[Bf-docboard] Manual Formatting Discussion
Fade
fade_docboard_blender at ymail.com
Tue Jan 15 22:10:44 CET 2013
Hi all,
I thought it would be best to break this out into a separate thread for
ease of use.
For anyone picking this up now, the discussion pertains to specifically
improving manual formatting and increasing consistency when using
formatting elements (headings, lists) across pages. Issues are mentioend
immediately below, suggestions are further down.
kesten previously mentioned a committee for working on the formatting
tests, given the responses on the board so far, I'll suggest that this
committee be: kesten, cal, jared, greylica and me. Jared and I have
already prepared some mockups (linked at the end of this post). If
everyone is ok with this I suggest the following timetable/process:
1. Decide on the skin (2 weeks from now)
2. Mockups with new/edited/current skin (4 weeks from now).
Would a weekly meeting in #blenderwiki work best for everyone? Or mail
to the board? If we prefer #blenderwiki can you let us know what
timezone you're in so we can work out a decent day/time (I'm in
Australia with UTC+10).
----Current formatting issues----
--1. Inconsistent style (headings, lists)--
This includes but is not limited to: when and how often to use H2, H3 etc.
What determines whether a list should be bulleted or numbered?
What format should definition lists take?
--2. Suitability of Naid skin as the default.--
Performance issues
Do the right and left columns serve a useful purpose?
Why are headers and footers no longer displayed?
I regularly find that pages with the default Naid Skin load noticeably
slower. Without specific testing, this appears to be due to the menus on
the left hand side and on the main wiki page. After changing to a skin
that doesn't have the drop down/roll out effect, page loading is much
quicker. The left hand column is really only useful if you know where
you want to go and even then it is quicker to jump back to the main page
and go from there. I find the content in the the right hand column
useful (if only for being able to link to specific sections from other
pages), but agree that with the overuse of headings, it can quickly
become unwieldy.
--3. Mobile devices--
How to fix the extensive scrolling required to view pages due to lack of
word wrapping?
--4. General aesthetics--
Would useability be improved with redesigned info boxes?
Do UI items need different weighting?
Are links visible enough?
Are the size of headings appropriate?
----Suggestions----
1.
From Jared
One =heading 1= per page, as recommended in the Mediawiki documentation
Describe UI items/options with a clear separation between the word and
the description
Term on its own line, and the decsriptions on next line, indented - *Not
bulleted*. Visually interferes with the word itself, and is consistent
with most of the manual and other manuals - Bullets are only for
examples/lists of things
Numbered lists for explanation of steps
Omit unnecessary sub-headings, like ==Description==. (It should be
assumed that what is written is a description).
2.
Switch to a new default skin. My preference would be for either the
Blender or Vector skin.
If we stick with Naid, remove the left hand menu. Move the right menu to
the left or the top (similar to a standard wikipedia page with a
contents box)
3.
No idea about this one, I don't know much about mobile devices :-)
4.
From Jared
Literals: UI items should be *bold, *or *bold+italic*).
Bold stands out better than *italic *alone
Links: brighter blue to help them stand out Indent text/headings under
==heading 2== to better separate sections.
Increase size of ==heading 2== to make it more separate from ===heading
3===
Add a bar/background color to headings ?
----Current Mockups----
From Jared: http://www.artofjared.com/content/wikiFormatting.html
Mockups from me.
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Fade/Doc:2.6/format_test1
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Fade/Doc:2.6/format_test2
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Fade/Doc:2.6/format_test3
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Fade/Doc:2.6/format_test4
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