Getting ready for an alpha release: CSS fixes

Nao

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Re: Getting ready for an alpha release: CSS fixes
« Reply #30, on September 5th, 2012, 11:58 PM »
Thankfully, I don't need anything, but even if -- I try not to rely on JS to support CSS if I can do without it.
Heck, CSS = presentation only, if it isn't supported, it'll just be ugly...
Cf. rev 1683.

Oh, and regarding arrow sizes -- actually this isn't due to the font size, but rather the fact that some browsers don't render certain UTF characters at the same size. Very odd. One solution is to change the arrow to use a different one -- it works, but it's too large, so I'd then have to set a font-size: 60% or something in the code. Which I didn't like much. I decided not to give a damn for now :P I've already spent way too much time on that particular rewrite...

PS: I'd like to fix Wine & co before I upload the changes to wedge.org.
Re: Getting ready for an alpha release: CSS fixes
« Reply #31, on September 7th, 2012, 07:31 AM »
Aaaaand... Skin updates are online I figured I'll fix Wine later :P). There are plenty of changes (menu arrows, fixed sub-skins...), hope you'll like them! The only issue I met is that menus are about 10% slower to show in Opera 12.5, but it's the only browser that's showing even a slowdown, so it's okay, it's not like I'm spending my days in there anyway...

Looking for feedback on 1024x768/1024x600 screens too... What do you think? They should have the sidebar now, unlike previous versions... Should I remove the sidebar for these widths?

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Nao

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Re: Getting ready for an alpha release: CSS fixes
« Reply #34, on September 8th, 2012, 01:38 AM »
I don't see the point in moving it to the top, and forcing people to systematically scroll...
Plus, it's one thing to be able to move the sidebar to the bottom with a CSS trick. It's a different thing to do it the other way around, because it supposes you add the HTML for the sidebar BEFORE the HTML for the content. And guess what -- not great for SEO.

Ah, yes, I've been working on a table-less version of the sidebar for IE6/7, because I figured, it's nice to show off what WeCSS can do (on-the-fly table/table-free layouts), but it's best to keep the stuff simple and stupid, especially in a default skin.

Also, I've been working on a new feature for WeCSS which I can't believe I never had.... Conditional compilation of CSS depending on the browser. It was already done for variables inside a file, but never for arbitrary properties/rules/entire blocks. Duh. This can potentially remove many of the hack files I added to the skin folders -- and most importantly, it makes the hacks easier to maintain because they can be put right next to the non-hack versions.

Now if I could settle on a proper syntax for that... I'm not too fond of {if ie6,ie7}...{else}...{endif}.
I'll sleep on it.

emanuele

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Nao

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Re: Getting ready for an alpha release: CSS fixes
« Reply #36, on September 13th, 2012, 05:24 PM »
A few reasons why 'mandatory' sidebars have a point in Wedge... Feel free to disagree.

- If you know the sidebar is going to be there (even if moved to the end of the page), it's a 'sure' target for any block you'd want to add that doesn't belong in the main content.

- Readability of main text content. Because long lines make it harder to 'catch' the next line when reading, it's always recommended to do no more than 50-100 characters per line, I took the upper one and limited my widths to about 600 to 800 pixels in width on all my designs. Because today's displays can have largely varying widths (up from 2000px+ on Retina screens down to 320- on mobile phones), it's best to hide the sidebar on smaller displays, and have it in wider displays to give some additional content that would help eliminate the feeling that you're reading a single column of a regular paper if you're on a 600px wide column in a 2000px wide window... See what I mean.

- Most forums have a very complicated layout for topic pages, with much useless information. I did my best to push all that 'useless' stuff to the sidebar -- because removing it wasn't a solution either. It makes topics more user-friendly overall. And more work can be done on that...

emanuele

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Re: Getting ready for an alpha release: CSS fixes
« Reply #37, on September 14th, 2012, 06:02 PM »
Quote from Nao on September 13th, 2012, 05:24 PM
- Most forums have a very complicated layout for topic pages, with much useless information. I did my best to push all that 'useless' stuff to the sidebar -- because removing it wasn't a solution either. It makes topics more user-friendly overall. And more work can be done on that...
That is exactly the reason I suggested a toggle: I already know that most of the things that are (and could be) in the sidebar on *any* forum are *for me* useless (dunno, most likely I have a rather peculiar way to use forums). The only one that from time to time *I* use is "Unread replies".
Quote from Nao on September 13th, 2012, 05:24 PM
- Readability of main text content. Because long lines make it harder to 'catch' the next line when reading, it's always recommended to do no more than 50-100 characters per line, I took the upper one and limited my widths to about 600 to 800 pixels in width on all my designs.
Taking the 1st line of the 1st message on this page:
800px: 74 chars
1024px:  63 chars
1024px (without sb): 102 chars
So in a typical 1024px screen the message area appears narrower than on a 800px (I know, I'm moving from a general statement to an actual example...I should have used the example first :P).

