[boost] Re: Front page, one last time.

From: David Abrahams (dave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-12-14 07:27:21

Rene Rivera wrote:
> Beman Dawes wrote:
>> At 04:47 PM 12/12/2004, Robert Ramey wrote:
>>  >I have to agree, same experience with my IE6.  Even if I increase the 
>> text
>>  >size from Medium(default) to Larger, the monospace fonts are much smaller
>>  >than the other ones.
>>  >
>>  >Robert Ramey
>>  >
>>  >> All of the monospace text is unreadably small in a default (I think)
>>  >> IE6 configuration.  At least it is in mine.  It comes out as
>>  >> something lik 6 or 7 point courier.
>> 
>> Same here on a notebook LCD screen. But Firefox doesn't have the 
>> monospace font problem.
> 
> Fixed. And made sure the size is consistent across browsers.

http://redshift-software.com/~grafik/boost/index.htm

(for reference).

This is fantastic.  All in all a vast improvement, and the web
typography problem is solved!  And now, being -- as my wife likes to say
-- a fussy virgo, I have a little more input.

When you back up and look at the overall balance of the page layout, it
doesn't quite seem to work yet.  For one thing, we have the Google
search box floating all by itself over on the right, and directly across
from it on the left there is a blank space where the search box could
nearly fit.  Why not just put it there?  Also, I'm not positive about
this, but I think it *might* work better if the index column on the left
were lightly shaded, or a thin line was used to divide it from the text
to the right.  This might prove to be no improvement at all once the
search box is moved, I don't know.  Finally, the page seems to demand
some sort of more prominent title at the beginning of the text.  It's
just a feeling I have, but think of how any of the major newspapers are
titled:

      T H E   C H I C A G O   T R I B U N E
      -------------------------------------
      left column  middle column middle
      left column  column middle column
      left column  middle column middle
      left column  column middle column

 ...

Maybe something similar would work for us.

Another issue I have with many web pages is that when browser windows
are maximized, the lines of text are simply too long to read.  I lose
track of what line I was on when scanning back at the end of each one.
The only way to handle this properly would be to have a right margin
whose position is proportional to the font size used for display; I
don't think there's a way to do that with HTML, but then again I don't
know much.

Last of all, the "revised date" and copyright don't seem to add anything
but distraction when placed on the left.  I think they belong at the
bottom along with the other things most people don't care about ;-)

-- 
Dave Abrahams
Boost Consulting
http://www.boost-consulting.com