Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 12:28:50 -0600 From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: Porter <ocean@ecenet.com> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: web site: ms vs freebsd Message-ID: <15002.41058.835342.650046@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <3A9A9924.57185C26@ecenet.com> References: <HNEIIPBNPCOCPHAOFFFKIEJCCCAA.dominic_marks@btinternet.com> <3A9A9924.57185C26@ecenet.com>
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Porter <ocean@ecenet.com> types: > I've moved this to -chat because it's no longer a question. The > discussion is Microsoft's web site versus FreeBSD's web site. Most people > are attacking with blind pride saying that Microsoft's web site either A) > sucks or B) is better only because of millions of dollars. Well, I just looked at MS's web site, and I'd have to say it sucks. I I have to scroll left/right to read the top menus (pretty much everyone agrees that left/right scrolling is the single worst thing you can do on a web site). The text is long, skinny column down the center, barely 20 characters wide. Even though narrow columns of text are generally easier to read, the generally accepted lower bound is around 35 characters. Going from my favorite browser to Netscape, things aren't much better. I get a left/right scroll bar, but there's no text on the right when I scroll it. What's odd is that about a fifth of the browser window on right is empty, except for the nav menu at the very bottom of the page. The main text is still a very narrow column, though it's not quite as bad as before - but it is small enough that I don't want to read it. There are pictures of text - complete paragraphs - which are painfully small because I'm using a 100dpi monitor, and not the ~70 dpi they probably designed for. > I took a quick glance at microsoft's web site, and it's not too bad. > I was actually thinking that FreeBSD's web site wasn't altogether too good > anyway--no offense intended to those who designed it. One of the main > arguments for keeping it the way it is is because of internet viewers' > differences, people citing that web sites look like garbage under certain > viewers. Am I just naive or are the *viewers* bad? If you define bad as "buggy, and fail to follow published standards", then yup, the viewers - at least the ones from MicroSoft or Netscape - are bad. If you define bad as "doesn't render things exactly like MSIE (or your favorite browser)", then all the viewers that aren't bad as defined above are bad. However, it makes equal sense to define bad for an operating system as "doesn't run Windows binaries". Both statements assume that everyone wants what the market leader provides, and that anything that doesn't provide exactly that is in some way broken. > I'm not saying we should all base the internet on how IE or Netscape says > webpages should look, but you have to admit, they are big influences, and > why should we not have web pages with a little flash just because we don't > want to "follow the leader"? No reason. In fact, anyone who tells you "I can't make it work in other browsers because I want a little flash" doesn't know what they're talking about. What makes a web site not work for everyone (and I get paid to help web site designers do that) isn't what you put on the page, it's what you fail to put on the page. > I'm not suggesting we have dancing elephants or flashing text, and I'm no > professional web page developer, but I was thinking of doing a little > modifications to the web site and posting it to see what people think. > Anyone back me up on this? I'd say that's an excellent idea. The best way to change things about FreeBSD is to change them yourself, then try and sell them back to the community. That's true for code, documentation - or the web site. Go for it. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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