New Mercurial Website

[Steve Losh]

On Nov 2, 2009, at 5:46 PM, Andrew Lentvorski wrote:

> Giorgos Keramidas wrote:
>
>> FWIW, the Wiki is not a second-class citizen.  At least it isn't  
>> for me.
>> The pages on the Wiki contain a *lot* of useful information and I'd
>> prefer if you kept improving it.  You seem to have a knack for this  
>> sort
>> of thing and you've been doing many non-trivial improvements to the
>> content of the Wiki.  So it would certainly be a pity to lose the  
>> value
>> your contributions add to the documentation.
>
> I also agree that the wiki is not a second-class citizen.  While a
> landing page is good with a prominent "DOWNLOAD" button is nice, every
> time a newbie hits that page after the first he's looking for  
> "Support",
> "Forums", "Mailing List", or "Wiki".  Wiki and Search need to be the
> next most prominent links.
>
> Additionally, I'd like to say that I'm not that fond of the "new"  
> pages.
>  While it may be pretty on some monitors, it doesn't reflow.  Note  
> that
> the Wiki *does* reflow.  So, I wind up with horizontal scrollbars  
> for no
> good reason if my monitor is small (think netbook at a client site),  
> or
> I wind up with huge amounts of wasted real estate if my monitor is big
> (think 30" 2560x1600 for my home machine).

This is probably the thing I dislike *most* about the wiki design.  I  
keep my browser window at roughly 1000 pixels wide so sites with  
multiple columns (brightkite, twitter, newyorktimes, etc) are usable  
and look good.

When I go to the Mercurial wiki I have to read lines of text 1000  
pixels long which is not fun at all.  There's a reason newspapers use  
very narrow columns instead of having their lines span half or all of  
the page -- it's easier for the humans to read shorter lines of text  
because with long lines your eye has to jump farther after each line.

A common rule of thumb is to aim for "1.5 alphabets" of characters per  
line, so somewhere around 40 or so.  Full lines on the wiki with my  
window size clock in at about 150+.  Sure, I could decrease the width  
of my web browser, but then if I switch to another tab that contains a  
site with multiple columns I get horizontal scrollbars.

>
> -a
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--
Steve Losh
http://stevelosh.com/