Bugzilla – Bug 1094722
New wiki design (as of 25.05.18) needs a bit of fixing
Last modified: 2018-05-28 21:15:58 UTC
I've noticed that new wiki design needs a bit of fixing, mostly in accessibility department (it's not easy to read). Let's start with basics: a) It's monolithic - there is no distinction between page elements which forces user to specifically look for what they need in a wall of text instead of finding what they need or may need through natural flow of the page browsing. This happens mostly due two issues: * lack of distinguishable features that differentiate parts of the page (usually done with background shades/colors and/or elements borders) * font formating is all over the place (from font size to weight) b) Golden ratio, a foundation of ANY, ANY quality design from ancient greek art to modern photography to system UX to web... is nowhere to be seen on wiki making everything completely disconnected, random and not pleasant for the user (for example, it's very easy to spot on badly formatted books or newspapers when you suddenly get taken out of the content and notice that something is wrong with text, but don't know what exactly) A bit more about golden ratio here: https://apiumhub.com/tech-blog-barcelona/golden-ratio-in-web-design Even openSUSE own artwork guidelines seem to agree: https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Artwork_guidelines I know that someone put work into new wiki design, but openSUSE deserves a bit more. Web presence is big part of marketing and even a foss project is always a product and should be treated as such, otherwise it will fail.
Some statistics about https://en.opensuse.org/: Text content: 3,654 bytes HTML (sans scripts): 27,730 bytes (759% of content to provide semantics) HTML (gross): 30,636 bytes (838% of content) CSS: 159,949 bytes (4377% of content dedicated to appearance) Mediawiki software used for the openSUSE wiki produces web documents that differ little from the vast majority of other web documents. Virtually all are over-controlling, designed to please the web designer rather than the average web user. This particular incarnation is actually better than usual in that black text is used instead of low contrast gray, and mousetype[1] is imposed at the root (HTML) level, which allows user styles or browser zoom to easily override the mousetype with minimal to no negative side effects. I find its use of whitespace appealing, and its main detraction besides text size the marginal contrast menu links at its top. One can only imagine how much the CSS would have to swell beyond its already onerous size to incorporate the additional complexity required to include the golden ratio. https://en.opensuse.org/ is an information page first, and does a better than average job of it. Artistry necessarily needs take the back seat. [1] mousetype: euphemism for text size which is a tiny fraction of optimal. The wiki's php stylesheet as saved to disk on this 42.3 installation using Firefox ESR 52.8 with a 1920x1200 24" screen declares a base size (14px) that is nominally: 3.70mm tall on a (nominal 96 DPI) 17" 1280x1024 SXGA display (10.5pt) 2.49mm tall on an 11" 1366x768 display (7.0pt) 2.26mm tall on a 28" 3840x2160 (QHD/4K) display (6.4pt), and 1.29mm tall on a 13.3" 3200x1800 (e.g. Dell XPS 13 XPS9343) display (3.65pt). As text size is a function of area, not height, the true size on the XPS 13 is a mere 12.1% of the size on the 17" SXGA, aka illegible scribble.
Felix, while I would agree with that if we didn't have hidpi scaling on every modern browser. If you don't like how stuff looks on your computer, just change DPI settings. Golden ratio will be impossible to recreate with Wiki most likely, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try ;) gutigen: I will look into your suggestions, meanwhile I will add two people that worked on current redesign to discuss :D
As the original author of Chameleon, I am still working on the skin. For me, it is still unfinished, just like a seven years old boy. Next pull request will update many things. But golden ratio is not in my todo list...
"position: relative;" for #user-menu-button looks completly useless, can it be removed?
I have a Github issue open for all change requests to Chameleon skin. You are welcome to comment there. https://github.com/openSUSE/wiki/issues/23
(In reply to Yunhe Guo from comment #3) > As the original author of Chameleon, I am still working on the skin. For me, > it is still unfinished, just like a seven years old boy. I'd say that this boy is much older already, maybe 15? ;-) I know there are still a few small issues, but in general it is more than good enough to have it by default. It also got a round of applause when I announced the switch at the openSUSE conference at the end of my "Heroes, not Superheroes" talk (you might want to watch the video, you'll have lots of fun ;-) Sadly I failed to mention you for doing all the hard work, sorry for that! > Next pull request will update many things. But golden ratio is not in my > todo list... I'm looking forward for your pull request nevertheless ;-)