What to improve in the askbot theme?
Of course it is impossible to please everyone at once, but nevertheless I'd like to ask your opinion - what could be improved in the design of the default theme?
8 Answers
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2
This would be a lot of work, but make it fluid instead of fixed width. I had a go but did not really get anywhere.
I also think big blocks of text should be moved into config somewhere, or separate template files so that they are easy to change.
The recent css cruft removal is a significant improvement. The lighter the css and templates the easier they are to understand, and therefore the easier they are to modify.
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I kind of like the width right now...
There will be more cleanups of the css and markup this week, after wednesday.
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First and foremost, something that works on mobile.
Less busy. More focus on content, less on style. Let everything breathe.
IMO the default font (ie of questions on the landing page) is much too stylized and distracting.
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I think separation between questions should be #1
I kinda of like this style http://www.answerbag.com/questions/ or like on http://www.blurtit.com/ with really nice separations..background color changing
also there seems to be too much white spacing ... like o this page between your question and tags there is at least 5 lines of white space... i think it needs to be a bit tighter
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Thanks, I have adjusted the spacings here, will publish the update probably tomorrow.
1
I would second the ability to have a flowing width, but keep the current settings as the minimum.
I think this is especially useful when displaying a question with code.
Right now, you are limited to about 70 characters when using <pre> before you see the scroll bar.
That's really annoying as I like the <pre> tag to display tabular format.
Specifically, I would be very happy with the following:
- Flow only on a Question page. Fixed width everywhere else.
- Only have the question body be variable width. Right column stays fixed.
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There was a silly css rule on the <pre> tag, with the rule removed the tag will fit ~85 chars, that will be a quick partial solution for now. There is work going on now on refactoring the templates, then skinning will be easier.
Evgeny, I don't think the rule was silly :) Removing it will cause any pre tags to actually overrun into the right-hand column if it's used in a question. I would suggest restoring the old behavior for now until a real flowing layout becomes possible.
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I would advice changing the "Yvonne Kaffeesatz" font, especially on mac's it looks strange.
See the screenshot:
Somehow the rendering (in Chrome) is stange (height is more than width) but if I look on Windows (in Chrome) it looks a lot better.
But after upgrading, all my mac users complained, so I suggest finding a different font. Perhaps not using the (performance intensive) webfonts but just one of the regular fonts?
0
Sorry if I wrong, but you could use font-family with multiple charsets. As I can see, for now you use Yanone Kaffeesatz which supports only latin charset.
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We'll keep this in mind, if you can suggest other font that works better, that would be great. For a workaround it is possible to use language class on the body element, to add language-specific font. For example <body> on this page has class lang-en.
Evgeny, for the quick patch I use Open Sans Condensed - http://www.google.com/webfonts/specimen/Open+Sans+Condensed
Oh, super. Thanks.
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Make it fluid instead of fixed width. Everything else could be fixed width, but make the actual Q&A flow properly no matter the text size.
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IMO simple fluid designs look awful on very large screens. Please give example of a high profile site using purely fluid layout. NY Times, facebook, twitter, Quora use fixed width.
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We must give at most focus for - giving best experience for readers, and worry less on styling. Currently the askbot site has too many colors(bright too?). We need to work more in getting better Colors and fonts which are pleasing and appealing to the eyes & mind. The current home page is a little distracting - I find Big & bold fonts.
Making it accessible from across all browsers and platforms - mobile and tablet layouts. Very Important one in the list!
- A much better editor? The WMD and Markdown editor's are definitely not user friendly. We need an editor which is very straightforward.
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