[boost] Re: [website] Oh the fun..

From: Eelis van der Weegen (gmane_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-04-27 16:30:44

Rene Rivera wrote:
> I've made a variety of changes to incorporate the variety of concerns 
> people had. There are problem that I likely did not fix. And of course 
> your browser mileage may vary. I'm not going to mention what the changes 
> are. They should either be obvious, and I'd rather not influence 
> perceptions :-)
> 
> Yes, both the front and history page are updated.
> 
> http://redshift-software.com/~grafik/boost/index.htm
> http://redshift-software.com/~grafik/boost/more/version_history.html

I think this layout makes unreasonable assumptions about the browser window 
width, and looks terrible when viewed in a slightly less wide browser window.

Here's an example screenshot:  http://www.xs4all.nl/~weegen/ss.png

Note that this does not just affect people who use 800x600 or smaller 
resolutions. It also affects people who don't maximize their browser window to 
fill the entire screen. For example, people (like me) who use tiled window 
managers often split their screen up into two equal-sized side-by-side windows 
(each containing one application such as a browser). Personally I find it 
extremely annoying when websites make me scroll horizontally for no good reason 
(this is especially the case on the version_history page).

As for the links, I agree with Victor; changing link formatting is yet another 
symptom of overly eager webdesigners' trying to control every last pixel on the 
screen because their precious design "depends" on it, while breaking usability 
for users who use a less common configuration. The website should just provide 
structured content and leave it up to the user's browser and preferences to do 
the final formatting.

Eelis