refreshed website soft launched

[Eli Cochran]

I'm with Mr. Clark on the body text. It's fine, although switching to  
Verdana would nudge the size of the type up a bit.

My comment before was mostly about the breadcrumbs which I do think  
are a bit small.

- Eli




On Feb 26, 2009, at 6:49 AM, Colin Clark wrote:

> Hi Jess and website-istas,
>
> On 25-Feb-09, at 10:30 AM, Jess Mitchell wrote:
>> The font size is smaller than it was on the old site, but we did  
>> that intentionally to keep from too much scrolling and the effect  
>> the other site gave.  For a reminder, have a look here:  http://fluidproject.org/blog/
>> My vote would be to keep the text small, but we can certainly  
>> entertain how small.
>
> The more I look at the new site and compare it with other sites I  
> find are well-designed and easy-to-read, I don't think it's the font  
> size that is the root cause of our problem here.
>
> To me, it's an issue of layout and structure: the body text size  
> looks small because of the context it's been flowed into. Taking  
> another pass through the design of the two-column main layout and  
> the post-it notes might help address this issue.
>
> We may also want to try to play around with different font families  
> within a range of a few points of our current size. I'm thinking  
> Verdana might actually prove to be more readable at this size, but  
> the only way to know for sure is to experiment a bit.
>
> In the end, we have two factors we need to balance: readability and  
> keeping essential navigation "above the fold." These are design  
> constraints we can iterate on.
>
>> We also need to address the blog...
>> I am tempted to put more than just release announcements on the  
>> news.  For example, I'd love to reproduce the short blurb here http://www.jasig.org/ 
>>  and the longer text here http://www.jasig.org/fluid-uportal-collaboration-20 
>>  on our news feed.
>
> +1. Although the past year has been pretty heads-down, and many of  
> our announcements have been limited to Infusion release news, we've  
> certainly used the site's news feed to announce all kinds of things.  
> The example you mention from the new Jasig site is a perfect example.
>
>> It also brings up the blog -- I'm thinking it should be on the Get  
>> Involved page -- we don't have a link to it on the new site at all.
>
>
> Get Involved makes sense to me, yes. And a new WordPress theme to go  
> with the refreshed web site will be great. Maybe with a smaller font  
> size? :P
>
> Colin
>
> ---
> Colin Clark
> Technical Lead, Fluid Project
> Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, University of Toronto
> http://fluidproject.org
>
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Eli Cochran
user interaction developer
ETS, UC Berkeley