Gentoo Wiki:Suggestions/Archive 3
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current Suggestions page.
Contrast
This wiki suffers more and more from poor or unnecessary contrast so that it looks “better”.
This text is gray, it isn’t black. It’s gray text on a gray background, not white.
Commands are now white text on black backgrounds, in a sea of white.
It looks pretty, but it makes it hard to read.* ¦ Reisio (talk) 01:16, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
- <off topic>Re *: Ironic that on a site about text readability, much of the text is obscured by badly placed and sized (and completely unnecessary, BTW) "buttons". (For example, the last two words of the "Let's start with the casus belli!" button fall off the end of the red background, making them unreadable; and the whole button covers up the text "Low-contrast font color and unreadable texts? To hell with them!", making those words unreadable, as well.) This is the case on my FF31.3, anyway. Very poorly designed site!</off topic> - dcljr (talk) 02:07, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
- To actually address the issue being raised: I agree that the contrast in the regular text could stand to be increased a bit. And the size of the text should also be increased (but not hardcoded in px!). (I have to use a couple of Ctrl-+'s to make this site usable. The forums I have to magnify even more.) I don't have much of a problem with the light-on-dark commands, but the colored text in the command boxes (i.e., the prompt) often fades into the background. - dcljr (talk) 02:31, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
- While I'm inclined to join dcljr in ridiculing the website you linked (It lags while scrolling?!?!), here's an objective take on it: I checked out two bad examples on that site. As we're talking about 256 shades of grey here, we can compare the contrast (0=black, 255=white):
| Site | Font | Background | Contrast |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hackernews | 90 | 130 | 40 |
| pomona.edu | 153 | 255 | 102 |
| Gentoo Wiki | 51 | 250 | 199 |
- I think 199/255 is reasonable while the others indeed are in the range of terrible to bad. That being said, should I receive more feedback on the font contrast as the theme rolls out to more Gentoo pages, I'll revisit this.
- Next up: Font size: Them being px sizes is an issue recognized upstream that will be fixed in the next major version of Bootstrap. I do not agree they should be larger by default. Considering the various devices our web sites are viewed on, the size is a good default. Should your preferences or circumstances require larger font sizes, you have already found the fix, and I think browsers zoom nicely these days and remember the settings just fine as well. —a3li 13:03, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
- To conclude that a contrast of 199 out of 255 is less hard to read than 102 or 40 is obviously correct, but to ask the question "How much unnecessarily low contrast is reasonable?" is a bit absurd.
The point of text is to be read, we’ve used black on white for ages, it has good contrast, it makes reading easier, it makes the point of text easier.
2¢ I wasn't even expecting a reply. ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:23, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
- To conclude that a contrast of 199 out of 255 is less hard to read than 102 or 40 is obviously correct, but to ask the question "How much unnecessarily low contrast is reasonable?" is a bit absurd.
CSS formatting of headers: needs more colour
As a prospective new Gentoo user, I make a heavy use of this wiki in general and of the Installation Guide in particular. Two things stroke me from the start: 1) is the high quality of the documentation, for which I am very grateful to the wiki editors. 2) the poor css styling of headers which make scanning a page very difficult. The table of content at the top of each page make the structure of the page very clear. However, scanning down the the page, I must concentrate on noticing the subtle font changes to figure out where the headers are (html h2, h3, h4, etc.). Generally speaking, I find it very difficult to follow a structure on all sites that rely on subtle font style and font size differences to suggest headings. I think the css styling must include colours and styling that make the hierarchy of headings very clear (user coloured background, coloured underlines, coloured fonts, etc.). The result must achieve two goals: a) make scanning a article for a specific heading very easy. b) show clearly the hierarchy. This is all the more important for long pages, like the full installation guide on one page. Thanks. Augustin (talk) 12:38, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
- Thanks for your feedback. Tackling this is difficult, as fixing this too much will disturb the reading flow even more.
