redhat.com Site Redesigned

First Post :-) by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-25 23:10 · Score: 0

I've been to the new site and its awesome.

CokeBear gets first post!! Yahoo!!

Re:First Post :-) by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 06:58 · Score: 0

Yes, but the new site looks arse. One of those fixed table width, restricted screen-res, designs and boring as fuck. Screens go from about 500px to 1600px width and the design looks arse in every one of them.

arse. arse. arse.

and before someone does the CHILDISH thing and jostles me.... yes, I could do better. I am, of course, l33t.

Just a thought... by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-25 23:10 · Score: 0

This looks like a carbon copy of alot of other sites. I think this is an effort by RH to become more 'Mainstream.' Show people something they're comfortable with, and they'll trust you.

Yet another instance of RH selling out. Subtle, but it's there.

Just my two cents, feel free to dispense change.

Re:Just a thought... by jamus · 1999-07-26 00:13 · Score: 1

I personally think that they "sold out" when they had a portal site, which I find to be an annoying trend.

I'll be honest, I have a portal for my start page. But, when I want to download the latest version of Netscape's browser, I don't want to search through a list of categories trying to find the one that the browser is under (yeah, I know it's under Netscape, but this is an example, so work with me). The idea of hiding the product seems counterintuitive to me. http://www.netscape.com/netscape should be the home page, and the current home page should be http://portal.netscape.com, http://search.netscape.com, or something like that.

So, I think the new redhat page is a good thing. I'll admit, I looked only at a few pages. But I do know this, going to the Errata page took half as many "clicks."
Re:Just a thought... by Joe+Patry · 1999-07-25 23:48 · Score: 5

It looks like other site because its a simple design. Making a site more useful is not selling out, not that a commercial company can sell out... By definition they have already sold out. This redhat bashing is senseless. What have they ever done that is wrong or is against the community. They pay programmers to work on Free Software projects. Those Bastards! They GPL their code. Corporate Sellouts! Oh wait, I know what their fault is.. They're sucessful, and are gaining mainstream acceptance. gasp! So Linux is loosing alitle bit of its mystery and your elitism is being threatened. So sad, you'll have to go find another counterculture OS to identify with. Me, I use it because it works. An OS is not a lifestyle, its a tool.

Looks more profesional everytime by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-25 23:11 · Score: 0

First they had a black backgroundish site. Which altough nice, was not very business like. Now, they are moving forward each re-design with a more professional design. Guess they are trying to go for the 'Linux is not just for open source freaks' ideal.

poortal by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-25 23:21 · Score: 0

It's another portal (yawn) and not a particularly exciting one either (a poortal?). Count me unimpressed. Something a bit slicker and more upmarket would be good.

Re:poortal by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 17:06 · Score: 0

I just wish they'd quit trying to be a portal site to push their IPO up (hey...*Yahoo* did it!).

Re:Small fonts by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-25 23:23 · Score: 0

Why are you respecting people's font changes? Just disable that.

Re:Microsoft sells out free software by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-25 23:33 · Score: 0

Okay, this is flamebait, but I'm going to bite:

Red Hat has continuously given back to free software. They devote something like 20% of their income to funding free software, all GPL'd. They pay Alan Cox so he can make a living while still doing kernel hacking. They pay other kernel hackers as well, whose names escape me. They release ALL software they write under the GPL.

What more do you want? For gods sake, they already give more to the free software community in one day than you will in your entire life.

Talk about ingrateful... with more attitudes like yours, we'd be lucky if they didn't say "screw the community, lets just make everything we do proprietary". Which is what SOME distros, like SuSE do (proprietary installer, proprietary X configurator, etc)

Get a clue, troll.

Start screen about:mozilla by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-25 23:48 · Score: 0

Much more entertaining.

Re:Microsoft sells out free software by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 00:00 · Score: 0

I was thinking of flaming myself (which you essentially avoided), however, you handled the issue already quite nicely. Agreed in full.

Re:Aren't you jerks ever satisfied? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 00:02 · Score: 0

I also agree with this. The quality of slashdot posts seems to be declining minute by minute. The internet is already so flooded with low quality, newbie trash, yet slashdot was avoiding this for a while. Slashdot attracted mainly intelligent people, people who understood software, hardware etc. Now we have a lot more immature worthless posts. I hate to post something such as this, it seems rather worthless itself. Just can't help noticing... very unfortunate and saddening.

Color Blind RedHaties by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 00:11 · Score: 0

Red text on yellow background simply will never look good. In fact it looks down right gad nasty.

Red Hat or (Atomic) needs to come up with a better color scheme. Does anyone know of a major website that uses red text?

Re:Color Blind RedHaties by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 17:31 · Score: 0

Atomic designers need to be run over with large, heavy vehicles.

Somewhere in the world there's a good web-design company. I just haven't found it yet.

Good web sites -- the GNU site, and if you want graphic frills, http://www.ambrosiasw.com/. Notice that neither hired a group of scum-sucking "Web designers" to do their website.

Re:Table widths? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 00:23 · Score: 0

Why does everyone designing these so-called portal sites insist on setting all their table widths to 600 pixels?

Because it is easier to read.

In conventional print design anything from 30-70 characters per line is considered ideal (the ideal length of the line depends on the point size of the characters).

When a designer limits the size of tables, it makes it much easer for the user (especially users with high resolution screens) to keep their place while reading and while moving their eyes from the end of one line back to the beginning of the next. (less eye movement = quicker/easier reading)

Everyone who thinks that they are a designer should read "The Elements of Typographic Style" by Robert Bringhurst at least 2 times, or at the very least read this page for Yale's web style manual:
http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/pages/typogra phy2.html

What's the fuss ? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 00:30 · Score: 0

Ok, they DO look like Njetscape, Microsoft and
a lot of other weirdos now. Nevertheless, I do
like the design (less graphics -> more speed)
I've got a full T1 here and yet /. drops in by
less than 200 bytes (!) per second. Yet, RH
really is just click and I'm there.

Just sitting there complaining will get you
nowhere. Go out and do it better and THEN
complain about other webpages. Unless you can't
do it better - shut up.

Re:What's the fuss ? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 17:32 · Score: 0

I have.

They only contribute to maintain a market edge by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 00:42 · Score: 0

Not because of any real belief system. 20% of their income goes to free software because it is good marketing - that's it. Their primary product is developed by free software developers who make no money - throwing them a bone is not a big deal to them and makes good business sense.

Re:They only contribute to maintain a market edge by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 00:53 · Score: 0

Okay a couple things:

a) Apparently you're psychic, because you just KNOW the EXACT MOTIVATIONS behind EVERY MOVE of Red Hat's.

b) regardless of motivation, THEY STILL DO IT.

Go get a job with the Psychic Friend's Network.

Re:Get a real browser (Troll) by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 01:39 · Score: 0

So where can I download IE5 for Linux? You did of course realize >75% of the people visiting Redhat's site are probably going to be using Linux with Netscape (i.e. the only browser really available for Linux!).

Re:GeekWorld Contest by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 02:01 · Score: 0

They had it a while back... Apparently the winners were real geeks and didn't want to make use of the beach facilities or anything.

Would look bettter... by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 02:11 · Score: 0

if it was centered, and not aligned to the left.

Re:Table widths? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 03:13 · Score: 0

Ethelred Unraed wrote:

Admittedly, Red Hat did it in a particularly crappy way...no flexibility at all. But you can't assume that all pages can be made to fit your 4096 pixel screen. It just ain't in the cards.

That's the point isn't it? Either you 'design' to some fixed width or you take advantage of HTML's ability to work across different browsing situations. What if the browser window (or even screen) is less than 600 pixels wide?

Trust me, as a web designer, I can tell you that that ain't gonna work, at least not within reason.

WWW != DTP.

BTW, anyone notice the alt="Logo"?

RE-designed? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 03:50 · Score: 0

What is meant with "RE-designed"? The RedHat website has until now been a site that had definitely NO design behind it; If was just one of many children's playgrounds with a lot of shouts, no system or logic in it, too many useless graphics, and a pain to use.
I've just seen (not used) the new site, and at least it now looks somewhat more usable. It will be interesting to see if the contents and usabilty too have improved...

Re:REDHAT Get a DESIGNER, an ARTIST I say by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 04:30 · Score: 0

They (M$) hire talent that not only knows the tricks of the Web trade but understand things like
color theory and the psychology of design. Guess what when I need something from the M$ site I find it easy, and the site gets me to look at other information because it is engaging.

I'm sorry but I totally disagree with you. My job requires that I utilize MS site regularly (primarily the tech support sections), and I am frustrated to no end by the lack of a sensible and quick method of navigating their site. It's bad enough that they use a cookies based userid/password system (which is just plain irritating when accessing their site from other than my primary workstation), but it is just plain difficult to get back to information I got to just a short time earlier (bookmarking doesn't help much-- internal order of the site changes frequently).

The most recent incarnation of the MS support site has made even downloading simple patches, finding knowledge base documents, etc take a good deal longer than their previous rendition of the MS support site.

Perhaps your experience is different because you seek a different sort of information than I.

Re:REDHAT Get a DESIGNER, an ARTIST I say by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 04:33 · Score: 0

They (M$) hire talent that not only knows the tricks of the Web trade but understand things like color theory and the psychology of design. Guess what when I need something from the M$ site I find it easy, and the site gets me to look at other information because it is engaging.
I'm sorry but I totally disagree with you. My job requires that I utilize MS site regularly (primarily the tech support sections), and I am frustrated to no end by the lack of a sensible and quick method of navigating their site. It's bad enough that they use a cookies based userid/password system (which is just plain irritating when accessing their site from other than my primary workstation), but it is just plain difficult to get back to information I got to just a short time earlier (bookmarking doesn't help much-- internal order of the site changes frequently). The most recent incarnation of the MS support site has made even downloading simple patches, finding knowledge base documents, etc take a good deal longer than their previous rendition of the MS support site. Perhaps your experience is different because you seek a different sort of information than I.

