Forum OpenACS Development: OpenACS.org site layout and 4.x Browsers

1: OpenACS.org site layout and 4.x Browsers

Posted by Steve Ivy on 09/15/03 01:34 AM

This topic has been covered sometime in the last number of months I believe, but I wanted to revisit it as I've started work on a new design for the OpenACS website (not the OACS itself) and I'm hoping to be able to create a more standards-based, accessible design. My reasons for doing so are several:

1) I believe as developers that we should be working to advance proper usage of out technologies in ways that make the information available to as many users as possible.

2) The OpenACS site should be a showcase for what is *possible* with the toolkit, not an example of lowest common denominator development. First impressions do matter.

My goals with the new design are: Good-looking. ;) Standards-based (valid HTML 4.01 and CSS) and Accessible (Bobby-validated).

Unfortunately, standards-based code and 4.x browsers seem somewhat mutually exclusive, if the goal is identical rendering of the site for all comers. I'm proposing that the site be *usable* by visitors with 4.x browsers, but not constrained by the rendering limitations of those browsers. This means a separate, basic, stylesheet for the older browsers, superceded by an advanced stylesheet for any browser that can render it.

I'd like to hear from the other developers (and users) on this issue. What do you think? Would what I'm suggesting be acceptable for the OpenACS.org site? Pros/Cons?

2: Re: OpenACS.org site layout and 4.x Browsers (response to 1)

Posted by Dave Bauer on 09/15/03 02:17 AM

I think this is a reasonable compromise. Perhaps we can post a message for 4.x browsers to let them know what is going on.

I know Steve is interested in actual statistics on browser usage on the site. We can run something to analyze the logs to find out.

If anyone who reads this actually uses a 4.x browser for their day to day web access it would be interesting to hear from you.

3: Re: OpenACS.org site layout and 4.x Browsers (response to 1)

Posted by Malte Sussdorff on 09/15/03 07:40 AM

I'm not sure how 2) fits with your goal. Demoing that a toolkit is able to work with HTML 4.01 doesn't say anything about the toolkit but the smartness with regards to web design of the developer behind it. What would be more important is to use more of the packages that OpenACS offers on the site (e.g. why don't we collect bookmarks for special topics / threads in one instance, see http://recruiting.azri.biz/bootcamp/resources/ for an idea. And use the bookmarks module for it ;).

7: Re: OpenACS.org site layout and 4.x Browsers (response to 3)

Posted by Steve Ivy on 09/15/03 04:21 PM

Malte,

You're right. Point 2 is not technically related; but it is related to, for lack of a better term, the emotional appeal of the toolkit. A smart-looking design, based on recent web standards says to the visiting developer "you too can do this with our product" - even if "technically" you can do the same with notepad and an image editor.

4: Re: OpenACS.org site layout and 4.x Browsers (response to 1)

Posted by Carl Robert Blesius on 09/15/03 11:01 AM

About once every full moon I use NS 4.x on some very old X-terms at the oldest library on campus in Heidelberg. The last time I checked the boxes on the front page are hard to read because they float on top of each other.

Would be great if you could fix that Steve. It is certainly better to make the site usable for everyone than to have it look the same for everyone.

Look forward to your new design.

5: Re: OpenACS.org site layout and 4.x Browsers (response to 1)

Posted by Andrei Popov on 09/15/03 02:05 PM

I think that http://www.alistapart.com/index.html has a few goos points about 4.x browsers (and some brain-dead later ones) and sites look/usability.

There should not be a general problem having usable design, that standard compliant. It may not necessarily look the same as it is now (i.e. tripple-column with a big header on top may be a bit tricky to tailor), but maybe that's a good thing?

Also, another nice redesign article was here: http://www.webreference.com/authoring/style/sheets/layout/advanced/

6: Re: OpenACS.org site layout and 4.x Browsers (response to 1)

Posted by Dave Bauer on 09/15/03 03:00 PM

Malte,

Openacs.org is still on a hybrid 4.5/4.6 version. Soon we will be updated to 4.6.3 and will be able to more easily upgrade to 5.0 upon its release. I have avoided adding new packages due to that. We will be setting up a few new features when the site is upgraded.

The bookmarks package is installed at https://openacs.org/bookmarks/

8: Re: OpenACS.org site layout and 4.x Browsers (response to 1)

Posted by Malte Sussdorff on 09/15/03 05:29 PM

Dave, thanks for letting me know. Hopefully we could maintain collaboratively a list of bookmarks to specific topics that will allow us to collect information about the various feature areas including deep links into the forums package (e.g. if we started a new thread that explains how to use list-builder, it should show up in the quicklink section of OpenACS in the catagory core-packages/listbuilder or however people want to structure it).

Steve, I completely agree with your argument. I just wasn't sure how you meant it, that's why I made my reply. Good think you are working on it, looking forward to see the result!

9: Re: OpenACS.org site layout and 4.x Browsers (response to 1)

Posted by Carl Robert Blesius on 09/16/03 09:43 AM

Some design meditation aids:

http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=/038/038.css&page=0

http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=/020/020.css&page=3

http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=/042/042.css&page=0

http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=028%2F028%2Ecss

http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=026%2F026%2Ecss

http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=http://www.zeit.ca/zenzilla/001/001.css

All use the same html, are readable in browsers that do not have decent css support, and look great in the others. Would be nice to have the html to a point where it does not have to be changed again. With some work maybe OpenACS could become The Toolkit for Online Community CSS Zen? ;)
See Don's relevant css zazen TIP:
https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=116041

10: Re: OpenACS.org site layout and 4.x Browsers (response to 9)

Posted by Andrei Popov on 09/17/03 08:59 AM

That is really amazing! The downside is that to get to that point for entire OpenACS we'd have to go through a lot of ACS Templating and whatever other utility/generated code is there (table is used almost everywhere where layout is considered necessary).

11: Re: OpenACS.org site layout and 4.x Browsers (response to 10)

Posted by Steve Ivy on 09/17/03 06:50 PM

Andrei,

Just to be clear, I'm talking right now about OpenACS.org, not the entire OACS. So, yes, there'd be some work to do but it could be done over time and then slowly moved back into the toolkit.