Ok, a few days after there was some discussion about the home page not looking very good. It didn't look balanced to me, either. Many of the pages didn't.
I offered up a new title bar. Jonathan said +1, and Per Einar said a move in the right direction, and Stas seemed to agree with Per Einar. Reasonably positive response, so it would seem. So I'm not sure where that leaves us. The changes I made were specifically designed to bring the title out more and tie the title in better with the content, and to make the eye follow the structure of the page better. The title in reverse text hides the title too much; our eyes are used to seeing black text on white. On many pages there's an intro paragraph, then a bold heading. I think that caused the intro paragraphs to be skipped over by the eye and instead go to the first heading below the intro paragraph. So the big changes were to make the title back text, and to make the headings also back on white instead of gray on white. Plus, give some white space before the title, and remove widgets between the title and the first paragraph, so the title and first paragraph are more directly connected. Current cvs is at: http://perl.apache.org/preview/modperl-docs/dst_html/ Here's variations of the design I showed the other day: Content offset down below the navigation (extra white space) http://mardy.hank.org:5000/test5/docs/1.0/guide/advocacy.html Above without the thin line separating nav and title. Cleaner looking. http://mardy.hank.org:5000/test7/docs/1.0/guide/advocacy.html Same, but with the search box centered. http://mardy.hank.org:5000/test8/docs/1.0/guide/advocacy.html (Stas and Jonathan both said they like the centered input elements in the above example. I think my search box test page was misleading since it showed the search out of context. The input elements looks a little odd centered when the text above is left justified. But perhaps that's just me.) Stas asked about placing the navigation on the same line as the title: http://mardy.hank.org:5000/test6/docs/1.0/guide/advocacy.html I like this ok, but not as much as test7/test8 (the ones with the most white-space above the title. test7/test8 really tie the content together. But test6, with the nav on the same line, looks good too. Actually, even with long titles that wrap, it still looks ok. You will notice the pdf|src links below the bar on the Advocacy page (well, they aren't links in that example). In the past I've suggested placing the [SRC] link at the bottom of the page. I felt that the reverse [SRC] button was too strong of an element for as little use as it will get, and too strong for the left side of title bar. Same for [PDF], really. I'm against placing them on the left side of the title bar because they get in the way of the content; the title should flow to the content. They are not navigation, so they don't need to look just like the other navigation widgets. So to keep the weight across the title bar a bit more balanced I just used simple, small text for pdf|src. Anyone that's advanced enough to desire to read in pdf format (or grab the source for that matter) will surely understand that those are links to pdf and the source. But for the masses that won't use them, they are not overpowering or in the way. And placing the pdf|src below the bar ties them with the content, if you like that kind of argument. The point of the fading bar is also to throw more weight to the left side to where the title is, and to offset the widgets on the right. It's optional, but it seems to help. So, there you have it. It's the best I can offer. Stare at them a while, please, because everything will look wrong compared to what you are used to looking at. So please, I'd like to reclaim my disk space. > du -s modperl-docs* 60984 modperl-docs 20072 modperl-docs.test1 63324 modperl-docs.test2 34504 modperl-docs.test3 52696 modperl-docs.test4 180568 modperl-docs.test5 180564 modperl-docs.test6 180548 modperl-docs.test7 180568 modperl-docs.test8 And, btw, test1, test2, test3, test4 (and just hank.org:5000/) are still on-line. It's kind of fun to run through them all and see the progression and understand why I may go have a beer now. -- Bill Moseley mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