Re:Table widths? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 04:44 · Score: 0

I think you mean "because they think it's easier to read".

Actually, no - that's not what I mean...Here's a design/type saying - Q: What's the easiest typeface to read? A: The one that you just read.

Aside from all the rules of type, design, line length, x-height, etc...the easiest stuff to read is the stuff that you read most, and most content sites specify table/column width. Also most users don't have monitor resolutions set at 4000+ pixels wide, nor know how to set their own font size/face. RedHat (that is the site we're talking about, right) is a consumer site (just like microsoft.com, apple.com, be.com --- all of which have hard coded widths). Consumer's like what they know.

width="624", baby - dave.imarc.net

- dave

VERY BAD PLAIN JOE LOOK / OLD SITE WAS NICE by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 04:59 · Score: 0

As someone who is a big fan of the company, i have to say the new site looks like as if it belongs to Turbo linux, it has the same sort of plain joe feeling. The previous site had the look of a successful company, even if it could have been improved. I just dont get this new plain joe hungry look . Hope Mark and the redhat gang know what this is all about.

Re:VERY BAD PLAIN JOE LOOK / OLD SITE WAS NICE by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 18:15 · Score: 0

Heh. TurboLinux is plain Joe.

Re:RedHat: capitalist pig-dogs by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 05:32 · Score: 0

How many people who got the email from RedHat passed that fucking test e*trade came up with? I feel unbelievably shafted now that they've excluded me from the IPO. I gave (what I thought) answers which showed I understood that it is a risk and I was willing to take it. Going through the effort of opening an account with them was for nothing now.

Re:Table widths? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 05:35 · Score: 0

It's not *that* bad to have fixed width tables. It is just bad when it's all aligned to the left, when it's centered it isn't so bothersome.

Netscape download by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 07:26 · Score: 0

Uhm... the button to download Netscape navigator is at the very top left in netscape.com

Open your eyes

Red Hat returns to yesterday. by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 08:10 · Score: 0

Sorry guys, but I'm not overly impressed with their site. From a design perspective it looks like any other churned out site. I do question why they have written HTML 3.2 and set it for 640 x 480. I thought those days were gone.

Re:Red Hat returns to yesterday. by wilkinsm · 1999-07-26 09:37 · Score: 1

Well at least I can _use_ the site on my 640x480 LCD Thinkpad Laptop. I hate sites that _assume_ 800x600 or higher. (My printer does not like them ether)

I make all my stuff resizeable layers. Not that hard to do. (What's HTML anyway? ;P)

Re:Careful what you wish for by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 08:49 · Score: 0

I don't think that anyone is suggesting making web sites unreadable for 640*480 users. If the page adjusts to fit whatever the browser size is, it will look fine in a 640*480 window and still not look stupid on a 19 or 21 inch monitor at high resolution. The font shouldn't try to force itself as a certain size either. Leave everything up to the user and his browser; don't try to force everything at a certain size or it'll look terrible on some people's monitors.

Stats by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 08:55 · Score: 0

Here are the stats from my site over the last 7 days:

800x600 - 51.6
1024x768 - 24.2
640x480 - 15.5
other - 6.9
1280x1024 - 0.9
1600x1200 - 0.5
1152x864 - 0.3
-----
99.8% (doesn't equal 100 due to rounding)

Portal What? No, it's a product site again by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 09:16 · Score: 0

No, RedHat did not become more like a portal, it became less of one.

The latest revision was like a portal. I think they realized that people will go to Slashdot and Linuxtoday to read things directly, they don't want to go to Redhat. Especially with linux.com doing such a better job.

This version is back to a company website that advertises it's products, supports them, and gives you a chance to buy them. It is "nice" and provides links to relevant information at other web sites.

Grab a clue people.

The real problem... by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 09:56 · Score: 0

is the fact that they hard-coded it for 640-pixel wide browsers...some of us don't USE 640-pixel wide browsers..and, on OUR monitos it looks stupid...also shows they don't understand the nature of HTML

Re:The real problem... by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 12:17 · Score: 0

very true.
Re:The real problem... by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 17:12 · Score: 0

No one understands HTML, or at least pretends not to, because otherwise stupid journalists and the like would say that the web site looks poor.

You want a solid HTML site? Check out the GNU site. They use HTML properly. Very readable in any browser. And a newbie would look at it and say that it looks lame (even if it loads quickly).

And if they're going to be lame and hardcode it, better for 640x480 than big_numberxbig_number...at least this way everyone can use the site.

I have yet to see a "professional" web design agency that can write what I would consider a good web page. It really is possible to make a web site that looks good at follows HTML rules. It's just so easy that they'd be out of a job.

Designers don't get it. They're used to traditional print media, and *have* to have precise layout. Screw the end viewer, they envisioned it, and its gonna look that way.

They do make sense by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 11:02 · Score: 0

Unlike your post which contributed nothing

I don't get it by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 11:52 · Score: 0

Either it's my browser or does the new RedHat site just look boring ? It looks like fixed for 640x480er resolution... (table width=600)... It's cheap and not very pleasing to look at IMHO.

Says it all by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 11:52 · Score: 0

404 page:

To better serve you, redhat.com has been reorganized. The page you are looking for has been moved or
no longer exists. Please check your URL or use the menu below. Remember to adjust your
bookmarks.

Re:Get a real browser (Troll) by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 12:14 · Score: 0

gee, it looks great in the browser I use, lynx! (yes on linux)

Re:Get a real browser by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 12:17 · Score: 0

to me, it looks almost exactly the same (font size) on ie4 (nt 4 workstation) and netscape 4.6 (r.h. 6.0)

Re:Start screen about:mozilla on IE 5.0! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 12:25 · Score: 0

YIPE! The weird thing is that anything else just shows up as white, but this is blue, etc. Too weird!

Re:Start screen about:mozilla on IE 5.0! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 12:36 · Score: 0

here is the truly bizarre thing. apparently iexplore 4.0 knows about only THREE about: urls... And one of them is mozilla?!?!?!

$ strings MSHTML.DLL|grep AboutURLs
HKLM,"Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\AboutURLs","blank",2,"res://mshtml.dll/bl ank.htm"

HKLM,"Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\AboutURLs","PostNotCached",2,"res://mshtm l.dll/repost.htm"

HKLM,"Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\AboutURLs","mozilla",2,"res://mshtml.dll/ about.moz"

Re:Looks good in Lynx... almost. by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 12:45 · Score: 0

They did ok, but missed a few things. boxshot_brn.gif and a few pixel.gifs aren't ALT tagged. What are those pixel.gif things, anyway?

Re: Netscape Problems by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 15:34 · Score: 0

True. X11 freezes, as soon as you open a large mailbox under NS. Have you ever taken a look at top?? In my systerm, Netscape took about 46MB of memory while opening the mailbox.

As long as you have enough memory (for Netscape) it runs fine.
BTW: After some time, the system unfreezes.

Re:Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No... by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 15:36 · Score: 0

Yes, we do!

Slashdot is a portal.
'nuff said!

Re:Small fonts by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 16:54 · Score: 0

Uh...so the layout doesn't look like garbage.

The fact that HTML pages *have* layout and *can* look like garbage is pretty sad, I know...

I tried to respect font selections for a long time, and finally gave in, and just see everything in Verdana (which was a *pain* to get on my Linux machine...had to get/install a TT font server, unpack the thing by rebooting into Windows...)

Re:Get a real browser (Troll) by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 16:56 · Score: 0

Ya...everything sorta looks the same in lynx... :-)

What about lynx, as he said? Amaya (when Navigator dies on a page, I use Amaya on it) exists as well. There are 5 or so browsers in dev...just nothing to usability yet.

I wish that BeOS browser would get ported to Linux. It's supposed to be small and nimble.

Re:Get a real browser by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 17:01 · Score: 0

Gee, and all we have to do is go pirate Windows 2000 beta XXXXX, create a new partition, and install a crummy browser (that hands information off to MS at the drop of a hat) to see the web page properly? Great!

Yahoo is about as un-sterile as it gets. Yahoo is a WELL DONE SITE. I was very impressed with it, and it hasn't gotten much worse over the years (wow...years and "web site" in the same sentence). It is simple and easy to navigate. I wish they'd have less on their front page (they've slowly added more), but they're still pretty good.

If your idea of good is the Coca-cola page or something else "professional", those are poorly done sites.

I don't like all these people that try to imitate Yahoo (which is good), and then add about 3000 links on their front page. Mirabilis does this. One of the worst websites of all time. Bullfrog's (They made Syndicate,a really cool old video game) is worse -- all Shockwave), but in general I like the Yahoo layout, if done properly.

I don't know *anyone* that would use the RH site as a "portal" site, as the RH IPO statement seemed to say. I think that's mostly kissing up to IPO folks...RH's *real* assets are in software.

Re:Looks fine in IE5 by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 17:05 · Score: 0

Ya, X-windows is a pretty crummy protocol for today's needs. There's all these extensions to try to make it compete with Windows...I just wish we had something new.

Want to crash X-windows? Okay. I wrote a simple Xlib program that renders "If you can read this, you don't need glasses!" at 2000 point or so. Promptly freezes my X server. Repeatedly. And I'm running the latest version of XFree86.