- I've changed two things: The headings are slightly increased in size and <h2> has a slight border on the bottom to give pages some structure, like on the original Wikipedia skin. Using colors or colored backgrounds is something that would distract more than help in my opinion. Then again, I really hate having these overly long pages, but that cannot be helped. :(
- The changes can take a day or two to pass through all caches, but do let me know if it improves things for you. —a3li 19:17, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
Gentle introduction
Seems like we need a general introduction to Gentoo Linux article (we don't already have one, right?) that covers why one would choose this distro over any of the others and, let's be honest, why one might not want to use it. (The Handbook is too oriented towards the actual installation process to serve this purpose well.) - dcljr (talk) 22:28, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
- Hi Dcljr, a similar article called Benefits_of_Gentoo does exist, but as the title suggests it only lists the benefits. Maybe some disadvantages could be added, the layout changed, and it could be moved to the title you suggested? I would be willing to help with this, as I do have some disadvantages in mind. What do you think? --Maffblaster (talk) 19:57, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
- You should add this to the Gentoo Wiki:Requested Articles page! —a3li 18:44, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
Link colors
I've noticed that visited links on pages such as AMD64/FAQ are almost completely indistinguishable from the surrounding normal text (I'm using Google Chrome on a Windows 8 machine with an LCD monitor). Is the visited-link color darker than it used to be? Can it be lightened a bit? - dcljr (talk) 23:46, 11 February 2015 (UTC)
- Hmm. Looks OK again on my Firefox/Gentoo/LCD combo here at home. The Windows machine I was using just had an exceptionally narrow font (relative to the screen resolution, anyway), which made seeing the color on visited links really difficult. And BTW, probably any other article here would be a much better example, since the article I cited has very few internal links in it. That's just the article I happened to be working on at the time. [g] - dcljr (talk) 18:58, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
- I did have my own difficulties seeing visited links at times, so let's try a different color now. Feedback welcome (it may take a while for all caches to update the CSS). —a3li 18:42, 27 February 2015 (UTC)
Formatting of keywords
I've just created Template:Keyword for formatting mentions of keywords (like ~x86). I chose <code> tags for no particularly compelling reason. Interested parties should discuss there how we should format keywords on this wiki. - dcljr (talk) 00:17, 21 February 2015 (UTC)
- I have added this template to the Guidelines article in hopes that Wiki contributors will use it in the future. I believe it is a good idea overall to make more in-line templates available. Since any further discussion can be performed on the template page I will mark the discussion as complete. Thanks for the new template! --Maffblaster (talk) 08:49, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
Homepage Infobox internal link capability
I was working on the Gentoolkit article today (it is on my list of articles to clean up) and I came across a problem: there is no way for me to properly add a link to the Infobox for an internal homepage. The homepage Infobox presumes the homepages for various software is external to the wiki. In the case of Gentoolkit (Project:Portage-Tools) the homepage is now local to the wiki. I'm sure this applies to other Gentoo-original tools that have moved their project pages to the wiki. Right now links will always appear to be "pointing" to an external location (the up-arrow graphic following the link) when that no longer the case for certain projects. My suggestion is to enable the ability to link internally for homepage Infoboxes. --Maffblaster (talk) 19:51, 17 February 2015 (UTC)
- I've renamed most of the templates' heading to simply say "Resources" instead of "External resources" and have slightly enhanced the gdoc InfoBox to deal with homepages (projects) local to the Wiki. gdoc can now be used for pages on the Wiki. :) --Maffblaster (talk) 08:26, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
Consistency in article titles
I would like to suggest moving the GNOME "configuration" page to GNOME/HOWTO in order to match the title style of the other HOWTO articles. Either that or change HOWTO articles to "X/Configuration" instead of having "HOWTO" in title of the articles. This would maintain consistency throughout the wiki and make the titles easier to search. I could make the changes myself but I would need admin privileges to move a page and it's probably best to actually have input on this type of change... ;) I can continue to post other inconsistencies as I discover them.
Articles using "Configuration" in their titles:
Articles using "HOWTO" in their titles:
--Maffblaster (talk) 19:16, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
- I think "HOWTO" does not really convey much information about the guide, so I prefer to use a noun or title that reflects the content better. If the guide is about the configuration of a tool or service, then "Configuration" makes more sense.
- I wouldn't go as fas as to start moving/renaming articles because of this - first work on content, we can rename later when there's a global consensus to do so ;-)
- --SwifT (talk) 18:38, 2 March 2015 (UTC)
- I have compiled a longer list of the "HOWTO" articles in my user space area. When we are ready to make a decision on this it will be easy to migrate them to new locations. I think the term "Guide" would work best for most of the renamed articles since many of them cover not only configuration, but concepts, installation, Kernel features, suggestions, etc. In my opinion using the term "Guide" would be more descriptive of what the article is for while at the same time allowing for a broader range of content inside each article. What do you think? --Maffblaster (talk) 18:36, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
- I have moved the respective pages to */Guide completing this discussion. --Maffblaster (talk) 17:48, 4 May 2015 (UTC)