[OLPC library] FLOSS Manuals visual presentation

Wed Sep 3 17:54:07 EDT 2008

hey Skier...try the FLOSS Manuals remix :
http://www.flossmanuals.net/remix

you can read about it here:
http://en.flossmanuals.net/FLOSSManuals/Remixing


adam


On Wed, 2008-09-03 at 13:45 -0700, S Page wrote:
> Looking at http://en.flossmanuals.net/OLPC_simple and
> http://en.flossmanuals.net/Sugar/Introduction , the content is most
> excellent!  But the presentation needs work.  I hope these are easy to
> fix.  Should I file Trac bugs for them?
> 
> * The manual doesn't fit on my XO screen (Browse 95 on 8.2-757) *and*
> there's no way to horizontally scroll it.  In e-book vertical mode, even
> less text is visible  That seems like a show-stopper.  The first line
>    "The XO laptop is designed to help you, your family, and your
> community to learn and grow, and to"
> is cropped to
>    "The XO laptop is designed to help you, your family, and your
> community to learn and grow"
> in regular mode; I have to View > Zoom out twice before I can see all
> the text.  The line is cropped to
>      "The XO laptop is designed to help you, your family, and y"
> in vertical e-book mode; I have to zoom out about 5 times before I can
> see it all.
> 
> The HTML for the book must not force a particular width.  Maybe this is
> coming from the gray box around the text.  I see a ds-contentcontainer
> <div> with width:654px and a few other divs and tables that may not be
> necessary.
> 
> * The orange and "fishnet over flesh" ( 8-) ) theme is jarring and
> inappropriate.
> ** I think eliminating
>    background="/publish/OLPC_simple/rsrc/TWiki/FlossSkin2/background.gif"
> in the <body> tag will get rid of the fishnets
> ** Maybe the fleshtone in the main text will go away if you eliminate
>    background:#FFF7F0;
> in <table id="ds-layout"
> ** The orange isn't quite OLPC's orange, I think it's #ff7f00 vs. #f78f1e.
> ** The gray margin around the text is the only Sugar-like element.  But
> it wastes space and imposes a tight margin next to the fishnet so it
> doesn't feel expansive but like a photocopy of a page on the screen.  If
> you got rid of it I think the material would be more pleasant to read,
> and maybe the text would flow to fit the screen.
> 
> * Is it possible to have conventional < previous ^ top > next chapter
> advance links in each chapter?
> 
> If not, the only navigation is the left-hand box.
> 
> * The CSS for the left-hand box eliminates the distinction between
> visited and unvisited links!  This is very bad for navigation (see "3.
> Not Changing the Color of Visited Links" in Jakob Nielsen's "Top Ten
> Mistakes in Web Design" http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html ).
> 
> * The "Introducing the XO" text in the left-hand box overlaps itself In
> Firefox 3.1pre and on my XO at every zoom level.
> 
> * The left-hand navigation uses a color change and a rule above to
> indicate each section, but wiki pages use a font size increase and a
> rule as underlines under section headings.
> 
> * The two icons above the left-hand navigation box do the same thing (go
> to '/' ), don't seem like useful to kids on the XO, and the back arrow
> is confusing below the browser's own back arrow.
> 
> I've done a little bit of CSS tweaking but I've never created .css from
> scratch.  So if you want I can propose exact changes, but I'd be
> guessing and messing.    (BTW I used Google Chrome to inspect elements,
> the Firebug extension to Firefox is even more powerful.)
> 
> * The <title> tag for every page is the same "OLPC_simple (en)".  This
> makes the history (hover over the back button) useless, makes
> bookmarking harder, and prevents Browse and Firefox 3's Awesome bar from
> working (you can't type "insta" and magically "Installing new
> Activities" shows up in the location field).
> 
> The "Introducing the XO" does heading capitalization right.
> * But in http://en.flossmanuals.net/Sugar/Introduction , when I see
> "WHAT IS AN ACTIVITY?" I just get anxious.
> ** Also in the Sugar manual, some of the Appendices are mixed case no
> spaces.  Just use "Joining activities")
> 
> I hope this helps, I'm sorry to appear so critical.  Again, well done on
> the text of the manuals!
> 
> --
> =S Page
> 
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