Rework of the FreeBSD website[was:FreeBSD'sVisualIdentity:Outdated?]

[Chris Zumbrunn]

On Jan 12, 2005, at 9:16 PM, Nikolas Britton wrote:

> 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?

Here's what that would look like:

http://top.ch/sitedata/freebsd/freebsdweb1f.html
http://top.ch/sitedata/freebsd/freebsdweb2f.html

Chris

chris at czv.com  +41 329 41 41 41
Chris Zumbrunn Ventures - http://www.czv.com/
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