Re: Too simple my a.. by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 17:08 · Score: 0

It works fine with lynx. I'm glad to see a non bloated design. The former looked just like MS or the Intel cheap website bloat.

Lynx all the way :)

Re:You're supposed to use "Verdana" by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 17:08 · Score: 0

Um. I *am* rendering things in verdana on the RH site. And it *still* gives my eyestrain.

BTW, I believe it *is* possible to legally install Verdana on a Linux system. Just takes some work.

Nu Sans on the Mac used to be my favorite on-screen font...at 72 dpi there was a *beautiful* 12-point bitmap font. Beautiful. It just doesn't translate well to Windows or Linux, tho (haven't tried it on Linux). The vector version of the font is okay...but the bitmap is drool-inducing.

Re:Table widths? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 17:18 · Score: 0

Um. You back up your point well. But I'm sick of old-timers trying to follow old rules for traditional print and graphics with HTML, which just makes everyone miserable. Under HTML *you should not be able to position your text at all*, because that isn't what HTML is for. Using CSS for this is an ugly hack. It is *wrong*.

HTML sites should look like the GNU site. HTML should be simple, easy to read/write, and be used for hypertext documentation. That would also give us smaller, stable browsers. If you want to make some ungodly garbage that looks horrible on computer screens with rules designed for print, follow your calling and go make lots of huge .ps files or something.

Re:Table widths? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 17:20 · Score: 0

Nail on the head. Designers these days look at how pretty it is. Hence, corporate sites are table-laden sites with thousands of tiny *animated* graphics. Slow, a pain to navigate, and so on.

And few sites can make something better than just following the way HTML should work...plain, simple sites. See the GNU site for an example.

Re:Table widths? by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 17:23 · Score: 0

Unfortunately, HTML is currently too brain-dead

Uh. Wrong. HTML wasn't *designed* for what people use it for today. You want to make one of those hideous "professional" corporate web pages with 10,000 little sliced GIFs per page, use Postscript or something. HTML pages should look like the GNU site.

I wish VR would hit the 'Net. No guidelines for that, so you can't pervert something designed for another purpose.

Re:Format VS Markup by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 17:28 · Score: 0

Thank you. I thought I was the only one saying this. The hacks that people use to do stuff like this in HTML is horrible. I read Macworld...a lot of Mac users are publishers, and I *cringe* when reading sentences from happy editors saying things like "Finally, pixel precise HTML layout is here!". No. Bad. That's not what HTML is *for*. Netscape would be a small, stable browser if HTML was used for what is was suppsed to be.

Fusion is a good example. A program that builds your pages out of thousands of tiny GIFs with lots of zero-width divider tables to make everything line up. Gross, nauseating, not cool.

I wish people wouldn't use HTML for this. We *really*, really, really need to get XML or VRML or something used more...I should be able to write an HTML browser in 6 months, without anyone else helping me. I can't do that, because of all the garbage added in these days. I *hate* HTML documentation, because I have to open up ol' unstable Netscape just to read it. I *should* be happily reading everything with a stripped down browser.

Re:RedHat: capitalist pig-dogs by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 17:29 · Score: 0

Maybe that was the point. They just wanted you as a customer.

Re:Yahoo for Redhat! by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 17:44 · Score: 0

Wow. I've never seen the apache or w3 sites before. I like them. They follow HTML rules.

Some suggestions for a good web page: use a white background color and black text...doesn't break anything and looks good.

Never use tables unless you have a *table of information*. Tables are way overused to try to do layout. HTML is not a layout language. It massively slows loading.

Javascript/other flashy technologies are good *IF YOU HAVE TO USE THEM!* and they're optional. People that use Javascript for form information verification before posting are smart (assuming non-Javascript users can still use the forms). People who use Javascript for *links* are lame.

Animated GIFs may seem like a good idea. They're not. Anything time-related (music/animation, etc.) is BAD.

PNG was developed for a reason. Use it. The Linux Gazette logo looks like garbage because of JPEG compression. If they used PNG, they wouldn't have problems.

Don't specify custom link colors. It's lame.

Don't use custom fonts. It's lame.

Don't use absolute *anything*. Font sizes, anything.

Don't require anything (cookies, Javascript, Flash, Windows with MSIE). If you want to use it if they've got it, great. Don't require it.

Don't use pointless huge images.

Shamlessly steal design tips from well-done sites like Yahoo.

If you don't know how to hand-code HTML, you will be a bad HTML author, because you don't understand what you're doing. Either stick to making PDF files or sit down and *learn* HTML. You may never ever hand-code an HTML document (I hope to high heaven you do if you're one of those "professional" web designers), but if you don't understand what features were designed for, you won't do well.

"Under construction"/"optimized for xxxx"/"Best viewed at XXXXxXXXX resolution"/"Get Shockwave--it's worth it" are the marks of a true loser.

Please post if you disagree with anything I said here...but I'm pretty sure that these are design tips that, if followed, would make the Web a lot better.

Re:REDHAT Get a DESIGNER, an ARTIST I say by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 18:00 · Score: 0

I agree full heartedly. It is does not have a 'finished' look and feel. RedHat needs to drop the 100k to get a real designer on staff that understands the principles of design.

BS. There isn't *anyone* yet that understands solid HTML design well enough. There's no widely-accepted standards. Just a bunch of recommendations and designers trying to apply old-world techniques to HTML. Which looks like garbage. The *worst* thing you can do is get a traditional graphics/publishing team. Coca-Cola did. Look at their website, and the websites of other large corps (Coke isn't really that bad...I just thought of them immediately.) If you're on a LAN, you don't count, because you can't see how long they take to load.

The second website I ever did I coded by hand. It beats the living snot out of all these "professionally done" sites done with Fusion and thousands of tables and graphics. Look at Yahoo's site. Looks great. Looked great *before* they got wealthy. Fast to load. Good site.

Hey REDHAT, MICROSOFT'S SITE KICKS ASS ON YOURS!!

BS again. Microsoft's site is possibly the worst web site of all time. I use it as an *example* of poor web design. It requires cookies, passwords (just to get at public info), is slow to load, uses that moronic .asp stuff and passes stuff through cgis, so instead of having a bunch of addresses like /support/main.html you get stuff like /page.asp?support-main (well, not like that but same idea).

They (M$) hire talent that not only knows the tricks of the Web trade but understand things like color theory and the psychology of design. Guess what when I need something from the M$ site I find it easy, and wthe site gets me to look at other information because it is engaging.

Then you have a twisted mind. I have an *extremely* difficult time getting anything off the M$ site when I need to. It *certainly* isn't engaging. I just went there...the main page has a bunch of blue graphics, most of the text is blue links, and is all too intense on the blue and fatiguing to look at for long. I can't understand why you like it.

If Redhat really thinks it can steal market share from M$ then they will have to learn a trick M$ has perfected. Copy the competitions strong points and expand the functionality of the product to become superior. I don't want to start the anti-M$ rants thread here, but everyone must admit that marketing is a key to the Redmond success.

And having a website that *isn't* like M$'s poorly done one would be a good start.

Redhat better understand this right now and quit letting the mailboy do the graphic and UI design for there biggest asset in today's marketing toolkit.

I've seen web sites done by programmers, and "professional web design" businesses. Quite frankly, the programmer-done ones beat the living daylights out of the web design ones. In general, I find that the only sites worse than the pro web design ones are Johnny Sixpack's first site, which was done in Netscape Composer and has nothing but zillions of clip art animated GIFs.

Re:REDHAT Get a DESIGNER, an ARTIST I say by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 18:00 · Score: 0

Lot better than the sliced-image approach that many other large companies use.

Re:REDHAT Get a DESIGNER, an ARTIST I say by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 18:03 · Score: 0

Who on *earth* sticks around a web site because of the *eye candy*????? Granted, goodies make a slight difference....bright green on black gets tough to read quickly, and a KPT Bryce site sometimes catches my eye and makes me say "Wow". But quick loading, ease of use, and lack of annoyances like Javascript, huge tables, and frames make a lot more difference to me.

Re:No More Slashdot Feed... by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 18:05 · Score: 0

A portal is like Yahoo...somewhere you can use to find the place you want to go...not just a search engine, but with a link like "Weather", another for "Tech News", etc.

I wish people would stop feeding off other sites, myself. Everyone seems to grab stuff from freshmeat and slashdot. I mean, get your own content, or add a link to the site. It's one thing to put in information relevant to yourself (GNOME putting up freshmeat announcements about new GNOME apps). It's another to just mass use another site's information.

Re:Poor site design by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 18:08 · Score: 0

No. Always go for least common denominator. A 800x600 user can use a 640x480 site. A 640x480 user can't use an 800x600 site.

That's besides the point. If you're doing the design properly, the resolution shouldn't *matter*. There should be no such thing as a 640x480 site.

Everyone wants to be a portal because portals get good IPOs.

I gave up on using portals a long time ago. Portals are annoying. If Netscape could make the *first* new window of the day, and only that one (the rest would be blank), go to a portal, it might be different. But as it is, portals have no point.

Re:Careful what you wish for by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 18:11 · Score: 0

I'd love to see some stats on how many 640x480 vs. 800x600+ users there are out there. I bet the ratio is far in favor of the 800x600 users.

Then why did you write this? No one would care how many 800x600 users there were if we were to just do flexible sites.

Re:portal page by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 18:12 · Score: 0

So what about those of us that suck shit through straws for religious reasons? Seems you're a bit bigotted yourself!

