Help Beta Test Slashdot CSS

After almost 8 years, Slashdot's HTML is finally getting an overhaul. For now the changes are almost entirely under the hood, as we migrate the current skin to CSS. Slashdot itself will migrate in the next few weeks, but for now, we'd appreciate it if people who understand CSS could take a look at Slashcode. If you use a browser that lets you select a stylesheet, you can take a look at that site with the Slashdot CSS Skin. Keep in mind that Slashcode doesn't look exactly like Slashdot, so there will be some differences between that site, and the final version that will appear on Slashdot. We're mainly looking for feedback on compatibility issues and blatant bugs. You can use our our SF bug tracker to submit bug reports. Thanks for your help. Once we move Slashdot, work will begin on a new look & feel. If you have ideas, you could start playing with the CSS stylesheets now!

Comments

Will the beta bring the site down?

[geomon]

Just about every site remodel has problems. I have just gone over the list of things I have issues with on our local public school's new website. Most of my comments have to do with broken capabilites. I'm sure that the folks at /. have tested this system in a non-production environment, but things are bound to go wrong at first. The unfortunate thing about my local school district's website has been access. How much of the /. staff resources are going to be committed to the rollout and how soon are problems going to be addressed?

Considering the fact that it took nearly two minutes for the form to arrive makes me think we are in for a bumpy ride!

Oh My God, It's Actually Happening!

[AKAImBatman]

CmdrTaco? I have exactly two words for you.

This. Rocks.

Kudos on finally bringing Slashcode into the 21st century! The Slashdot style over on Slashcode looks absolutely wonderful, with none of the chunky layout problems that plague Slashdot itself! What I'd love to know is, how much bandwidth are you saving by using CSS? Many of the experiments done to date suggest that you could cut your bandwith usage by 30-50%! Will this update usher in a new era of faster page loading? Inquiring minds want to know! :-)

Maybe adding a little JS ...

[TeXMaster]

for things like collapsing articles to header only and expanding them to full article? (And user options for the initial view)

XHTML

[Anonymous Coward]

Just curious -- not attacking or anything -- but why HTML 4 as opposed to XHTML 1 Strict? Is it because of the content type issues with a certain browser, strict XML compliance was too difficult, or simply that only purists ever seem to care? ;-)

Re:XHTML

[slcdb]

That is one of the most ridiculous articles on web authoring that I've ever read. The author's logic seems to mainly stem from the fact that IE has extremely poor standards compliance. Of course it has poor support for XHTML: when IE was last released (6.0) XHTML was still brand-new.

This guy is seriously arguing that people should not adopt a now mature standard, because one aging piece of software hasn't been updated in four years? He just needs to get over his love affair with IE and realize that the rest of the world is still progressing.

Addmitedly, I don't know when the article was written, but that's only because the author didn't date it. To argue that XHTML is bad because old UAs poorly support it is truly a case of the tail wagging the dog. I can hardly believe that the author doesn't understand that.

huh?

[bad_outlook]

finally, being as /. is such a tech site, it's about time to bring things into this century. Hell, I rework my site constantly, I still can't believe /. went so long with old/outdated/non-validated code. perhaps it could be a quarterly thing to update things in the future.

Re:css!!

[mrchaotica]

If you think about it, his theory would be totally unnecessary if they did.

Incidentally, I agree with him -- designing web sites for broken browsers is like giving illegal immigrants drivers' licenses: it's stupid and it doesn't fix the underlying problem.

Re:css!!

[CowboyBob500]

Personally I design to standards and then detail the charges for the time it takes me to fix it on IE in the final invoice. Then the client knows exactly how much the use of IE is costing them as a percentage of the total cost of the project.

It doesn't cost them anymore than before, but it really opens their eyes.

Bob

Re:Fortunately

[spectre_240sx]

Taken from A List Apart:

"Perhaps the biggest benefit of this particular example is the bandwidth savings:

        * Savings per page without caching the CSS file: ~2KB per request
        * Savings per page with caching the CSS file: ~9KB per request

Though a few KB doesn't sound like a lot of bandwidth, let's add it up. Slashdot's FAQ, last updated 13 June 2000, states that they serve 50 million pages in a month. When you break down the figures, that's ~1,612,900 pages per day or ~18 pages per second. Bandwidth savings are as follows:

        * Savings per day without caching the CSS files: ~3.15 GB bandwidth
        * Savings per day with caching the CSS files: ~14 GB bandwidth

Most Slashdot visitors would have the CSS file cached, so we could ballpark the daily savings at ~10 GB bandwidth. A high volume of bandwidth from an ISP could be anywhere from $1 - $5 cost per GB of transfer, but let's calculate it at $1 per GB for an entire year. For this example, the total yearly savings for Slashdot would be: $3,650 USD!

Remember: this calculation is based on the number of pages served as of 13 June, 2000. I believe that Slashdot's traffic is much heavier now, but even using this three-year-old figure, the money saved is impressive."

Let me use Sans fonts

[Tester]

Using the layout as slashcode, it seems that the font is specified to be Serif everywhere... I much prefer to read on-screen stuff with a sans font, which is my default. Please dont specify the font and just use my browser's default... Please remove "font-family: serif;" from the body{}

Thank you,

Tester