[Geany] A new look?

[Russell Dickenson]

On 5 April 2011 02:21, Lex Trotman <elextr at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5 April 2011 00:34, Matthew Brush <mbrush at codebrainz.ca> wrote:
>> On 04/04/11 06:55, Lex Trotman wrote:
>>>
>>> But the font size is fixed, which is no good.  To give you an idea,
>>> note in my screen shot how much extra space there is on each side
>>> compared to yours, now think how small that makes the text.  I
>>> currently use 18 point as default, but you probably wouldn't want that
>>> on your screen.
>>
>> Press Ctrl and + to zoom in :)
>
> Why should we have to do this??  Plus when you zoom most pages (in
> your list) show artifacts and/or font rendering problems.
>
>>
>> I have a big monitor as well, and I've noticed many of the nice professional
>> sites don't scale or change the font size when the browser is resized.
>
> Sadly this just proves my contention about web designers ;-)
>
> Perhaps I'm being too harsh, they are taught at design school to do
> things on a piece of paper and I understand that they consequently
> have trouble getting their heads around things that vary.  By calling
> them lazy I really mean that fixed size is much easier to design.
>
> Some
>> of the nice ones I've noticed lately:
>>
>> http://www.ubuntu.com/
>
> Nah, doesn't do it for me, all advertising no content & text too
> small, if I didn't know anything about Ubuntu it wouldn't sell me on
> it.
>
>> http://gitorious.org/
>
> An ingenious background that makes it look less like it is fixed size,
> and the multi column text layout is good, but again some of the fonts
> are too small
>
>> http://ground-control.org/
>
> As above but not quite so nicely designed
>
>> http://store.apple.com/ca/
>
> Shows that you can have sidebar navigation :)
>
>> http://www.libreoffice.org/
>
> This one is an interesting one, even though it has two column text all
> the text follows the default size, it isn't fixed, & I like the
> background gradient.  The overall look is clean.
> Maybe we could do something similar with one column for news the other
> for description/features/info?
>
>>
>> I usually use only half of my monitor for the browser, which works well with
>> this style of fixed-width, centered websites that seems to be all the rage.
>
> 1. NEVER confuse common with good, Microsoft anyone? :)
>
> 2. I have 12 tabs open, 8 of which are using full width.  The only
> ones that don't look too good are the GTK reference ones.  Of the
> fixed size ones, two are manuals, (all text so of course they are
> fixed width), one is news (lots of pictures, another of the reasons I
> gave for fixed size) and that leaves one other fixed size.  So I am
> not going to re-size the browser for one website.
>
>>
>> Note also that all those examples are using the same general style of
>> "across the top" menus.  I think a lot of people look there by default
>> nowadays for the main site navigation.
>
> None of them have menus across the top, they all have 4-6 links across
> the top, which all go to other pages so you have to go to other pages
> to look for things.  I think 4-6 is too few for what we have to cover.
>  Hence I advocate a sidebar which fits more.
>
> But maybe we can use the method that http://www.linuxmint.com/ uses
> where, as you mouse over the top categories the next line shows the
> subcategories, that way you can find what you are looking for without
> having to go to other pages to search for it.  Anyway its something to
> try as an alternative. It could probably re-use most of the menu code
> Pockata has already, just make the menu horizontal on the next line.
>
>>
>> My $0.02 CAD.
>>
>
> Raise you $0.02 AUD its worth $0.0015 more as of writing this.
>
> Cheers
> Lex
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>

Just a few comments in reply to points raised by Lex et al:

* I agree that the background colour should be a light shade, not dark
as it is in the mock-ups;
* I also like the design of the LibreOffice site;
* I like the general idea of the Linux Mint web site's menu but in
practice when you hover over a sub-menu item, it's then not obvious
which main menu item you are viewing;
* If it's possible I agree that a fluid/dynamic layout is definitely
preferred to a fixed layout.


-- 
Russell Dickenson