(don't know why I posted this...too much backwash everytime a percieved "bigot" posts around here, I guess)

Re:That's Nice, but... by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 18:14 · Score: 0

Not so much Q&A...I think they're pushing the bleeding edge too hard to try to prove that they aren't getting slow and corporate and not advancing the system. Result? RH pushes the envelope more than anyone else, but also tends to lose in stability.

Also, you need a bit of a jump, since it sometimes takes a while for RPMs to come out. RPMs might come out after Debian people are happily running around with tarballs for some piece of software.

No one uses 8-bit monitors any more. by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 18:22 · Score: 0

Why do you *care* how your site looks to people with 256 colors? Big deal. No one with a computer bought in *at least* the last 3 years is limited to 256 colors, and most for some time before that weren't either. I keep my bottom of the line 6-year-old Power Mac in 16-bit mode. My WinNT/Linux box is always in 32 bit. No one uses 256 colors. It's legacy.

I think the reason people in the **IX world are so 8-bit conscious is that X-windows is incredibly lame in low resolution. So people get ungodly expensive 21 inch monitors, and run in really high rez. (X-windows at 640x480? Eeew!) But they get obsolete video cards that can't do more than 8 bit at that resolution. Or something.

Just make the web site so that it looks good at any resolution in 32 bit color. Everyone will then like you.

Oh, and there is no *way* you are going to see any kind of a noticeable graphics speedup by using 8-bit graphics, given that todays cards have hardware acceleration. The only times you need massive redraw are when doing movie playback and when playing full-screen games (usually 3d games). 3d hardware has the full-screen games (and will be in at least 16 bit anyway), and movies will be in 32 bit (well, 24...whatever) as well.

Seriously, I'll bet less than one percent of the people reading this currently use 8 bit graphics.

Re:Mathematical spacing is the problem. by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 18:23 · Score: 0

This seems like a good time to point out that the *Mac* 256 color system palette was designed with this in mind. The Windows one was designed with mathematically-spaced colors in the palette.

Re:Poor site design by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 21:41 · Score: 0

Sorry, but you're wrong. Don't aim for ANY resolution, simply let the browser do the formatting. Frankly, there are sites that I cannot use because they were hardcoded for 640x480, the fonts are just too ridiculously small to read

RedHat: capitalist pig-dogs by Anonymous Coward · 1999-07-26 00:21 · Score: 2

With this latest manuver, those guys have completely SOLD OUT. DEATH TO RED HAT!!! We must fight them at the FTP servers, we must confront them in the mailing lists, we will never surrender!!!!

Of course, my anger at RedHat might have something to do with my having missed out on the IPO. Dammit.

Re:Table widths? by mce · 1999-07-26 07:27 · Score: 1

I'm having a real hard time imagining why anyone would want to run a web browser any wider than 800 pixels anyway

My default size is 800x880, but occasionally I'll make a window a bit wider than that.

But, speaking as a long-time programmer and a big fan of genericity: it is not the issue how big people's windows are (on average) and/or what one can or cannot imagine that others will want to do (either now or 5 or so years from now). The issue is that when it takes no extra effort at all to get the tables right, there is no reason to get them wrong. Hell, even if it did require some effort, it should still be done right.

Computers are meant to automate things for us, so why, oh why, do so many of their users, and even so many programers, insist on doing things manually and getting them wrong in the process? Let that stupid piece of silicon take care of things like the layout of WWW pages automatically. That's what it's "good" at, or that's at least what others already have t old it how to do.

--

--
Linux user since early January 1992.

Re:Table widths? by mce · 1999-07-26 07:34 · Score: 1

the ideal length of the line depends on the point size of the characters

There you have it: hardwiring 600 pixels is not the right thing to do!

PS: I'm a big fan of TeX. Guess why...

--

--
Linux user since early January 1992.

Re:Small fonts by Brian+Knotts · 1999-07-26 00:32 · Score: 3

Yes, the fonts are rather tiny, even with xfstt.

I can understand using a relatively smaller font for the subcategories, but the proper way to do that is not SIZE=2. It should be SIZE=-1. That way, someone who has limited vision or a high-resolution display can set their fonts to a large size, and the subcategories will still be relatively smaller, but remain large enough to see.

Absolute font sizing is a Bad Thing. Unfortunately, it is still done quite often.

--

Re:Small fonts by Matthew+Weigel · 1999-07-26 01:17 · Score: 1

I actually get better font sizes by giving control back to other web sites. Probably something to do with . Which is annoying, especially since for one of my jobs my monitor is constantly about 30 inches away from me (so I need larger fonts all the time). sigh

--
--Matthew

Re:Table widths? by sterwill · 1999-07-25 23:47 · Score: 1

I'm running in 1600x1200 now, and I'm having a real hard time imagining why anyone would want to run a web browser any wider than 800 pixels anyway. Why people maximise a browser window, I will never know. What's the point of having work space at high resolution if you're going to limit yourself to one huge window?

Re:Table widths? by sterwill · 1999-07-26 06:20 · Score: 1

Yes, I actively use 10 workspaces through Window Maker, but I use the "maximize" feature about once a week. Reading text in a web browser at 10 points in a window 16 inches wide is almost impossible; my eyes lose the line I'm on in big chunks of text.

That's Nice, but... by mholve · 1999-07-26 04:45 · Score: 0

...I wish they'd spend more time doing Q&A on Redhat 6.0.

One machine locks up solid on huge FTPs.

Another machine, after applying the errata RPMs, no longer starts GNOME/Enlightenment.

I've heard of many, many other people complain about RH6 now as well.

Come on, get with the program Redhat!

Re:Table widths? by astroboy · 1999-07-26 03:56 · Score: 1

t really doesn't matter what design rules you follow and how well you follow them, the only thing that matters is this: does it look good or crappy?

Exactly wrong. Oddly enough, I agree with the rest of the posting, so I wonder if that sentance above is really what you mean.

The aesthetics do not matter except indirectly. A portal-ish-type-page is not a piece of artwork to be framed and hung and for people to have strong emotional feelings about how beautiful/powerful/sensitive it is. The readability and useability matter.

If a page looks so ugly that it distracts from usability, that's fine, but I'd much rather visit an ugly-ish useable site than a gorgeous unuseable site any day. The design rules you reject are expressely for the purpose of enhancing readability and usablility. Even at the cost of beauty.

Faster by suprax · 1999-07-26 10:26 · Score: 1

It loads a lot faster but also it dosen't have as much content. Where did all the streams and feeds go. Even though they might have been slow, they were cool as a portal site.

--
Scott Miga

It's an improvement, IMHO by Tet · 1999-07-25 23:46 · Score: 1

I think it's better than their last attempt. They were in danger of becoming another useless site like http://www.netscape.com. At least with Red Hat they've now put the important things back on the front page (like Products, Updates and Errata, for instance).

--
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown

Re:No More Slashdot Feed... by drix · 1999-07-26 03:54 · Score: 1

The Slashdot feed is still there, featured on the _first_ line under "News & Views." Why must everyone go apeshit with the conspiracy theories when it concerns Redhat? - "aah! they're offering content! My god they must be trying to kill *our* Slashdot." Guess what - if you consider their page as it is right now a portal, then so is practically every other software company website. Chill.

Personally I thought plastering Slashdot and Freshmeat headlines on the front page was a bit much anyways. Literally, they accounted for about 25% of the real estate.

--

I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.

Beg to Differ by knuth · 1999-07-26 02:12 · Score: 1

The teeny tiny absolute font size still looks horrible in Windows, and even in MSIE running in Windows.

Re:Table widths? by Zagadka · 1999-07-26 01:13 · Score: 1

Why does everyone designing these so-called portal sites insist on setting all their table widths to 600 pixels?

Because it is easier to read.

I think you mean "because they think it's easier to read". My point is, of course, that this is an incorrect assumption. Do you know how big my text is? Maybe I've got a really high resolution screen.

Let's pretend I had a display that was 4096 pixels across. Because I want to be able to read text, my font is set to something that gets roughly 80 charcters per line, or an average width of 51 pixels per character. So almost 12 characters will fit in that 600 pixels. See the problem here?

Yes, you don't want more than about 70 characters per line. But restricting the number of pixels per line is not the right way to do this. You don't know how big my font is, or what the resolution of my screen is.

The right thing to do is to either use a 100% width table, or use no table at all. If I have trouble reading your lines because they're too long, I'll make my browser window narrower. Artificially restricting it to a certain number of pictures only ensures that a large portion of your users will never be able to get it to look good on their display.

If you really want 30-70 characters per row, HTML will need some way of specifying widths in em's. Unfortunately, HTML is currently too brain-dead to do sizes in anything other than percentages or pixels. Using pixel sizes is the wrong thing to do for anything other than raster images.

Re:Table widths? by Zagadka · 1999-07-26 06:38 · Score: 1

Just because most sites do it, it doesn't mean it's a good thing to do. c|net used to have fixed table widths as well. Now they don't.

Putting fixed width tables around your pages tells me one thing: you should be working with paper, not HTML. The web is too powerful for you, and you want to artificially constrain it.

I am aware that many commercial sites use fixed table widths. That doesn't stop it from being a stupid thing to do.

Using your logic, all web sites should still be grey, because most web sites were grey initially, and "Consumer's [sic] like what they know."

Using fixed-width tables around web sites destroys their usability. You can fool yourself all you want, and make up statistics like "99.9999874 users use exactly the same browsing configuration as me", but the fact remains that anyone with a different screen resolution, font, font size, browser, windowing system and/or video card is probably going to see your page differently than you do. Trying to squeeze the page into some lowest common denominator resolution just pisses users off.

