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CSS for the LDP?
Saqib Ali asks: "Over at The Linux Documentation Project there is a lengthy discussion going on about whether to use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to improve the presentation of the documents. I support the use of CSS to improve the image/formatting of the document, and improve readability. I understand that content is more important than the presentation, but it can't hurt to improve both. There are others who think we should not get involved the presentation layer, and mainly concentrate on the content. Since, most Slashdot readers are Linux users, and might have visited the LDP once or twice, I would like to poll them on what they think about implementing and using nice CSS for the documents on the Linux Document Project website. I've written a CSS for this purpose that is available here, and some sample documents available in this weblog. Any thoughts? Any pros and cons on using CSS to improve presentation?"
How about some CSS for Slashdot? Seriously.
Obviously content is the most important thing, but what possible reason could there be for not improving the presentation as well? Unless it somehow cuts into the time needed to prepare content (which is certainly shouldn't), it only makes sense to make things pretty.
I know this is a bit of a tangent, but...
"Most Slashdot readers are Linux users" - seriously? I know there's a strong anti-MS contingent, but this can't be true. Is there data to back that up or are you just talking out of your, er, hat?
#DeleteChrome
I fully support the idea. It's not a matter of "getting involved in the presentation layer," as opposed to the content. That's, after all, the whole point of CSS... To separate these concepts, and make them independently manageable.
It would be simple for a team to develop CSS files in concert with those who are already doing a great job developing consistent, predictable content. This project lends itself easily to improvements with CSS.
I'd only recommend that multiple CSS files be created, and people be allowed to choose one that suits them, or none at all.
Exactly what presentation problem are you trying to solve? Make it look prettier? The UI is pretty solid. Just wanting to change the presentation layer without understanding what you are trying to achieve for the user is silly.
Thalasar
It would be trivial to write a CGI script that would simply include, or not include the link to the CSS for each document. Assuming of course that all these documents are in XML (docbook?) format to begin with.
Photos.
Error: Acronym overload! Danger, Will Robinson! Danger! Jesus christ.
Translations:
Cascading Style Sheets-Uniform visual format for web pages.
LDP-Linux Documentation Project: Produce documentation for linux. Quite helpful.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
If you are going to go through all that work to reformat the documents, it seems more reasonable to go to an XML/XSLT system. For documentation projects XML is the way to go, so it can be viewed great in many applications.
Before you start whining that "it wont work in my browser," remember, there are several solution where the stylesheet is applied server side, and the page can be servered as plain old html.
Of course they should use CSS to make the pages look better.
Unfortunately, CSS won't solve the root of the problem: non-semantic HTML. I've re-done several sites to make use of the so-called semantic HTML tags (em, strong, etc.) and to get rid of nasty table-abusing layout tags. CSS is necessary to make this transition, but readability on non-desktop browsers (phones, terminals) can only really be improved by switching to layouts using semantic HTML tags and divs for layout.
One last point I'd like to get out there is that there are many console browsers (links, w3m, but NOT lynx) that do a fine job displaying abused table layouts. Unfortunately, the console usually has so few columns that everything just ends up looking squished, while as my div-layout pages are easy to read.
True story.
The best examples online are still probably this and this and even and slashdot style
Note that all those pages had the exact same html. Only the css changed. In their site (read the page) they have styles for all sorts of displays including wireless friendly ones.
Isn't this kind of silly? Why would we the Linux community actively choose to NOT use stylesheets? They're not complex and they're widely supported now. Only this community of emacs users at GUI-less workstations users would think it better to not use CSS. I see refusing their introduction as actively alienating users by refusing to implement anything that could possibly be considereed "eye candy."
I'm sure someone will mod this down as flamebait, but it's not meant to be. Truly, this is one of those times I find myself not so surprised that Microsoft retains so many customers - because you gotta sell the sizzle with the steak.
Of course they should!
CSS doesnt touch the content of a document at all - that's the whole point of it. You can "pretty up" a document without needing to redo all the content's code. In addition, no one doing to the documenting needs to worry about anything new - they just continue as always. The "extra" download can be turned off in cool browsers so that its formatted normally - heck, even a fancy JavaScript button can be set up to use different (or no!) style sheets.