Funny enough the message area (that I think is the most important part of a topic) in a 1024x is 450px, that is less than half the size of the screen (44%) and the space actually filled with text is only ~386ps (38%, a bit more than one third of the screen size).
Quote from Nao on September 13th, 2012, 05:24 PM
Because today's displays can have largely varying widths (up from 2000px+ on Retina screens down to 320- on mobile phones), it's best to hide the sidebar on smaller displays, and have it in wider displays to give some additional content that would help eliminate the feeling that you're reading a single column of a regular paper if you're on a 600px wide column in a 2000px wide window... See what I mean.
That would work if the sidebar is visible for the entire length of the page, but at the moment is visible just in the first screen, going down the topic the result is a single narrow column (16 page-down long against 12 without sb)...and your signature is too wide for a 1024px monitor. ;)
From 1152px and up (provided that the forum is 100% wide) it should work. That said: I still hate all the empty space on the right. :P

Nao

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Re: Getting ready for an alpha release: CSS fixes
« Reply #38, on September 16th, 2012, 06:34 PM »
@To everyone: right now, the minimum version of PHP that may run Wedge is 5.2.3. I just found out that v5.2.4 can use "\h" to represent "[\t ]" in a regex (i.e. horizontal whitespace), and "\v" for "[\r\n]" (vertical whitespace), which is SUPER cool IMHO. I was wondering if anyone was against the idea of upping the minimum version to 5.2.4 just for that...? (Keeping in mind I may not even use it.)
Quote from emanuele on September 14th, 2012, 06:02 PM
That is exactly the reason I suggested a toggle: I already know that most of the things that are (and could be) in the sidebar on *any* forum are *for me* useless (dunno, most likely I have a rather peculiar way to use forums). The only one that from time to time *I* use is "Unread replies".
Okay, I guess the main point of doing that would be to save the bandwidth if you don't have a use for the sidebar. I can always set a max-width on the content itself to ensure it simply doesn't go beyond those boundaries, sidebar or not. It's not a bad suggestion, and it's very much possible to implement it as such because if my memory is correct, Wedge supports fallback target 'layers' for blocks, and if you don't provide one, it'll just skip showing it. So, a plugin author may choose to always have their contents appear, whether or not the sidebar is enabled, or just respect the sidebar's visibility by not providing a fallback.

That's doable. Anyone? Opinions?
Quote from Nao on September 13th, 2012, 05:24 PM
Funny enough the message area (that I think is the most important part of a topic) in a 1024x is 450px, that is less than half the size of the screen (44%) and the space actually filled with text is only ~386ps (38%, a bit more than one third of the screen size).
And...? :^^;:
Quote
That would work if the sidebar is visible for the entire length of the page, but at the moment is visible just in the first screen, going down the topic the result is a single narrow column (16 page-down long against 12 without sb)...and your signature is too wide for a 1024px monitor. ;)
My signature is precisely made to 'not' stretch (with a table) so that I can see how bad it looks at low res.
Posted: September 16th, 2012, 06:32 PM

Re: bad space at the right, I could use a position: fixed or something on the sidebar, or use JS to reposition it to always have the contents on the side, but that would mean having to ensure the sidebar height isn't bigger than your viewport height. That, or using JavaScript to help dynamically, ah ah... Lots of work, no time for that.

Arantor

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Re: Getting ready for an alpha release: CSS fixes
« Reply #39, on September 16th, 2012, 08:01 PM »
Quote
I was wondering if anyone was against the idea of upping the minimum version to 5.2.4 just for that...?
No objections whether you use it or not.
Quote
That's doable. Anyone? Opinions?
I think it's going to be awkward, because I suspect plugin authors will assume it's available. That said, provided that a good fallback can be achieved, it puts the control back in the plugin author's hands.
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Farjo

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Re: Getting ready for an alpha release: CSS fixes
« Reply #40, on September 17th, 2012, 02:47 PM »
Just for your info, my webhosting packages are pretty cheap and one's 5.2.17 and the other is 5.3.10, so I can't see anyone being caught out on 5.2.3.

Norodo

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Re: Getting ready for an alpha release: CSS fixes
« Reply #41, on September 17th, 2012, 03:38 PM »
Quote from Nao on September 16th, 2012, 06:34 PM
@To everyone: right now, the minimum version of PHP that may run Wedge is 5.2.3. I just found out that v5.2.4[...]
I think I posted this about a year ago, but here it is updated, the information from all my providers (I use a slew of them, and most of them are common and will be used by Wedge users.). Min is obviously the lowest one, and for curiosity, I'll provide the max version and debian/rhel stable version number too.

PHP Min: 5.2.17 (Dreamhost) Max: 5.3.16 (Nearlyfreespeech) 5.3.3-7 (Debian) 5.3.2-6 (RHEL)
MySQL: Min: 5.1.47 (RHEL) Max: MariaDB 5.3 (Nearlyfreespeech) 5.1.63-0 (Debian) 5.1.47-4 (RHEL)

It seems that 5.2.4 is fine with virtually any host I can dig up. Godaddy also uses 5.2.17, so with Dreamhost+Godaddy on 5.2.17 that's a decent chunk of your userbase already up to date. Most other cheap hosts are likely to be around the same point, and by the time Wedge is final, I suspect very few will use PHP of as low verision as 5.2.3

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Nao

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Re: Getting ready for an alpha release: CSS fixes
« Reply #44, on September 17th, 2012, 06:42 PM »
@Pete> Plugin authors shouldn't assume that it's available -- although it's very likely to be, there are plenty of ways to get rid of the sidebar (wetem method, or redefining the skin.xml skeleton without a <sidebar> entry...), and thus a fallback should be given, like I mostly do.

Re: PHP version, it was pretty much a given to me that 5.2.x isn't a problem as long as the x version is at least a couple of years old. We could even ask for 5.2.15 or something, it's still a two-year old version!
Still, I'm not so sure about using \h and \v right now... Especially \v. I'm not sure I understand this page correctly, which lists what they stand for:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3230623/filter-all-types-of-whitespace-in-php

I thought \h was 'only' a shortcut to [\t ] but it's actually way more than that, including non-breakable spaces, UTF8 special space characters, etc... I guess it's a bit overkill to use \h but probably less risky than using \v -- while \n will match all linebreaks in any system except for old MacOS (which I don't even think has decent server software available...), \v will match against \r as well, meaning that a Windows-made file will be seen as two linebreaks, and maybe it's not suitable for my code (I think it is, I just don't think it's worth testing against.)

Funny eh..?