Comments on Python Redesign

[Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters]

"Tim Parkin" <tim.parkin at pollenationinternet.com> wrote previously:
|text resizing here is a sample of +1 text size.
|http://pollenation.net/assets/public/python-main-2larger.html
|http://pollenation.net/assets/public/python-interior-2larger.html

Yeah... this moves it from truly awful to merely bad.  So that's a good
step.  Even so, the lines of text are squashed together vertically in an
awkward way that makes reading difficult.  I don't even really know how
that effect was achieved (or in what browser)... is there a CSS
attribute for "really small vertical spacing"?

In my experience, good pages remain good even in the complete absence of
their CSS stylesheet.  Well, and CERTAINLY good pages do not embed
ad-hoc <font> tags all over them, but I don't think the redesign demo
did that.  While I'm only guessing, this is a page that would fare
poorly with the CSS dropped, and with user-specified fonts and colors
specfied.

The problem is that it is WAY over-designed.  It looks like something
you'd design for a magazine, not for the web, with many browsers
possible.  Parkins, or whoever, has a certain browser and screen size,
and probably took out a ruler to align everything properly on that
unique combination.  But on my screen, there is a gaping wasted space on
the right edge.  Why not put the "news and announcements" over on the
right edge, using as much space as is available, instead of squashing
things into fixed sized boxes?  "Features" could then flexibly fill the
middle section, scrolling down as far as is needed for the window size
and font of a reader.

That said, I -DO- like the look of the left navigation buttons.  They
could use more contrast still, but the light 3-D effect is good, and the
subsections below an "opened" button is visually clear.  The roundish,
almost OpenLook-like, pane/box frames are fine.  I kinda like the
fingerprint icon, or whatever that is meant to be (two snakes?).  And
having a search tool at top seems useful.  It's just hard to get past
the font disaster (and the goofy, oversized, photos).

Yours, Lulu...

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