb@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [pcplantdb] website
  • Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 11:01:35 -0600

John Schinnerer writes:
> Chad Knepp wrote:
> > So, permaculture.info looks different. What do you think now?
>
> Looks good to me overall visually. Earthy colors seem appropriate... ;-)
>
> Page titles should include text 'permaculture information web' or
> similar, e.g. 'Welcome - Permaculture Information Web', 'Vision -
> Permaculture Information Web' and so on.
> Google among others uses page titles to categorize, so title should
> contain key words we want to be recognized by.

I recognize all that. The problem with 'Permaculture Information Web'
from a design standpoint is that it's just too long. It doesn't make
a good logo and the acronym is non-obvious and non-associative. My
first logo attempt tried to remedy this issue but wasn't really
legible. You can look at another logo I worked on for a while here:
<http://permaculture.info/images/logo.png> It is dark green with the
'permaculture info' part a [subtly] lighter shade of green. I also
couldn't scheme the colors satisfactorily. The current logo, sort of
a fleshy 'Permaculture.Info' only takes about 5 minutes to make, in a
different color, font, whatever. I'm not at all attached to it
either. I might even do another test version of the current site with
default Plone colors for comparison.

> Top tab navigation will morph to what when we have too many pages to use
> some relatively small number of top tabs? Assuming we will at some
> point - perhaps not...?

I'm not attached to the tab thing at all... in fact I think it looks
rather awkward. This new website project has been my chance to learn
css finally. I feel a little like Neo in the Matrix learning skills
through a brain tap, "Wow, I know kung-fu/css!"

> The ibiblio logo lower right is kinda fuzzy-looking at the edges of colors.

That was their image... doesn't look good on darker backgrounds. I
did a little cleaning, check it out now.

> Passes my ad-hoc lynx text browser accessibility test OK.
>
> Fails HTML validation with 11 errors (12 counting the initial "no char
> encoding found" warning). Home page that is - didn't try them all but I
> reckon that's indicative, as you said you were using some kind of
> homebrew templating system...?
>
> Validation done here:
>
> http://validator.w3.org/

I will work on that RSN.

> No comments here yet on my nomination of XHTML 1.0 transitional as our
> standard for web page validation.
> Pages so far are specified as HTML 4.0 transitional.
>
> I want consensus on our HTML standard before more work is done on the
> web pages to avoid Chad or whomever having to rework them all if group
> choice doesn't match what's already been done.
>
> Please post your nominations/comments/votes on HTML validation standard
> for PIW web site.

I'm all for XHTML 1.0. The header is a cut and pasted one from an
older page. As above, I have bit of cleaning up to do.

> > It doesn't look very good in Mac/IE5, which
> > doesn't seem to support css concepts like float.
>
> IE/Mac is very old and moldy. It is at least several years behind
> everything else and last I heard MS has no plans to upgrade it - ever.
> Doesn't even support privately signed SSL certs... :-p
>
> It's a tiny tiny fraction of user agents - officially I say don't do
> anything to accomodate it. I will be happy to recommend
> standards-supporting browsers to IE/Mac users (Mozilla, Safari,
> Netscape...).

Well, one thing I did that I know won't work in Win IE 5 and maybe 6
is in using transparent pngs. The best long term choice is to fake
transparency with jpegs but you have to be commited to the background
color. Not really sure what level of backward browser compatibility
we want to have... I will make sure it's usable in Linux Firefox and
w3m anyway.

> Speaking of user agents - do we get stats with our ibiblio hosting?
> Webalyzer or similar?
> If so how do we access them?

I'll look into that.

Stephanie Gerson writes:
> hi Chad,
>
> Is there a color chart we can look at? Like paint swatches, but for web
> colors?

I think <http://www.hypergurl.com/colormatch.php> is kind of helpful
for picking colors that work with other colors although it doesn't
realy create a complete scheme... there are others.

> Please no Times font. Sorry. I have some unexplainable aversion. I
> even prefer straight Courier (the one that looks like a typewriter).
>
> I like simple and round-ish, like Arial - anything like that?
>
> Of course we don't have complete control over what user will see, but
> let's do what we can.

Actually depending on your browser configuration and font availability
the site should be rendered with Arial first, then Schoolbook, and
then the broswer default. Not sure what's happening that you see
Times. Personally I'm in favor of not changing the font from the
browser default but I'm ok with using something serif if folks
prefer. Anybody else have a set of font choices that includes good
looking fonts that are available in Unix, Win, and Mac (Arial is not
available on Unix). This would go in body {font-family: "Font";} of
the css.

> Many comments on the website, but falling asleep so I'll submit tomorrow.
> Don't you have the bios to put in the about us - didn't I send them to
> you? I've re-attached, if you'd like to use them.

Didn't have them and will add them to the About Us page today.

--
Chad Knepp
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page