Rework of the FreeBSD website [was:FreeBSD'sVisualIdentity:Outdated?]

[Nikolas Britton]

Ceri Davies wrote:

>On Wed, Jan 12, 2005 at 11:11:41AM -0600, Nikolas Britton wrote:
>  
>
>>Ceri Davies wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>On Wed, Jan 12, 2005 at 05:45:39AM -0600, Nikolas Britton wrote:
>>>      
>>>
>>>>Chris Zumbrunn wrote:
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>>>On Jan 10, 2005, at 7:03 PM, Ceri Davies wrote:
>>>>>          
>>>>>
>>>>>>On Sun, Jan 09, 2005 at 04:17:01PM -0600, Eric Kjeldergaard wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>            
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Something we do a lot at my workplace (web development firm, mostly)
>>>>>>>is to have underlines on rollovers and (on some sites unselected,
>>>>>>>depending of course on user preference).  I would prefer to not see
>>>>>>>the blue underlined if we could avoid it.  Of course with the modern
>>>>>>>css technology, it's not an issue because any user that wants blue
>>>>>>>underlined links (vision impairment, personal preference, etc) can
>>>>>>>override the link colour via his/her client.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>              
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>I am sure that people with vision impairment would love to mess around
>>>>>>trying to edit a custom stylesheet because you don't like blue anchors.
>>>>>>I quite like the rest of this patch, but removing the underline from
>>>>>>links is evil.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>            
>>>>>>
>>>>>People with vision impairment set their browser to override the 
>>>>>stylesheet, so the web works best for them personally. This is not 
>>>>>something that is specific to a particular site. I would argue that 
>>>>>underlining links impairs the vision of everybody else ;-)
>>>>>
>>>>>The important thing is consistency: If it's blue it's a link, if it's 
>>>>>not blue it's not a link.
>>>>>
>>>>>          
>>>>>
>>>>This link should be helpful: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040510.html
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>Thank you (I am slightly shocked that it took two days for someone to
>>>agree with me).  The W3c agree: http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/#gl-color
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>I not trying to agree with anyone, just providing reference to what the 
>>experts think.  Also you have to realize the target user of this 
>>website, 90% (more like 99.999%) have at least some technical 
>>background. Therefore they know how the web works and what and where 
>>links are. As far as the blind, what good is the website if they can't 
>>use the product?, AFAIK FreeBSD has no built-in accessibility and those 
>>blind people that did manage to get it installed are again going to have 
>>a technical background and will know how to navigate the web (the only 
>>thing they need are ALT/Title tags). This leaves only color blind people 
>>that we need to accommodate, text based web browsers (which don't 
>>display links as underlined or real link colors, pull up the FreeBSD 
>>site in Links), and old people (I group in the low-vision users here). 
>>So the only thing I agree with from Jakob Nielsen site is that of link 
>>color, normal text as the same color as links, using hover if links are 
>>not underlined, and the old people stuff. I don't care if links are 
>>underlined or not.
>>    
>>
>
>Everything above boils down to "I don't see how this makes it hard for
>people, so it's probably ok".  I don't imagine that blind users (of
>which there are quite a few) could care less whether links are
>underlined or not, but if having links underlined makes it easier
>for one person to find them (and I count towards that, so it's already
>fulfilled) for whatever reason then they should be underlined.
>
>How about all the people who *don't* want them underlined do the thing
>with the user-agent style sheets and see how keen they are on imposing
>it on others then?
>
>In short: I will not commit, and will request a backout of, any patch
>that turns off underlined links on the website.  I may not stop short of
>backing it out myself either, and with that said I'll try not to reply
>to this thread any more, for the sake of everyone's sanity.
>
>Ceri
>  
>
Like I said earlier, I don't care ether way :-) ... So reading between 
the lines does this mean you'll commit the patch (do you have the power 
to do this?) if he underlines the links?