So - Better appearance, negligable performance hit, backwards compatable, no change in article (html) formatting, and zero drawbacks. Why would they not put CSS into action? Even basic CSS can do wonders.
There's nothing wrong with making the pages more visually appealing, just don't overdo it.
I suppose if you provided a standard stylesheet that every document used, and each document author only had to worry about content and didn't have to bother with how it would look (since that's all handled with one good stylesheet forced on everybody), then it could work. Just don't, for the love of god, force each author to come up with their own stylesheet for everything. There should just be one standard one, and that should do it for everybody.
Also, the full text should remain available in plain ASCII. Just my $0.02 worth. Thanks for asking!
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Unless they can make even easier to use, it seems like a waste of time to me. I could change the look of things on my end if I really needed to.
I can't remember who said that long ago, but it is an important axiom.
:-) ) pay lots of money to be sure documentation is clear and attractive. Without commenting on success, they do spend those dollars and make the effort for a reason.
Many readers will tune out or find it even daunting to jump into a document that doesn't make an effort to present itself well. Even when the content is top notch, weak presentation will leave a poor first impressions placing the author on the defensive from the get-go. That's not to say good presentation will save a bad document... but every little bit helps!
If using CSS makes the documentation look more professional, more organized, easier on the eyes, and more consistient in presentation I say go for it. Just don't fall into the mistake of overdoing it and continuously changing the presentation... then effort will be wasted.
One final point: corporations (including Microsoft
Cheers!
Like the users. This user at least.
- "professional" anything. +10 points
- Advocates using "Lynx/Links", "Dillo", "Netpositive" and, my favorite, "Geckos" to test websites. +15 points
- "CCS'ed" documents. +5 points
- "also include the FONT SIZE, bgcolor and Bold or Italics tags." + 50 points. (apparently Slashdot subscribes to this ideology)
- "use HTML markup for heavy layout stuff, because most of the browsers above won't be able to handle it." +1,000 points
- As of my previewing, being scored at +3 insightful, +1,000,000 points
I am very impressed.concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
The question shows a profound mis-understanding of CSS.
If anything, CSS reduces the effort on style in LDP, not increases.
CSS would be just one line,
<link href="ldpstyle.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
Thats it. And that could be put in by php elsewhere. Heck, you could even exclude it alltogether and let people set their own style.
the pages could then concentrate purely on content. Don't say font/i/b if its not needed, use pre/tt/em/strong tags. e.g content, not style (pre formatted, typewriter, emphasized, strong text).
Don't use tables, if it isn't a table you are describing. use div's (and class=..., ok one more css usage, but not required).
I can't tell you the number of times I have been annoyed when someone writing a webpage assumed style tags like font (+size, -size) should be used, it makes a blind assumption about the viewer of the page, their resolution, fonts available etc. Far better to use CSS, and avoid any style at all in your content, just use a separate, includable css page for the style.
Far too many pages on the web use content related tags to do style (table) and style related tags to do content (b, i, font=courier). I for one would be thrilled to see CSS used in LDP to reduce this horror.
You can see in gentoo's website that they have a very nice consistency in their documentation, it really helps the human eye find what's needed among all data, so Im all for it
you go ldp!
I think it goes without saying that Linux folks should embrace CSS. It's sort of a no-brainer. That being said, another advantage is style-sheets for different media. In particular, LDP pages are likely to be printed (I printed one the other night for a Linux install where I didn't have a live Internet connection), and even with all the problems, a smart designer can make very nice print stylesheets that use serif fonts (not so good on screen, very good on paper from a readability standpoint), add banners that print on each page, etc. This assumes a well-structured document that the CSS is styling, but that's a big advantage.
Online citizen journalism from the inner city: The View From The Ground
I think any CSS detractors are missing the point - docs should be marked up consistently, with H1, H2, etc. Particular semantic types (like author) could be added as styles for particular tags e.g. Adding CSS would be relatively simple on top of semantically structured docs.
