oh boy, SO much in here, please see below...
:murb: [maarten brouwers] wrote:
Hi all,
The discussion on the removal of the !important statements seems to
halt... No good. There are a few problems:
We want to launch a new website soon, but:
1. there is no staging server
2. a conservative sound is heard when only minor changes are proposed
to the global css
(and an even more conservative sound is expected
when we are to change the global headers and
footers)
3. it is incredibly hard to understand the current CSS soup, on top of
which we are expected, because of 2., to launch a new site
4. it is already hard to design simple things at the domain
openoffice.org, because of 3.
This is a situation we can't maintain forever. We need to think of how
to proceed. We, as the website group, are responsible for a good
website, and we have a bad website. We need to take responsibility.
Since we have no staging server, we can't guarantee a 100% fluent
transition, however, we can do our utmost best to make it such one by
reviewing the diff's on this website before committing. Since that
won't give us a 100% guarantee, we have to inform the users, just like
we have done in the past with a Collabnet (~up)grade during this
period. It is simply the best we can do... Apart from standing still
and changing nothing. The current situation is so frustrating that it
makes more sense creating a new domain, and start with people who are
enthusiastic a new portal from scratch for OpenOffice.org. But such
split of community is not desirable. But tend to see this as an
alternative which becomes increasingly more interesting, which I hate
to say.
So I propose to focus on a process of change (I do not have any
relationship with Obama ;) ), and make sure that it is a change that
does not interfere with everyday operation too much. This requires a
plan. A first rough draft:
0. announce on the website that we are working on the website, which
may cause minor inconveniences. in case major sections break, please
notify the [EMAIL PROTECTED] list.
1. delete all !important statements (of which none are related to
display nones etc., but only colour or text decoration)
2. introduce the new html code needed for the new design to work to
the header and footer files (e.g. the tabbed search, login etc., and
the new tabs with as style attribute: display:none (this can, but only
for testing in the tryouts area, be overridden with !important
statements in a manually included css file)
- the introduction of this code is first approved in a discussion
at this list.
boy oh boy! OK, I've got the latest version in tryouts just now. Without
boring you with what I did to do this (changing a few url refs in the
style sheet), I don't think what you're proposing would work at all,
Maarten. Sorry about this. I think what WOULD work is for someone with
some appropriate access to put the styling we've already got (we'd need
to break up the header and footer styles) and dump them into new styles
in "/branding" then get whoever at Collabnet to do some magic to allow
these to be used as standards ONLY on pages in a particular area of the
server, presumably /tryouts/Jan2008. I would be willing to bet this
could be done...hopefully! :/ Or, alternatively, let this business go
for now and just remember to append /nonav to tryouts. This is working
pretty good for me right now.
But your suggestion has merit in terms of how some of this would work
with the remainder of the site that doesn't get transformed! :{
3. finish the website in the tryouts area
This part shouldn't be too bad, well for the most part. We can always
dump unfixed test pages in to see what happens.
4. upload the new content files, to www
5. remove the old header items, and remove display:none attribute of
the new ones (I am afraid that this will result, albeit for minutes,
in a messy appearance, maybe we can refine this point)
6. start actually enjoying the website again.
I know, I'm looking at things from a progressive point of view, and
rather see the site break ugly temporarily than continue with the
current site in a ramshackle state. But we have agreed on a change in
look, we are working on it all together... we need to take the final
steps as well before we can actually implement it. Let's figure out
how we can do this smoothly. Input much appreciated.
I'm VERY concerned about the complexity of the new header design vs what
we have now, if you want to know the truth. I guess we'll just have to
wait and see how this plays out.
g.,
Maarten
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Kay Schenk
"As anyone who has ever been around a cat for any length of
time well knows, cats have enormous patience with
the limitations of the human mind." --Cleveland Amory
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