When 4096 pixel wide displays do become commonplace, what are you going to do? change your tables to say 'width=3000'? What about users with 640x480?

Leave out the constraint, and things will look good on every user's display.

Re:Small fonts by orabidoo · 1999-07-26 00:15 · Score: 1

right, but the small-fonts trend still sucks. it seems like "professional designers" tend to forget that text in pages is tehre so people can READ it.

Looks fine in IE5 by Axe · 1999-07-26 03:07 · Score: 1

..booted back to Linux, and indeed, looks shitty in 4.6. Can be readable with a lot of tweaking.

Poor font rendering quality is my biggest problem with using X/Linux. Compare writing text in Word or Scientific Workplace with WordPerfect and LyX in Linux. (And yeah, NT4SP5 is more stable on me than X - example? try reading a large mailbox file originally from Pine from Netscape messenger. It freezes X solid. Hard reboot. Repeatable. Yeah THEORETICALLY I can ssh in and kill it. 20 min roundtrip to nearest box. Netscape is a piece of shit as it is)

Fortunately, I mostly write code, not presetations and fixed font looks fine for that.

On topic - RedHat better put their money into Mozilla and XFree, than that GNOME doodads.
Browser and fonts is what people work with -
it should look as good as NT at least.

--
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>

Memory? by Axe · 1999-07-27 01:57 · Score: 1

I have 512Mb on my Dell. If that's not enough to open a 4M+ text file for Netscape, while pine (!) reads it just fine... NC...Sign..Is it THAT hard to fix?

--
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>

Portal? Who said it's a portal? by Ptolemarch · 1999-07-25 23:57 · Score: 1

First: Their Slashdot section is still there. It's just behind a link from their front page. But did you ever *really* go to Red Hat's site for Slashdot news? It wasn't updated often enough, it was ugly, and it was slow to load.

In any case, this really doesn't look like a portal to me. Yes, they do have links to a lot of places, but links do not a portal make. What they *do* make is a good starting point for a newbie. (And a portal would've put Slashdot, Freshmeat, and Linux Today on the front page.)

When I had just gotten into Linux (two years ago! How both long and short that seems!), the one thing I was starving for was a way to find other Linux sites. It took me until the Mozilla launch in April '98 to find out that Slashdot even existed. And I was the first out of any of my friends.

Yes, Linux.com does a good job already. Yes, there are other portals. But c'mon. Isn't that what Open Source is all about? Don't trust any service of block of information to only a single provider. Hell, that's what Slashdot's all about, if you ask me.

Re:Portal? Who said it's a portal? by Ethelred+Unraed · 1999-07-26 01:56 · Score: 1

Yes, Linux.com does a good job already. Yes, there are other portals. But c'mon. Isn't that what Open Source is all about? Don't trust any service of block of information to only a single provider. Hell, that's what Slashdot's all about, if you ask me.
That's not what I was criticizing; I was mainly worried at the apparent "demotion" of /. on their site. It used to have a much more prominent place.
The idea of a portal is to have _one_ central place where you get a sampling of info that you can customize to suit you. The "old" Red Hat site (which, oddly, wasn't *that* old) came closer to that goal; now, I have to hunt for the /. link (which is pretty tiny) and don't get any other real info on the same page. Just a huge mass of links.
And for a while, at least, I *was* using it as a portal, until I realized you could customize /. a lot more. :-)
Ethelred

--
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.

Re:Um. Where's /.? Wha' happened? by geocajun · 1999-07-26 00:26 · Score: 1

I agree, it needs some flashier colors in my opinion. The whole canary yellow thing is just nasty looking. The Red is a must have considering the name but not yellow..

Hey! About time! by Rahga · 1999-07-25 23:55 · Score: 1

The last revision was ugly. Looked like it was put together by a 5 year old, shoving everything in where it didn't belong. Nice one this time.

Start screen about:mozilla on IE 5.0! by wilkinsm · 1999-07-26 09:51 · Score: 1

Whoa. Just for the hell of it I typed it in. I was not expecting much, after all, I'm currently using IE 5.0.

I got a (blank?) blue screen that in the title bar says:
res://mshtml.dll/about.moz

Easter egg? Subliminal message?
For some reason it's freaking me out.
Maybe if I set security to low... aiiiieee!

GPF

Re:Um. Where's /.? Wha' happened? by SimJockey · 1999-07-27 01:06 · Score: 1

Anyhow, this whole "portal" strategy doesn't sound like a big winner, especially if that's their front door. At a first glance, it looks marginally more useful to those looking for "HOWTOS" etc. than Linux.com or org's which are "news and views" oriented.

Funny thing is, I went to Red Hat this morning looking for particular HOWTO (built my first Linux box on the weekend, YAY) and the link to the HOWTO within their mirror was broken. I like site updates which improve the looks of the site (and at first glance RH's isn't bad) but I hate when they make the front page look all pretty and don't fix the links deeper down. Grr.

--
Laugh while you can, monkey boy!

Get a real browser by Zico · 1999-07-26 01:32 · Score: 1

Seriously. If you care to notice, these font-readability complaints are almost exclusively from Netscape users, usually using a *nix version. Stick a fork in Netscape already, okay? Your web browsing will be much less stressful. The page's default fonts look just find under IE5 and Win2K/NT4.

Now, I admit that I haven't tried Internet Explorer on Solaris since the somewhat shaky version 4 debut (I pretty much only use my SPARC box as a server anymore), but given the ass-kicking that Netscape's taken on the Windows and Mac platforms, surely version IE5's gotta be better than what Netscape's shovelling out, right?

As for the new RedHat site, I can't say that I'm all that fond of it -- from those flags, which seem a little silly to me, to that unattractive yellow background for the buzz section. My biggest complaint, though, is that there's just way too much red. I really (really!) felt like I was looking at a Chairman Mao advocacy website or something. Then there is the Yahoo-ish table of links -- a stale, sterile look I've never really liked.

Of course, it's just a website, and I'm sure that someone out there liked the look or they wouldn't have done it that way. So for all of you screaming that this is the end of the world and that RedHat's evil incarnate for their changes, get a little perspective on life already.

Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

Re:Poor site design by Zico · 1999-07-26 02:40 · Score: 1

1280x1024 ~2%
1024x768 ~24%
800x600 ~55%
640x480 ~14%
Others ~3%

Source: StatMarket for July 25, 1999 So basically, you're talking about disregarding about 14 percent of the web surfers.

Careful what you wish for by Zico · 1999-07-26 02:49 · Score: 1

[Sorry, had a mouse spasm with that last post and hit Submit instead of Preview. Whoa!]

1280x1024: ~2%
1024x768: ~24%
800x600: ~55%
640x480: ~14%
Others: ~3%

Source: StatMarket for July 25, 1999

So basically, you're talking about disregarding about 14 percent of the web surfers.

Then again, since Windows users make up more than 90 percent of the web viewing audience, who cares about that paltry less-than-10-percent who aren't using Windows? Why bother keeping things readable for those people when there are such a relative few?

Hmmmmmmmm? :-)

Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

Re:Careful what you wish for by Quelish · 1999-07-26 15:52 · Score: 1

I am not suggesting that we ignore 14% of the web surfers...what I AM suggesting is that we don't devote our attention primarily to those 14% -- we give our attention to all 100% by designing nice, flexible layouts that take the whole screen at any resolution and still look good....not to mention that they are still readable at any resolution as well.

Re:Small fonts by Hammer · 1999-07-26 00:52 · Score: 1

I make a point of having small fonts on my box to make room for lotsa stuff.
Red Hat uses small fonts to make room for space???
Hard to navigate, no appeal to the siple style. Let's just say that I hope they didn't pay a lot for this design ;-)

Transition by mudpup · 1999-07-26 07:22 · Score: 1

I hope this is just a transitional page as they prepare for a major change

--
Who owns your data?

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No... by fuerstma · 1999-07-25 23:44 · Score: 1

Why.. it looks.. yes.. it looks like.... a PORTAL...

Doing my best to fuel the insane portal mania
Does anybody other than mom and pop on the 'Net for the first time actually use a friggin "portal"?

--
www.jackasscritics.com

Hold the Mustard by blanco · 1999-07-26 06:31 · Score: 1

Boy, am I getting bone tired of mustard and light yellow on Web sites. But we're stuck with seeing those colors on big web sites for a while. There's a reason we keep seeing that combo.

Ideally, Web sites have to be sensitive to users of 256-color bit depths on monitors/laptops etc., even in 1999. The cube/palette holds colors that are equally spaced apart (mathematically) to best represent all visible colors. This helps people with 256-color bit depths set. Don't quote me, but I think the "cube" was done first by Netscape (heard that at a Macromedia user group once-the cube is a best intersection of the different 256-color palettes of Windows and Macs).

If a color falls outside this palette, it gets re-mapped by the browser to the nearest "cube" equivalent. In the case of a real light non-cube color like champagne, it gets mapped to a nasty salmon color on 256-color monitors.

I've noticed the problem is the cube is very sparse on attractive, light colors. It's heavy on the dark colors. Despite the even mathematical spacing, in the dark range, there are a half dozen dark dark greens that are indistinguishable from each other. But at the light end, the light yellows are hugely different. Which gives us only a few "palatable" light colors.

The 256 color palettes of the aforementioned OS's needed to be designed with a greater representation of light than dark colors from the get go. We're paying for this lack of foresight with the way way overused mustard.

Its not as useful by Lt.Hawkins · 1999-07-25 23:36 · Score: 1

what happened to their portal site that they released a few months ago? that was semi-useful!

oh well, back to using /. for my homepage. (either that, or about:blank)

--
-- My Sig is a P228.