Lack of standards??? Have you ever heard of the W3C?! There is a standard. Learn it. Use it. Prof it. *chortle*
Seriously. If CSS1 is used exclusivly, and linked to the pages using @import, there should be no problems at all
If bad puns were like deli meat, this would be the wurst
No, this is an incorrect view. CSS is about separating CONTENT and PRESENTATION. That means no font, bold, or italic tags. This is all done in the style sheet. Additionally, font tags, etc always take precidence over style sheets.
By using proper XHTML (or HTML 4.0) and sticking to valid tags (heading tags, emphasis, lists) the page will automatically degrade nicely and be viewable in ALL BROWSERS. This includes lynx and other text only browsers.
The browsers that support CSS will use it, and it will look prettier for them, and browsers that do not support it will still display the content perfectly even though fonts, etc could be wrong.
Also note that by using CSS, the site will be easier to maintain. The removal of font, bold, italic, and underline tags will also make the site lighter and faster. Note that CSS is cached by the browser, so that file only has to be downloaded once.
Please look at The CSS Vault and CSS Zen Garden as great examples and references. CSS Vault has page after page that justify the use of CSS and valid XHTML. Also notice that if the browser cannot use CSS, the site still renders all the content properly.
An important additonal note: By using proper XHTML and CSS, the disabled will have access to the site in a much easier fashion due to the lack of tables being used for markup (tables only for data!), and the simpler code. This is for special screen reading browsers.
"BEHOLD, CORN!!" - Dr. Weird, ATHF
CSS & LDP, PDQ!
;)
No, but really, it is always a good idea to make docs user-friendly, especially when the Linux community as a whole is trying to recruit the troves of Windows users out there. Anything to make user experience more friendly shouldnt be overlooked.
Who among us here doesnt remember that first RFC that we gasped in confusion at? And the fact that it was entirely in Courier 10 didnt help
Intelligence is like four wheel drive, having it just means you'll get stuck in more remote places.
this is flamebait, but i'll reply just for the record. MS IE is not CSS compliant despite what MS says. the designs in those pages look beautiful in my galeon window, and i lose no content.
ato
In all fairness, when it debuted, Internet Explorer for OS 9 was the most standards compliant browser on the web. It still does a pretty decent job. The trouble is that it's a dead browser, and will do an increasingly poor job at rendering the web, as web developers start using more advanced CSS techniques.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
When I first used gentoo linux, I was most impressed by the quality of the documentation provided.
And then I realized. It wasn't necessarily high qualty nor at the time did it contain better content than the guides for Debian and Red Hat. It was presented in a much cleaner format using CSS and a nice clean layout. Since then, the quality of the gentoo documentation has only improved.
Compare this gentoo page with this TLDP page.
See the difference? They both contain useful information. The TLDP documentation makes me feel like i'm reading a legal document. Blegh! The gentoo document is much less harsh on the user.
This is scary, considering that gentoo is widely considered one of the most difficult of the linuxes to use, as it contains absolutely no installer. Thanks to the clear documentation, I actually perfer the gentoo installation process over fedora's, as it's easy (thanks to the documentation), and gives me a tremendous amount of control. I think this fact can only be capitalized by the fact that I use a mac 95% of the time as my desktop machine.
Please... add some color. It helps. Lots of people are visual learners. It just so happens that most linux users aren't (Reading a monotonous 26-page manpage on ls of all things makes me want to gouge my eyes out)
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Ahem. This is completely silly. Well structured documents--a prerequisite for good CSS--degrade *better* in browsers like Lynx because the underlying tag structure reflects the logical document structure.
Why would anybody do that? Modern browsers like Firefox are actually zippier, even on older hardware, than Netscape 4.xyz. A designer should think about how to make the page degrade because many of the browsers you mentioned choke on some CSS. But there are lots of tricks for hiding the CSS from those browsers, and if you do, then the user still gets a nice, logically structured document.
