This is, of course, a huge problem for doing CSS comparisons. At the moment, I figured we have no choice but to make a separate wireframe overlay for each browser/OS configuration, and use that as a reference. The wireframes should be almost identical, but we need to ensure we're not dealing with a browser quirk as opposed to an actual bug. As an aside to address the second point, I will be the first to admit the FSS CSS is not a pixel perfect system (nor does it try to be) but rather a very helpful sibling to UI Options, doing what it can for assisting in layout, text and color manipulation. So, in the end, we leave the perfect-pixel-pushing to the OCD designer/developers who will tweak what they need :) Jacob On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 1:54 PM, Eli Cochran <[email protected]> wrote:
> I think that this is an excellent approach. It unfortunately still involves > someone eyeballing it. (I understand that with some effort we could devise a > system that did this auto-magically, but I'm not sure it is worth it.) > I have a concern. > > We all know that every rendering engine has it's own quirks and while > cross-browser pixel perfect designs are do-able, they take extra effort and > often browser specific code or hacks. In many cases, especially web > applications, an acceptable strategy is to accept that some variation will > occur and as long as the page is usable and esthetically consistent on that > browser then it's OK, even if it doesn't agree with some other browser. > > The overlay approach should also be paired with a policy that outlines what > is an "acceptable variation" between browsers. > > <huge generalization>One of the advantage of the Web 2.0 esthetic of > "less-visual-design" is that it has much more room for variations between > rendering engines.</huge generalization> > > - Eli > > > On Jan 27, 2009, at 10:31 AM, Jacob Farber wrote: > > Hi Everyone, > > The past while it has become more and more pressing that FSS has some form > of testing. Through some research and long discussions it has become evident > that this is not going to be easy. Some ideas bounced around were automated > image comparisons and programmatic CSS parsing but no solution was feasable > within our time-constraints and nothing completely removed the need for > someone to just open a page and see if it "just looked right". > > On that note, Justin and I were thinking perhaps a wireframe overlay on top > of special test page would suffice for now. The wireframe would look > something like an outline like Adobe Illustrators "outline" mode, and it > would layer itself on top of the test page content. If the wireframe and the > content beneath it didnt match up perfectly, you would know something is > broken right away and bug could be logged. To complement this test page, a > series of smaller pages would be available to test very specific chunks of > the FSS CSS. This second part would help us pinpoint where specific problems > lie. > > Any thoughts or ideas? > > Thanks > > Jacob > > -- > Jacob Farber > University of Toronto - ATRC > Tel: (416) 946-3002 > www.fluidproject.org > > > . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . > . > > Eli Cochran > user interaction developer > ETS, UC Berkeley > > > -- Jacob Farber University of Toronto - ATRC Tel: (416) 946-3002 www.fluidproject.org
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