Re:Its not as useful by Reality_X · 1999-07-26 14:34 · Score: 1

Typed about:mozilla into IE 5 ...
Redirected to mozilla.org ...
Freaky ...

Format VS Markup by MS · 1999-07-26 14:43 · Score: 1

Most of You don't seem to know, but:

HTML is a Markup Language, not a Formatting Language. HTML was never meant, nor is it designed to do formatting.

Pages should be designed flexible and adapt to whatever screen/resolution (this includes also number of colors/color depth, not only size in pixels) and software/fonts the user has (this includes browser model/version, type and number of fonts - there are lynx users on a text-only monitor as well!)...

All html-designers requiring 800*600, at least 256 colors, MSIE 4.0 or higher, ... did miss the point. They aren't real html-designers. They are simply designers and haven't really understood what html is for, and how it should be used.

Only those who use HTML for and how it isn't meant for, have trouble. I don't. I feel well with HTML.

There are other formats for real page formatting.

:-)
ms

No More Slashdot Feed... by Evro · 1999-07-26 01:50 · Score: 2

I thought the Slashdot feed was kind of corny actually. I mean, if I want Slashdot, I'll just go here. But it seems like a real sign that they're gearing up to be a competitor with Slashdot as a "portal site." The thing is, I don't see anything interesting on their site that would make them a portal. Everything seems to be internal information. If this is what their final portal is going to be, it really stinks.

What is a portal, anyway? A site that gets a lot of people visit, or a site that a lot of people visit regularly? I mean, if millions of people go there one time, it's not going to be a portal. They'll need to add some news or something that actually changes on a daily/hourly basis if they want to attract hits. I mean, I don't think Microsoft.com or Apple.com is a portal.

--
rooooar

Yahoo for Redhat! by King+Babar · 1999-07-26 02:24 · Score: 1

My big gripe is that if Redhat wants to be the leader in the whole Linux/open source movement, well the should look the part.

OK, so I have no idea what this means. I have no idea whether it was intended to mean anything. Do you mean that Redhat should have taken design cues from the people at w3.org, the leader of the whole w3 standards movement? From apache.org, the leader of the whole open source web server movement? I wish they'd taken those cues a little more to heart, actually.

Blazing fast the site maybe, but will anyone stick around to find the info they want without a little eye candy? I doubt it.

I'd have gone with less eye candy, larger fonts, and no animated third party logos myself. Actually, I would have gone one better than that, and allowed users to customize their view of the site.

Return visitors will be hard pressed to see a change in the content within the golden 5 second window. after complete load)

I'm not quite so sure about that. The stuff that you would expect to change the fastest ("The Buzz"...gag) is at the top. I would have preferred the "sidebar" thing on the right to be at the bottom of the page. This would have also enabled them to make the search box big enough not to scroll text.

But I'll actually go further than that. If this is supposed to be the Linux portal of all portals, shouldn't the search box be at the very top? So I can go to the site, type "apache update" and see the real goods? I don't know about you, but I spend more time at sites where I can get information quickly and easily than at sites where I'm forced to wait ten seconds to see whether that last dorky image has content on it or not.

--

Babar

Re:Yahoo for Redhat! by King+Babar · 1999-08-04 23:56 · Score: 1

"Under construction"/"optimized for xxxx"/"Best viewed at XXXXxXXXX resolution"/"Get Shockwave--it's worth it" are the marks of a true loser.

Actually, I always like to see Optimized for Lynx. :-)
King Babar

--
Babar

Re:Table widths? by King+Babar · 1999-07-26 02:57 · Score: 1

I'm running in 1600x1200 now, and I'm having a real hard time imagining why anyone would want to run a web browser any wider than 800 pixels anyway.

One answer is to get really huge fonts. Another answer is to follow your stock portfolio in Yahoo more easily. :-)

Why people maximise a browser window, I will never know. What's the point of having work space at high resolution if you're going to limit yourself to one huge window?

I'm not sure I understand the fetish for ultra high resolution myself. But I can give a really good reason for maximizing browser windows. Some of us use features of current window managers under X that allow us to have a desktop 3 (or 4) screens wide and 3 screens tall, and we can flip back and forth between them without ever taking our hands off the keyboard. In that kind of a system, there's no particular reason why you can't have three maximized browser windows available at once. I know I do. One's usually a search engine, one is work-connected, and the other is to fire up whatever URL turns up as relevant in my travels.

King Babar

--

Babar

Re:Table widths? by eann · 1999-07-26 02:34 · Score: 1

After quite a bit of consideration over the last few years, I finally decided that it wasn't my job, as a Web site maker, to protect my users from themselves. If someone wants to read 12-point type at 1200 pixels across, it's their eyesight, not mine.

Doing this freed me of all sorts of other nasty little concerns, too. People with vision problems may have a virtual screen size set intentionally large, and be zoomed in on a small part of it. When I want to use a projection system to show a site to a room full of people, I don't end up with one- and two-word lines or worse--text that makes me scroll horizontally.

I do, however, prefer to make things that degrade gracefully. If at all possible, I don't require anything to be wider than about 540 pixels (== 72 pixels per inch * 7.5 inches for 0.5" margins when printed). Slashdot, as one other post noted, is a fairly good example of this in practice. When visual arrangement or appearance really is earth-shatteringly important, I use graphics.

Admittedly, I work mostly on information-intensive sites. I put things on the web because I see a need to share information, not to make an attractive piece of multimedia. Art, it turns out, is often less efficient at conveying important information, even though it might be more fun.

When my conscience really flares up about destroying people's vision or wasting reams of paper so they can print something they ought to be able to read onscreen, I've been known to include a reminder on text-intensive pages that they're often easier to digest with a narrower window and/or a larger font size.

Re:Table widths? by tonyj · 1999-07-26 03:49 · Score: 1

Slashdot is not exactly a paragon of virtue in regards to web design--it's got its strong points (good use of contrast, consistent positioning of navigation, etc.) and weaknesses (smallish type in some spots, addiction to embedded tables...bad Slashdot, no cookie...and lack of polish on the graphics).

Forgive me for being confused, but why exactly are embedded tables bad? (Please respond by normal e-mail tonyj@cs.umd.edu)

Absolute by ALIENHANDS · 1999-07-26 00:12 · Score: 1

I think that I am bound to be the only one here to agree with you. I think that its stupid the way it looks. Can you say Yahoo! or Lycos (yeah I know, not a portal, but it has that same distinct feel). Maybe a cross betweent the old and new site would suffice.

----------

--
Beau C

Re:Table widths? by ALIENHANDS · 1999-07-26 00:16 · Score: 1

But you can always (how does it go, oh yeah) SWITCH BETWEEN THE WINDOWS!!!

--
Beau C

Of course black wasn't first by ciphersnow · 1999-07-26 07:28 · Score: 1

I remember when their site turned black. I thought it was cool at first, but quickly grew to dislike it.

Before it was black it was an excellent design--- two equal columns. News items on the right and links on the left.

When they went to that slashdot/freshmeat/... "portal" thingy I remember thinking "I hit those sites pretty often, good idea" and then never went back.

Anybody remember what it looked like before? I distinctly remember the walking red man logo, but can't remember the website too well. Anyway...

--

Peace.

You're supposed to use "Verdana" by ciphersnow · 1999-07-26 07:33 · Score: 1

When MS launched that verdana font, they were advertising it for visibility at 7pt on screen. I notice that it's pretty much all they use on their web pages. I have to admit I like it quite a bit.

Maybe lucidatyperwriter is the best X font for small sizes.

--

Peace.

Looks good in Lynx by ciphersnow · 1999-07-26 07:37 · Score: 1

It's a page of links. As far as that goes, it looks fine in lynx. Loads fast, no frames but no real new info either. No complaints from me.

--

Peace.

Small fonts by theHippo · 1999-07-25 23:21 · Score: 1

Is Redhat taking part in the competition to see who can put the smallest size fonts on the web page as well? Or is there a bug with Netscape Communicator 4.6 font selection? Why are sites so intent on using small size fonts? Even with a 19-inch monitor, on the solaris box I use I've got to set the font to Helvetica size 18 to see clearly...and no I'm not blind :)

Re:Small fonts by Tom+Christiansen · 1999-07-26 21:16 · Score: 2

Guys, our only hope is to send Redhat mail about this nastiness. Right now, I can't read their site except using lynx, unless I use my hand-written proxy that strips out all the font changes and width stuff. I just sent webmaster@redhat.com mail explaining why I couldn't read their site. I also posted them at the admittedly Spartan but functional html design guidlines. I encourage you to do likewise, after your own fashion, of course.

New site is less useful (for a while) by chandoni · 1999-07-26 07:46 · Score: 1

About the only thing I use RH's site for is to search their mailing list archives. These are really helpful for setting up Alpha linux or getting your PnP sound card to work.

After the site (archive.redhat.com) was taken down for the upgrade, I logged on today but found: "The Red Hat mailing list archive search is currently unavailable due to the SEC's required "quiet period" associated with the proposed IPO of our stock. The search will be available again as soon as the quiet period is over."

So, it appears that the SEC forbids posting any useful information about your product during the "quiet period."

BTW, for anybody who needs info from the lists, the mailing list server still works, and has egrep as a search feature. Of course, there's been no mention of the IPO on the sound card list!

JMC

Mathematical spacing is the problem. by adamv · 1999-07-26 08:08 · Score: 1

The 6x6x6 cube is progratically easy to "nearest-neighbor" colors to, since you just drop the lower bits.

