Reorganizing python.org (was: Why isn't pychecker...)

[G. Sumner Hayes]

[Some attributions were lost already...]
In article <mailman.1015492232.3944.python-list at python.org>, 
Christian Tanzer wrote:
> Gerrit Muller <gerrit.muller at philips.com> wrote:
>> > >     Define "page".  If you say 800x600 you'd lose.
>> >
>> > Good question.  How would you define a page in terms of web design?
>> >
>> > Eliminating most if not all scrolling on reference pages seems
>> > particularly important. Some reference pages seem way too long.  And
>> > your point is well taken.  I have a large monitor, but I use relatively
>> > big fonts, so I'm only using 1024x768...
>> >
>> > Edward
>> <...snip...>
>> at this moment in time 1024*768 is a reasonable choice; the poor 14" CRT
>> users will need some scrolling, but all more lucky 15" LCD and 17" CRT
>> and above will have a scroll free overview.
> 
> You are assuming that everybody is wasting the full screen on the
> browser's window. That might be true for the average windows user but
> is not true in general. For instance, my monitor displays 1800x1024,
> but the browser gets only about 850x650 of that.
> 
> IMHO, software/web pages making such assumptions suck.

Right.  If you're making assumptions on a reference page I think the
following is reasonable:

Assume that the normal page is around 800x600 _only_ for the purposes
of limiting scrolling--that "one page" shouldn't need any scrolling
at 800x600.  Design the pages so that they will display okay (without
side-scrolling) at 640x480 and lower, though they may need vertical
scrolling at that depth.  Remember that low-resolution browsers are
becoming more and more popular as more handhelds get connectivity
(they often have resolutions around 320x200, cell phone browsers are
sometimes even smaller).  Ideally, the 320x200 window should display
without scrolling sideways (though possibly with a lot of up-and-down),
assuming the browser it uses is intelligent about image display.

One site that gets this part of web design right is the stereophile.com
site--I can read all their archives just fine in links (text-mode
browser, nicer than lynx), in an 80-character wide column.  There are
left and right navigation bars/ad areas, so the main content winds up
using only about 1/2 of the screen width, but it's readable only with
forward scrolling.

The current www.python.org does okay with this, too.

(Good rule of thumb: if links displays a site in a readable way, then
screen-readers for the visually impaired should work okay with the
site).

  Sumner



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