Re: [boost] New boost webpage

From: Beth Jacobson (bethj_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-08-08 11:49:10

David Abrahams wrote:
>>How about using the same blue as the headings for both linked text and 
>>menu items? The menu headings could be switched to black to maintain the 
>>color contrast between the menu headings and items. Both text and menu 
>>links could be underlined on mouseover. I also agree with someone above 
>>who said that the menu headers shouldn't change on mouseover. The change 
>>says "link" to users and should be avoided unless that's what it really 
>>means.
> 
> 
> Beth, your proposals sound interesting... but they'd be a whole lot
> easier to evaluate if you'd just make up the page or CSS stuff
> required and post it where we can all get a look at it.
> 

Done. The test page is up at http://bajac.com/boost/

I made a few additional changes, most notably increasing the menu text 
size which meant there was no longer room for the mouseover pointer 
image, and I had to shorten "Boost General Interest" to "General 
Interest" (under "Groups"). If either of these are a problem I could 
shrink the text back down and put them back. I wanted to make the text 
size large enough so the similarity between text links and menu links 
would be unmistakable, but maybe the color alone would be enough.

> 
>>Finally, and much less important. it might be nice to have a
>>different link color for visited links, at least in the text and
>>perhaps for the menu as well. Especially for someone exploring the
>>libraries for the first time, it's nice to have a visual cue to tell
>>you where you've already been.
> 
> 
> It looks to me as though wikipedia does that, but it so subtle that I
> can barely see the change.  At least it probably won't upset those
> people who *hate* the changing link color effect ;-)
> 
> 

I went for subtle but clear. Hopefully people on various OS's and 
browsers can tell me if I succeeded.

>>>Also, on my machine mouse cursor briefly changes to hourglass when
>>>moving on the link.  It looks like it was flickering.
>>
>>That could be solved by preloading the image with javascript. I noticed 
>>there's no js on the page and assume that was by design, but maybe an 
>>exception could be made in this case, since there'd be no added penalty 
>>for people without js. They'd just be subject to the same 
>>hourglass/flickering they've got already.
> 
> 
> Care to contribute the code to do that?
> 

Rene noted that the flicker only occurs on IE. That being the case, I 
doubt the fix I had in mind would work.