Unfortunately, the eye has different levels of sensitivity to R, G & B, thus all the "wasted" colors in the cube.

portal page by ripcrd · 1999-07-26 03:16 · Score: 1

Dull, dull, boring dull. They need to reload the last iteration of their page. It was cluttered but it had some stank on it. This looks like any other corp. home page, gay. Those so-called designers have dumbed-down a previously exciting place to go. A definite 10 on the boring meter.

--
--Somewhere there is a village missing an idiot.

Re:portal page by WebMistress · 1999-07-26 13:19 · Score: 1

I agree that the site sucks shit through a straw but to call it gay insults homosexuals! Let's watch the lame bigotted remarks, ok?

Re:Table widths? by PugMajere · 1999-07-26 02:32 · Score: 1

I can resize my window size to however large I want it. Different font sizes really make these pages annoying, however.

It's very important to be able to read Slashdot in about 1024 pixels wide, when you're reading comments in nested mode. Comments 4-6 layers deep waste a lot of space on the left side of the browser - I'd hate to read those in a smaller window. I'd spend all my time moving my eyes down lines.

Besides, the *TABLE* shouldn't be limited in size - the cells inside it should be. It would allow better word wrapping inside the outer cells, typically the ones starved for space as it is.

Re:Table widths? by PugMajere · 1999-07-26 02:53 · Score: 1

Everyone who thinks that they are a designer should read "The Elements of Typographic Style" by Robert Bringhurst at least 2 times, or at the very least read this page for Yale's web style manual:
http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/pages/typogra phy2.html

I just looked through that page, a little bit, and while it is well written, they haven't really adapted to the use of the web. Their example pages (well, images of them) are labeled backwards in my opinion. The large rectangular blocks of text with no variation are very hard to read through. The pages with nice breaks and appropriate headers where necessary are much easier to use to find the information I want.

They've also failed to compensate for the fact that most people will sit further from their monitor than they will hold a book or paper in front of their face. I figure I'm sitting twice as far from this 19" monitor in front of me than I would hold a book or newspaper here. That shows up in the amount of text I can comfortably read on a line. My 21" monitor at home is even farther away.

Strangely, on the Typography 1 page they make many of the arguments I am making here, but in terms of lower case and uppper case text. Overall patterns are important for keeping track of where you are in the page. I find it hard to read solid blocks of text without paying extra attention to where I am in the block of text. A more varied paragraph doesn't cause me those problems.

Table widths? by PugMajere · 1999-07-25 23:40 · Score: 3

Why does everyone designing these so-called portal sites insist on setting all their table widths to 600 pixels? It's really annoying on those of us who have monitors 17 inches and bigger. I mean, it's stupid to run my SGI monitor in anything less than 1280x1024, so i get to see this itty-bitty table in a massive browser window.

Folks, the trick is to do then specify everything else in percentages as well. It'll look the same on browsers with windows limited to 600 pixels, but those of us with bigger monitors won't think you're idiots. (Well, at least not as much.)

>/rant off

Re:Table widths? by Ethelred+Unraed · 1999-07-26 01:57 · Score: 1

If you really want 30-70 characters per row, HTML will need some way of specifying widths in em's. Unfortunately, HTML is currently too brain-dead to do sizes in anything other than percentages or pixels. Using pixel sizes is the wrong thing to do for anything other than raster images.
You have inadvertently hit the nail on the head as to why you _must_ often use a fixed width in designing a webpage: fixed-width pixmaps. 99.99% of customers (this is a verifiable statistic, really it is, I swear, really, honest) want their websites to have a consistent look across all platforms and browsers, and they also insist (rightly) that their corporate identity system be preserved. This means following guidelines for positioning logos, type, etc., and in most cases this is only to be done using pixmaps (until Flash becomes a *real* standard...where the hell's Flash for Linux?).
So you are forced to use fixed-width pixmaps and tables for positioning...which, by extension, forces you to resort to using things like "columns" (like Red Hat does) and fixed widths.
Admittedly, Red Hat did it in a particularly crappy way...no flexibility at all. But you can't assume that all pages can be made to fit your 4096 pixel screen. It just ain't in the cards.
Trust me, as a web designer, I can tell you that that ain't gonna work, at least not within reason.
Ethelred

--
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
Re:Table widths? by Ethelred+Unraed · 1999-07-26 02:43 · Score: 1

This has nothing to do with hard-coding every element size and font-type on your web-page.
I beg to differ. It has *everything* to do with it. The problem is having things like the logo, logotype, global typography, etc. visible (even dominant) and legible on the page at any resolution, and also preserving things like column widths to maintain legibility (as someone else touched on). But the most important thing is CONSISTENCY. You can't guarantee the customer that the site will look even remotely the same on all browsers (or the imporant ones, at least) if the tables are all totally flexible--or if there are none at all. It's a tradeoff, pure and simple.
Again, look at slashdot, it looks good and consistent most everywhere
Slashdot is not exactly a paragon of virtue in regards to web design--it's got its strong points (good use of contrast, consistent positioning of navigation, etc.) and weaknesses (smallish type in some spots, addiction to embedded tables...bad Slashdot, no cookie...and lack of polish on the graphics).
and it doesn't use Flash
The reason I referred to Flash is because of scalability. At least with Flash you can guarantee a layout is going to work in practically any size. Too bad it's proprietary...and you can't search or index the text in it...and body copy is damned near illegible in some cases. *sigh*
I myself don't use Flash unless I have to, mainly because I avoid all plugins and Java if at all possible. I sometimes use JavaScript, but never make it central to the interface--i.e. the site should work with JS or without it.
Anyways, enough ranting for t'day... :-)
Ethelred

--
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
Re:Table widths? by Ethelred+Unraed · 1999-07-26 05:13 · Score: 1

Embedded tables are "bad" for the reason that they slow down the rendering speed of the page dramatically. Try it sometime--do the same design with and without embedded tables (i.e. use tables with ALIGN="LEFT" and ALIGN="RIGHT" instead of having them all inside of other tables). It's much faster having each table separate. Sometimes there is no other way, but one should try to avoid it if possible.
Slashdot uses them to excess. Just look at their code and you'll see what I mean.
Hope that makes sense...
Ethelred

--
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
Re:Table widths? by Tom+Christiansen · 1999-07-26 20:55 · Score: 2

That's why I wrote the diversity guidelines for HTML creation. I talk about how evil absolute pixels are, and also these epileptic pages.
Re:Table widths? by guiwiz · 1999-07-26 02:22 · Score: 1

99.99% of customers (this is a verifiable statistic, really it is, I swear, really, honest) want their websites to have a consistent look across all platforms and browsers, and they also insist (rightly) that their corporate identity system be preserved.

This has nothing to do with hard-coding every element size and font-type on your web-page. It is possible to design a web-site that has a consistent look and identity in all situations, without resorting to hard-coding sizes or using Flash. It just takes more skill and effort. Again, look at slashdot, it looks good and consistent most everywhere (that I know of), and it doesn't use Flash...
Re:Table widths? by guiwiz · 1999-07-26 00:52 · Score: 2

It really doesn't matter what design rules you follow and how well you follow them, the only thing that matters is this: does it look good or crappy? The redhat site (and all its look-alikes) looks real crappy on my browser, and it seems like it looks crappy on other people's browsers too. You can say that it follows some set of design rules 'till you're blue in the face, it doesn't change the fact that it looks crappy on my browser (and many others).

A site like slashdot looks great whether I access it on my laptop at 1280x1024 or on the library PC at 800x600. There is a simple reason why it works: don't hardcode anything. If I like to read text with 30 characters per line or 132 characters per line, I'd like to be the one to make that decision, and I'd like to be the one to configure my browser to display sites in that way, not some pompous old designer who can't see the difference between designing for a glossy magazine and a website.

I'm intelligent enough to configure my browser with the proper font and window sizes, please don't insult my intelligence by imposing your own standards on me!

Um. Where's /.? Wha' happened? by Ethelred+Unraed · 1999-07-25 23:35 · Score: 2

Seems like Red Hat is trying to cut their moorings from the open source/geek/Linux community at large. What's this? No more headlines from Slashdot? Huh?

I also think the new site is one great big yawn. CmdrTaco may think that it's more simple and elegant, but to me it just looks cheap (sloppy design here and there IMO--what's with the cheesy flags?--and there is such a thing as TOO simple).

Only advantage I can see to the new site is that it loads hellaciously faster, but I'd like at least a _little_ eye candy.

Yawn...

Ethelred

--
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.

Re:Um. Where's /.? Wha' happened? by arthurs_sidekick · 1999-07-25 23:58 · Score: 1

/. is right there, only now you have to follow a link. Given that you're a regular here, and that their list of stories was always a little bit old, that shouldn't bug you too much. Anyhow, given the venting that goes on here (myself included =), often of an anti-corporate nature, maybe they don't want to highlight those aspects of Linux. That's their right, and hell (for those thinking "corporate sell-out"), do we really want suits to become hackers? Isn't the point selling them on the viability of non-MS 'solutions'? So pushing /. down off of their front page isn't that bad.
What, you don't got it bookmarked?
Agreed that the site is a yawn, it even looks bad in Netscape (on my Linux box; I've engaged in font-deuglification too) -- didn't they look at it for themselves?
Anyhow, this whole "portal" strategy doesn't sound like a big winner, especially if that's their front door. At a first glance, it looks marginally more useful to those looking for "HOWTOS" etc. than Linux.com or org's which are "news and views" oriented.
For them to compete, they need to provide something no other site really provides: we already have linux.org, .com and /., combined with those pages to which they provide semi-regular links. A new portal should contribute something new; if they don't have new brilliant ideas, they could at least be more comprehensive than they appear to be right now.
May your day be sunny, yet cool with a small chance of showers later in the afternoon.

