Rework of the FreeBSD website[was:FreeBSD'sVisualIdentity:Outdated?]

[Nikolas Britton]

Chris Zumbrunn wrote:

>
> On Jan 12, 2005, at 9:16 PM, Nikolas Britton wrote:
>
>> Ceri Davies wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, Jan 12, 2005 at 11:11:41AM -0600, Nikolas Britton wrote:
>>>
>>>> Ceri Davies wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, Jan 12, 2005 at 05:45:39AM -0600, Nikolas Britton wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Chris Zumbrunn wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Jan 10, 2005, at 7:03 PM, Ceri Davies wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Sun, Jan 09, 2005 at 04:17:01PM -0600, Eric Kjeldergaard wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Something we do a lot at my workplace (web development firm, 
>>>>>>>>> mostly)
>>>>>>>>> is to have underlines on rollovers and (on some sites unselected,
>>>>>>>>> depending of course on user preference).  I would prefer to 
>>>>>>>>> not see
>>>>>>>>> the blue underlined if we could avoid it.  Of course with the 
>>>>>>>>> modern
>>>>>>>>> css technology, it's not an issue because any user that wants 
>>>>>>>>> blue
>>>>>>>>> underlined links (vision impairment, personal preference, etc) 
>>>>>>>>> can
>>>>>>>>> override the link colour via his/her client.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I am sure that people with vision impairment would love to mess 
>>>>>>>> around
>>>>>>>> trying to edit a custom stylesheet because you don't like blue 
>>>>>>>> anchors.
>>>>>>>> I quite like the rest of this patch, but removing the underline 
>>>>>>>> from
>>>>>>>> links is evil.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> People with vision impairment set their browser to override the 
>>>>>>> stylesheet, so the web works best for them personally. This is 
>>>>>>> not something that is specific to a particular site. I would 
>>>>>>> argue that underlining links impairs the vision of everybody 
>>>>>>> else ;-)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> The important thing is consistency: If it's blue it's a link, if 
>>>>>>> it's not blue it's not a link.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> This link should be helpful: 
>>>>>> http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040510.html
>>>>>>
>>>>> Thank you (I am slightly shocked that it took two days for someone to
>>>>> agree with me).  The W3c agree: http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/#gl-color
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> I not trying to agree with anyone, just providing reference to what 
>>>> the experts think.  Also you have to realize the target user of 
>>>> this website, 90% (more like 99.999%) have at least some technical 
>>>> background. Therefore they know how the web works and what and 
>>>> where links are. As far as the blind, what good is the website if 
>>>> they can't use the product?, AFAIK FreeBSD has no built-in 
>>>> accessibility and those blind people that did manage to get it 
>>>> installed are again going to have a technical background and will 
>>>> know how to navigate the web (the only thing they need are 
>>>> ALT/Title tags). This leaves only color blind people that we need 
>>>> to accommodate, text based web browsers (which don't display links 
>>>> as underlined or real link colors, pull up the FreeBSD site in 
>>>> Links), and old people (I group in the low-vision users here). So 
>>>> the only thing I agree with from Jakob Nielsen site is that of link 
>>>> color, normal text as the same color as links, using hover if links 
>>>> are not underlined, and the old people stuff. I don't care if links 
>>>> are underlined or not.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Everything above boils down to "I don't see how this makes it hard for
>>> people, so it's probably ok".  I don't imagine that blind users (of
>>> which there are quite a few) could care less whether links are
>>> underlined or not, but if having links underlined makes it easier
>>> for one person to find them (and I count towards that, so it's already
>>> fulfilled) for whatever reason then they should be underlined.
>>>
>>> How about all the people who *don't* want them underlined do the thing
>>> with the user-agent style sheets and see how keen they are on imposing
>>> it on others then?
>>>
>>> In short: I will not commit, and will request a backout of, any patch
>>> that turns off underlined links on the website.  I may not stop 
>>> short of
>>> backing it out myself either, and with that said I'll try not to reply
>>> to this thread any more, for the sake of everyone's sanity.
>>>
>>> Ceri
>>>
>> Like I said earlier, I don't care ether way :-) ... So reading 
>> between the lines does this mean you'll commit the patch (do you have 
>> the power to do this?) if he underlines the links?
>
>
> Here's what that would look like:
>
> http://top.ch/sitedata/freebsd/freebsdweb1f.html
> http://top.ch/sitedata/freebsd/freebsdweb2f.html
>
Still looks good :-)...
----
1. Can anyone else see the Æ (AE) symbols where the registered trademark 
symbols should be, UNIX and MS-DOS?
2. In the navbar, where did you get the site map/index page from, I had 
no idea the website had one of those and I still can't find it on the 
real site. also labeling the link "index" on the navbar is misleading, I 
expected it to take me to index.html... the start page. I think that 
only works for books, If you labeled it "site index" then that would 
convey what the next page would be but then it would break your one 
word/link mold for the navbar.
----
And no, I haven't come up with alternate logos like I said I would. 
Between trying to get PhotoShop and WINE working on FreeBSD (any help 
here would be helpful) and rolling out major updates to are company 
intranet and server I haven't found the time, but I'd still like to do it.