Comments on Two Designers, Two Years, One Facelift...

Tim Beidel — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 14:42:26 GMT

I like the design, but am having trouble figuring out where to send a comment like this:

I use Firefox on Windows. When I print articles, I often do not get the illustrations that accompany them. I like the print stylesheet (every site should use these IMO) but I would like to get the pix.

Thanks.

Kate Walser — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 18:47:07 GMT

Think this has been great. Were the colors chosen for links driven by the CMS? If not, recommend we consider changing for the following reasons:

1. Link colors vary and in some cases (see 1A, 1B, 1C) B&A now uses a color that in some cases is for a link and in others is for static text. Seems like we now violate an important tenet of consistency and affordances:
A. orange used to highlight reputation points (not a link), but orange also used for links (author name at top of some articles, post comment, advertise event, etc.)
B. gray links in some cases
C. Black links for items such as Most Commented Stories (granted, position and context helps clarify that they may be links)

2. Link colors like #663300/brown make links difficult for both users without visual impairments, but even moreso for those with visual impairments, to spot.

3. A run-through with JuicyStudio’s Colour Contrast Analyzer shows some failures with respect to providing sufficient contrast between foreground and background colors –
A. Orange (#ff9f27) on white for links / hover colors has luminosity contrast ratio (LCR) = 2.74 vs. 5.0 recommended by WCAG – http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/WD-WCAG20-20060427/guidelines.h…
B. different shades of gray on white for some links –
gray (#999999) on white LCR = 2.85
gray (#7f7f7f) on white LCR = 4
gray (#666666) on white LCR = 5.74 (passes WCAG AA 5.0 ratio but falls short of AAA 10.0 ratio, and fails on difference in color)

Anthony Hempell — Wed, 02 May 2007 22:58:34 GMT

The single most exciting thing is the real-time feedback when entering in your username on the login page. This should become standard everywhere, now. It will save me ten minutes of frustration per day.

Thomas Sola — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 19:06:35 GMT

it’s the way the “side bar” content is positioned on the page. In the source code the information in the side area as well as some of the content in the header are children of the container #page. The navigation container #categoryList is position:absolute and 700px from the right. This means if you shrink the window it will push past the left edge of the view port. The questionable items in the header are position with a negative value and will do the same.

To fix it you may want to widen the width of the container #page to be the sum of the width of the #categoryList and #content containers. Then position those two containers from the left rather than from the right.

There’s a little more to it than that but it’s a start.

Clare Warburton — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 13:57:43 GMT

0 reputation points, but if it counts for something, i think you have done an amazing job. I love this site.

Mitch Hazam — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 20:26:53 GMT

Just a slight issue I have and I encounter it often on various sites. Please set the background color to white if you want a white background display. Many of us out there have our program background default color to not be white and a page like this is very disjointed when there is no defined background color. It seems to be a very common oversight most people make when building a white background site.

Joe Sokohl — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 21:17:00 GMT

I applaud everyone involved. It shows how difficult a site redesign is. I do wish the type weren’t so godawful small—it’s broken on my Mac running Firefox. From my usability perspective, as a user I shouldn’t have to bump up the type size for the site.

Anyway, though, it really is a herculean effort. Accolades all around!

Geof Harries — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 19:38:09 GMT

Same issue with Safari 2.0.4. The left-side of the screen completely disappears when you size down the window. There is a div titled #page which is 682px wide but very little of the layout within it, then all of these extra div’s with no set widths (e.g. #authorList, etc.). If it were me, I’d place every element within a single global container and assign a master minimum width. That way, you’d avoid the vanishing act that’s going on here.

a mignolo — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 02:04:25 GMT

The same thing is happening to me in Firefox 2.0.0.3. I’m running OS 10.4.9 and the viewport is currently at 968px.

Christina Wodtke — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 18:57:20 GMT

it’s not showing up on the new version of firefox. We’ll look into it.

lee fleming — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 18:24:50 GMT

It is so weird to have the left side of my screen cut off and no scrollbar to help me see the content—how did you manage that? Is there a reason for this? How would I get to see this content if my browser window were maximized and there is no scrollbar (say maximized at 1028?)

I see this in both Firefox 1.5 and IE7 on XP Pro PC. The scrollbar doesn’t kick in until my window width is narrowed 852 px. I can’t see the entire page unless my window is set at 1050 px wide—and that width leaves lots of blank space on the right (100 pixels wide).