--
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.

I can't stand it anymore! Why the f*** do they use by bdan · 1999-07-26 13:30 · Score: 1

I can't stand it anymore! Why the f*** do they use such a poor design as many others - my question is: all you people have 800x600 (or maybe 640x480) screen res ? I have seen this on many sites, the pages it's fixed size, no matter the screen res. This is BS! Want to see what make rant? Go to RedHat with a screen res of 1280x1024 and try the same thing with this site. Go slashdot ! 'nuf said.

Re:portal of portals by poopie · 1999-07-26 06:54 · Score: 1

> At the rate we're going we're gonna have portals >that point to portals that point to more portals

we have them already -- the top lists of mp3s/warez/porn that link to endless pages of banner ads that promise to give you useful results if you just click through one more page of banner ads.

Re:Aren't you jerks ever satisfied? by BigDaddyJ · 1999-07-26 07:02 · Score: 1

The cluelevel on /. isn't too bad, but it has gotten *much* worse. I remember the ol' days when we didn't have first posters, "RedHat == Microsoft" guys, etc. - rather people who were intelligent and were willing to think and discuss.

--bdj

mainstreaming by RoLlEr_CoAsTeR · 1999-07-26 06:55 · Score: 1

this looks like a carbon copy of alot of other sites.
It definitely looks like they were going for the sheek look.... trying to ease in some style to play up the idea that they're "Serving the Linux and Open Source Communities."

Oh, and, lest we forget, they're "the definitive online destination for the open source community."

Oh, we're not full of ourselves, are we? Nah...I will admit, change can be good, but I think if I were them, I wouldn't have put some of those lines in there like they did, and I wouldn't have made the font so small, and I wouldn't have...

--

Insert mind here.

GeekWorld Contest by Crimson+Midget · 1999-07-25 23:30 · Score: 1

Whatever happened with that Geeks on the Beach contest?

Re:Aren't you jerks ever satisfied? by Airneil · 1999-07-26 00:14 · Score: 1

I think what we're seeing is that /. is getting more popular, and so more of the flamers are here.

Unfortunately, I don't think there's a way around it with the way the 'net is structured. i.e. allowing anonymous access/posting by anyone.

I run a bbs that has international message areas. You have to sign in to read/write to those. Consequently, the signal to noise ratio is much better. Those arguements that do start, tend to get resolved quickly, and without too much flaming.

Airneil

Good thought! by gonzocanuck · 1999-07-26 01:05 · Score: 1

I think that last line was the best thing I've read in this thread. A clear simple design will work better and say more about the quality of what you produce than something like...http://www.shadow-net.com, say...I mean, there's a lot crummier corporate sites out there, believe you me!

--

Re:Poor site design by Tom+Christiansen · 1999-07-26 21:10 · Score: 2

Wow. That site really is bad. I suggest that folks all mail their webmaster about it. I can only read their site via lynx. I don't think they've read the site design guidelines. Alas.

Re:REDHAT Get a DESIGNER, an ARTIST I say by Flak · 1999-07-26 03:45 · Score: 1

I agree full heartedly. It is does not have a 'finished' look and feel. RedHat needs to drop the 100k to get a real designer on staff that understands the principles of design. I re-visited the site after my first post and instead of looking at it with my eyes, I switched to 'Johnny no-knowledge' thinking like an everyday user makes the site even more complex to comprehend. Linux is a geek power toy yes, but there is enough press on the OS some average users are looking into the technology.

Hey REDHAT, MICROSOFT'S SITE KICKS ASS ON YOURS!!

They (M$) hire talent that not only knows the tricks of the Web trade but understand things like color theory and the psychology of design. Guess what when I need something from the M$ site I find it easy, and the site gets me to look at other information because it is engaging.

If Redhat really thinks it can steal market share from M$ then they will have to learn a trick M$ has perfected. Copy the competitions strong points and expand the functionality of the product to become superior. I don't want to start the anti-M$ rants thread here, but everyone must admit that marketing is a key to the Redmond success.

Redhat better understand this right now and quit letting the mailboy do the graphic and UI design for there biggest asset in today's marketing toolkit.

REDHAT Get a DESIGNER, an ARTIST I say by Flak · 1999-07-26 01:00 · Score: 3

Ok, I am a bias fool, (I am a designer) but the design is not engaging. You get lost very fast as there is no central navigation design. Granted you have the top bar that takes you to the top of the specific section, but it is not effective It really looks to me that Redhat is trying to do a portal of sorts.

Think about what a portal does. You go to once place and you find links to deep level pages on other sites or with the same network(think go.com or msn.com or Netcenter). My big gripe is that if Redhat wants to be the leader in the whole Linux/open source movement, well the should look the part. Blazing fast the site maybe, but will anyone stick around to find the info they want without a little eye candy? I doubt it.

Return visitors will be hard pressed to see a change in the content within the golden 5 second window. after complete load) My two cents to Redhat buy the services of a company that can take there corporate image and turn it into something that is engaging and meets the basic rules of (web)design.

Re:REDHAT Get a DESIGNER, an ARTIST I say by WebMistress · 1999-07-26 02:31 · Score: 1

Here Here!

It really is a nice effort if you are going for that MS Frontpage Template look! They've gone from having a so-so site to one that's totally unimaginative! It's BORING! And it looks like they spent $45 to use a FrontPage or Net Objects Fusion Template.

I look at this site and it doesn't make me think, "Oh gee, this is a cool, dynamic, interesting, cutting edge company." It makes me think, "They obviously have NO web budget. They're either run by idiots or out of someone's garage."

Just my humble opinion. *shrug*
Re:REDHAT Get a DESIGNER, an ARTIST I say by WebMistress · 1999-07-27 13:04 · Score: 1

The second website I ever did I coded by hand. It beats the living snot out of all these "professionally done" sites done with Fusion and thousands of tables and graphics.

Oh Please! I'm a professional and I have always handcoded my sites and they still look great! My biggest gripe is that this Redhat site looks like a Fusion Template!

Re:Aren't you jerks ever satisfied? by bakert · 1999-07-26 00:28 · Score: 1

There is something about a wider audience/anonymity that encourages a poorer quality of post. As the usage of the Notes Conferencing system on VAX/VMS dwindled when I was at University (this was 94-95 and Netscape and Word were all that were used by most) it became a funny, interesting centre of debate and humour - you knew (or knew of) all the posters and it policed itself to a large extent. Apparently now it has dwindled to non-existence.

That said, I am pretty new here and I like it. Better than any newsgroup I've ever been on. Its my most visited site on the web.

And it has a simple look rather like the new Red Hat site. Although Slashdot is somewhat prettier and has slashboxes and is customisable so it is better.

--

"Don't open the gates, who the hell needs a wooden horse that size?"

Re:Table widths? (Question on tables) by JPS · 1999-07-26 03:58 · Score: 1

I agree that these 600 pixel width pages are a problem. But either there is something wrong with HTML or with IE and NS. I tried to do the following without success. If someone could explain me the right way to do it (if any) that would be nice.

I wanted to have a table that would take 80% of a page but with fixed length columns.

If only the first columns are fixed, you can do several tables, what if a middle one is? Is there any way to fix the length (in pixels) of a middle column, and have the other share the rest of the page in a specified way?

Looks good in IE by jacob+marley · 1999-07-26 01:57 · Score: 1

You have to remember who redhat's target audience is: windows users converting to linux. So, they will be more concerned with how their site looks in windows (and it looks good in windows).

Most current linux users stick with they're current distro (I've only changed once), so there's not much profit making the site appeal to current linux users.

It's a sound business move and I respect them for that.

Poor site design by Quelish · 1999-07-26 02:12 · Score: 1

I am so tired of seeing sites that are designed with the 640x480 user in mind!!! What ever happened to the good designers who could write flexible HTML that would fill up the screen no matter what the resolution? Not to mention that the text is so small and unreadable that I need a microscope to see what the heck's going on.

I'd love to see some stats on how many 640x480 vs. 800x600+ users there are out there. I bet the ratio is far in favor of the 800x600 users.

And what's the deal with every freakin' site on the web turning into a portal. At the rate we're going we're gonna have portals that point to portals that point to more portals and it'll take 50 clicks just to find some real content!

Don't count on me to be back to RedHat unless I need to get files or something. That new design sucks!!

Re:Aren't you jerks ever satisfied? by Stonehand · 1999-07-26 01:01 · Score: 1

Aye, there's actually a pretty high amount of clue on Slashdot, making it a welcome shift from skipping past the headers on the latest OS flamewars in the comp.* hierarchy, and the perpetual spam... {sigh} I remember when even alt.destroy.the.earth was remarkably free of spam, and one could look there and find light-hearted discussions and speculation about a possibly impossible problem. But the level of discourse here is probably due in no small part to moderation; trolls and mass-marketers can find their messages relegated to invisibility faster than cancelbots can patrol Usenet.

I do like the new RH site, also, since it looks like it'll allow speedy navigation. It seems quite clean that way. Of course, I'm not a web designer, (*very rarely* changing my own pages, for instance), and in fact am a frequent Lynx user :-).

--
Only the dead have seen the end of war.

Re:Aren't you jerks ever satisfied? by WebMistress · 1999-07-27 13:09 · Score: 1

Now we have a lot more immature worthless posts. I hate to post something such as this, it seems rather worthless itself. Just can't help noticing... very unfortunate and saddening. Yeah, this last one being one of them! What does this message have to do with the RedHat redesign?

155 comments