Website accessability issues (was Re: new FreeBSD-webpage)

[Brad Knowles]

At 9:51 AM +1000 2005-10-09, jonathan michaels wrote:

>                                                                     as
>  to why i and those like me do not use the available spelling checkers,
>  simple they are american based algorithms with dictionaries that spell
>  most of teh simple words that we use incoreectly and the superposition
>  of z for s is most silly as far as we are concerntde, it is most
>  difficult to understand and hence to use correctly and makes using teh
>  freebsd (and all american sourced/developed/uiltb) websites awkward to
>  say teh least.

	Spelling flames are never appropriate.  That said, there are good 
spell checking (and grammar checking) programs that use (or can use) 
alternative dictionaries/rulesets, so this is not really a good 
excuse for not using them.

	As a result, I don't think that this is a good topic to bring 
into this discussion, which has been focussed on the matter of 
usability issues of the "new look" FreeBSD website.


	I will remove freebsd-stable from the set of recipients for this 
response, because I think this is pretty off-topic for that list.

	However, I must say that fixed page width is a bad idea.  It 
causes people to scroll too much horizontally and vertically, if they 
have a smaller screen available to them than you've designed for 
(among other things, think mobile computing where many browsers may 
be 320 pixels wide, at best).  And it doesn't make good use of the 
screen real estate available if your screen is larger than the page 
was designed for.

	If you can't achieve something you want with a variable page 
width, then I think you should change your goals rather than to force 
people to live with bad page design.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.