[Bf-webcontent] Fwd: Blender.org website section email

[Chris Burt]

Bart,

I have a lot to cover here so bear with me. First thing is first:

New menu is very nice with a couple exceptions..

1) The font size is too small IMO. One things thats very nice about the 
current menu is its readability. Nice big thick unmistakable letters.

2) Right now you've got all those strange red lines.. intentional obviously

3) The biggie: It doesn't work in IE6 at all really. Drop down effect 
works (and I'm envious you figured out how) but the content in the nav 
bar is on two lines..

I know its a WIP but I thought I'd point that out. Its really strange.. 
just today I was looking at some of this while scouring through Typo3 
documentation looking for a way to make nested lists without using an 
HTML element (even if you do use an HTML element it doesn't render 
correctly). This brings me to my next couple points:

Firstly, the selection of available header styles for elements is 
seriously lacking and not terribly useful. Particularly that horrid red 
text heading. In my experience thus far if I wanted a small heading I 
had to resort to a separate element with normal size font set to bold. 
This isn't exactly an effective use of what Typo3 is capable of no? My 
proposal is to add one or two more useful headings to the drop down for 
heading styles, perhaps in place of some of the less useful "layout #" 
versions.

- A simple start would be to have a heading with a font size equal to 
the body copy that is merely bold.

- Another heading with a font size perhaps equal to that of subheadings

Secondly, indentation is a very important part of presentation and 
currently the only option available for indenting text is by choosing 
from the various "frame" settings. My proposal is to add a custom tag 
which indents text an amount equal to the "indent" setting, however this 
indentation would occur from the parent element, not from the page's 
content margin. See below:

|   | Content
|   |
|   |    Content Indented with frame setting
|   |
|   |    Content Indented with custom tag
|   |
|   |        Content Intended with frame setting *and* custom tag

Bulleted lists are only suitable for *some* elements, and in my 
experience so far a custom tag (perhaps with an optional attribute 
specifying the amount to indent i.e. level1/level2/level3) would save 
many headaches and allow content to be organized in elements correctly 
with headings and body text. (Currently you need to separate the two for 
the proper appearance)

My last point is about nested lists. I've only resorted to attempting to 
use them because of the aforementioned indentation problem, however they 
*would* be handy in many more situations. They currently don't seem to 
be possible in either an HTML element, a text element, or a bulletlist 
element. Given the highly organized nature of some of the data being 
presented it seems vital that this *extremely* basic portion of the HTML 
specification be supported correctly.

The content management system is incredible. I've never done so much 
work so easily. But I'm finding myself frustrated by a lack of some very 
simple formatting tools I normally have unfettered access to as a 
designer. I believe it is possible to extend the formatting capabilities 
of the current system without losing consistency overall, and while 
maintaining a strict set of rules about the appearance of every document 
in the database. Please let me know if you feel my statements are 
inaccurate or if you have solutions to the issues I've mentioned. It 
would be *greatly* appreciated to have some input from you on this. 
Thanks for reading!

Regards,
--Chris



Bart Veldhuizen wrote:
> Timothy has indicated that Elysiun will not be able to fix this quickly, 
> so I have removed the link to the knowledgebase. Unfortunately, there is 
> no easy way to update the top navigation yet (the current version is 
> hand-coded; we are working hard on an Typo3 driven XHTML/CSS 
> replacement), so I have simply changed the content:
> 
> http://blender3d.org/cms/Knowledge_Base.193.0.html
> 
> Bart
> 
> PS: sneak preview of the new menu:
> 
> http://www.vrotvrot.com/stuff/b3d/menu.html