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

[Bart Veldhuizen]

Hi Chis,

> 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.

Okay, I'll look in to that. On my screen (and in Firefox) the font has 
the same size as the original menu. If you change your browser's font 
size, the menu will resize along with it. I'll check in Internet 
Explorer later today. I work on a Mac, so my WIPs will always look good 
in Firefox :)

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

Debugging.

> 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..

Yeah, we know. Bart from Berlin is helping us with that. He expects it 
will be fixed tonight.

> 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.

No problem. I don't think I can rename the "layout #" names, but I can 
definately attach other designs to them. I'll try to find time for that 
later today or tonight.

> - 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:

What do you mean with 'indented with frame setting'?

> |   | 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)

perhaps it would be easier if we could nest <indent> tags, so that you 
don't have to remember the indentation level? Or would you prefer 
something like <indent 1>? I'd have to find out how that can be done..

> 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.

This is a known problem with the <typolist> tag: it cannot create 
nested tags :-(

However, there is another solution: the Rich Tech Editor. I have just 
plugged it in into Typo3 so please let me know how you feel about it. 
It can create nested lists and indents; seems pretty much like what you 
are asking for today, now that I think about it :-) [edit: it seems 
like indenting text blocks doesn't work properly yet. I'll look into 
this]

Here's an example: http://blender3d.org/cms/index.php?id=38

Currently, ALL its options are enabled so it pretty much a content 
manager to make a mess of his work and break the consistency you 
mention below. I am usually a bit reluctant to enable this editor, but 
let's try it for a while and see how we like it.

It's a cross-browser, cross-platform solution by the way. The default 
RTE is an ActiveX component which of course doesn't run on my Powerbook 
;-)

Bart

> 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!