Anyway, CSS isn't all that hard to do right. I just did a site that looks really nice and polished and works in every browser (IE, Moz, Firefox, Safari, Camino, Konq, Opera, Lynx) on tons of platforms (Windows 98/ME/2000/XP, Linux, OS X, OS 9)...and it worked on the first try -- I didn't have to change a single thing (rsvp.uchicago.edu). I tested it on all possible combinations of those I could think of and it looked nice (and in the way I expected) on all of them.
Finally, I can't imagine a situation, except using minimal HTML 4, which would be silly, because it'd practically be XHTML at that point, where it would be heavier that the XHTML/CSS equivalent. Even if the stylesheet is relatively large, say 300-400 lines (I'm pushing 500 on a site I'm working on), it typically downloads once and then gets cached, at which point all subsequent pages that use that stylesheet will only download the nicely structured document.
Online citizen journalism from the inner city: The View From The Ground
Man...I looked everywhere for Mac IE 5.5, but the internet ran out before I could find it.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
Gee, that's funny, I could read it perfectly fine in IE 5.2 on Mac OS 10.3. Wonder why that might be. Oh, yes, I turned off CSS in the browser.
Normally I wouldn't post a reply to something like this, but the whole shitty, breakable design that is so much of the web is in large part due to supporting pathetically old and broken browsers and proprietary extensions. NS 4 anyone?
Mac IE 5.2 did way better than previous Mac browsers with CSS but it is by no means some sort of quality benchmark. ON TOP OF WHICH, you could easily write CSS that does something to make a site look better, but is still simple enough for Mac IE 5.2. It's rather ridiculous to take a broken browser and say "look, I know it's borked but look, it doesn't render this site correctly". What makes this even better, is that the site is entirely usable because thankfully MS did include the ability to disable style sheets (or use your own) in Mac IE 5.2.
There's no reason not to use CSS unless it means that someone who would otherwise have been writing documentation is now writing CSS. I believe it more than likely, however, that there are people who would be willing to work on the CSS but who would otherwise not be involved in the project.
There's more than one person working on LDP, so do whatever you're best suited at. If that's CSS, then put in some CSS. On the other hand, if you were the only person working on it I would skip the CSS and put in some friggin content!
I'm a FreeBSD user who has to dabble in Linux from time to time. So every time I need some Linux info I go to LDP. What I generally find are horribly out of date HOWTO's and incomplete manpages. Quality content is lacking. For example, the XFree86-HOWTO was last updated September 2001. Maybe not a lot has changed since then, but considering the sparsity of information in this document, someone could have at least expanded a bit on several areas. Another example is ALSA. This was recently added to the 2.6 kernel, but the HOWTO was last updated November 1999!
So go ahead and work on your CSS. But find out who's in charge of content, and give them a swift kick in the butt!
p.s. Don't go too wild on the CSS. Make it use the standard DocBook-XSL produced HTML. For a good example see FreeBSD's stylesheet. It's not going to win any NEA grants, but it gives a consistant professional feel to all of the FreeBSD HTML docs.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
I used to love Linux howtos and faq's. They were great - a charm to read, just like RFCs.
.txt file.
Then they began to htmlize them, and I couldn't just less then any more. Which, quite frankly sucked.
Then they began to come in "chapters" instead of one giant file. Which, quite frankly, sucked even more.
I'm sure there's an option to get all the howtos and documentation in good old ascii out there _somewhere_, by the gods the LDP has made those more difficult to find.
And not, this is not an attempt to troll. It's an honest frustration. You cannot search a html document which contain 20 different html-files (one for each chapter) like youc an search a single
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
The best use of CSS, other than offering an easy way out of spending time on formatting (in favor of time spent informing) is any consistent presentation of the documents. I want to learn LDP documentation structure once, so I can quickly look for author attribution, platform (version, distro, HW, etc) details, publication (relevance) date, and "related links" to projects, docs, presentations, discussions, etc. Using CSS will not only make that structure easier to produce and comply with, it will make it easier for me to read, and to discard inappropriate docs more quickly. It will also make indexing the docs for searching much more straightforward. Get right on that!
--
make install -not war
Sure, use CSS! But if you're short of time/expertise, don't reinvent the wheel! Use the W3C Core Styles.
