Release notes- Great job

[Rodd Clarkson]

On Sat, 2005-10-08 at 10:08 -0400, Jim Cornette wrote:
> Great job on initial look for the default homepage.
> 
> file:///usr/share/doc/HTML/index.html
> 
> Impressive,

Yes, very nice.

A couple of suggestions.

Could the width of the text be limited to about 80 characters?

Along with this, could some spacing be placed between the lines of text?

The width is an issue because eyes move up and down more easily than
they do left and right, so having less width makes reading easier (think
news papers that take this to an extreme.)  A good example of this 80
character requirement can be seen in the source code for the page, where
the lines are wrapped around 80 characters since it makes it easier to
read the source code.  (There's a reason why old CRTs and terminals
where about 70-80 characters wide too)

The spacing (leading) actually helps visual discrimination of words
(nothing above or below to distract) which improves readability too.  In
fact, studies have shown that you can actually use a smaller font with
better leading and people think the font is 'bigger' because it's more
readable.

Both of these are very easy to do using CSS and both would improve
readability.  I know that this means that wide browser aren't filled
with text, but I'll take readability over a full page of text any day.

I know I haven't got these diffs in the right format, but here's an
example.

[rodd at localhost HTML]$ diff fedora.css.old fedora.css
12a13,22
>
>
> p, li {
>       line-height:175%;
> }
>
> .wholepage {
>       width:650px;
> }
>
[rodd at localhost HTML]$ diff index.html.old index.html
8a9
> <div class="wholepage">
2075a2077
> </div>
[rodd at localhost HTML]$

This narrows the page and adds spacing to the lines.  Some resizing of
images might be useful, but it's a start.


Rodd
-- 
"It's a fine line between denial and faith.
 It's much better on my side"