And if none of those style sheets quite tickles your fancy, you can use one as a base to modify.
Um...in fairness, the grandparent post was talking about IE5 for Mac. Seeing as how MS has abandoned IE for the Mac at that version...there isn't really any Microsoft alternative he can upgrade TO.
And yes, even the most recent version of IE for windows STILL does not handle CSS fully or appropriately in all cases. To wit -- if it were, why would this project exist?
I would say that that was the design of that site, not something fundamentally wrong with CSS.
A light, simple, standards-compliant CSS sheet can render well in 98% of the browsers and add quite a bit to readability.
I am surprised there is this much debate around such a simple thing. CSS can save bandwidth and development time and add quite a bit to user experience. Yes, use it.
CSS is the way to go. It makes it much easier to maintain pages, it means the document authors don't have to be the style managers, and it means less to download. With care CSS can be used to make pages that look very nice in a graphical browser and still function well in lynx.
Another advantage is the ability to have styles based on media. Display ads (if necessary) on the viewed pages but hide them on the printed (saves paper and ink/toner).
I use CSS so that I don't have a lot of formatting to get around when I want to update my web pages, or to make the programming easier.
<p align="center"><font size="4">My big centered paragraph</font></p> is amuch messier than <p class="parcent">My big centered paragraph</p>
Sig is on vacation
Damn. You've found us out. I suppose we might as well all come clean.
The truth is - we're staunch Microsoft Windows fans. In fact, many of us work within various business units involved in Microsoft's marketing. We really don't dislike Microsoft. And we certainly don't use Linux.
Except for one guy. See - there is, in fact, one Linux user in the world. We created this environment just to screw with his mind. I'd tell you who he is (we all know)... but that would ruin the fun. Part of the game is to sign up, discover the "true believer", and then become part of the conspiracy.
Without giving it all away. But hey - its over now. Been fun while it lasted. My only regret is that there aren't really many other candidates to play with. I'm affraid we've been a little too efficient while "on the job." I suppose there's always those two BeOS guys.
I know this sounds pretty far-fetched. Heck - just think of the man-hours and funds we've had to float to pull this off. All I've got to say is two things:
1) Expense account.
2) What's the use of millions in liquid assets if one can't have a bit of fun with it?
I have nothing against presentation so if a decent css (and the one the original author did isn't bad at all) is used I would not be against it. I am more concerned with the information/content/data than the presentation of same, though. Keep it simple. Keep it clean. As long as those two criteria are met then I don't really care.
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
They already write it in DocBook, dumb-dumb. ;-)
The question which is being asked, is when you convert it to HTML, should it be plain old boring HTML, or should it use CSS? IMO it should use CSS since the stylesheet for converting DocBook to HTML would be simpler.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Basic HTML pages don't seem to ever lock down text size (I'm not sure they even can - does anyone know?) and letting the page reach the width that the browser window is set to is a simple act of omission - just don't put a pixel width in any outer-level tables (assuming there are any tables), use percentages instead.
The very worst offending pages I run into all seem to be CSS-based; so while it certainly flexible, it is also a means by which pages can be made almost unusable. One of the reasons I prefer Mozilla Firefox is the ability to size text even on "locked" CSS pages (though I wish it could natively size images as well.) MS IE isn't nearly as friendly about this, though you can kind of hack it to work with the "Accessibility" settings. No big deal, I formatted my last XP system into a Linux machine a few weeks ago. :) But I still have to use IE at work, sometimes. The Windows Firefox isn't quite as clean. But I digress.
As you can probably tell, I'm a member of the crowd that thinks the user should always control the entire end presentation, and never, ever should the web site do so. The only thing that annoys me more than locked-format web pages are PDF pages, which are not only completely locked, they're overweight and massively sluggish compared to HTML - I have zero use for them.
So, as long as the CSS isn't used to enforce text size and/or width rules, I'm all for it.
But if either one of those capabilities goes away, for any reason, honestly, I'll probably stop visiting the site. My eyes are getting older a good deal faster than the rest of me is.
My .02
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.