Comments on: An Experiment in Redesigning about:mozilla

By: Mozilla: The Big Picture at Toolness

Mozilla: The Big Picture at Toolness — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 04:58:48 +0000

[...] inside to use images as a way of understanding what’s going on at Mozilla—sort of like about:mozilla, but using pictures instead of [...]

By: Abi

Abi — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 05:23:44 +0000

I like the second version better. But just a minor thing - you should invert the colors for the header in the second version, too.

By: Redesigning Planets and Project Dashboards at Toolness

Redesigning Planets and Project Dashboards at Toolness — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 22:14:47 +0000

[...] GuildPal 0.3 « An Experiment in Redesigning about:mozilla [...]

By: Atul

Atul — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 21:02:45 +0000

Hmm, I think I may not have been explicit enough about one of the assumptions about this design, which is that it was made to scroll horizontally rather than vertically. Some of you have made good points about how this can be more inconvenient for people, though–although I think some of them can be remedied through hackery, e.g. by capturing keypresses of the spacebar and scrolling horizontally.

@Christian: What I really meant by “resolution-independent” was that the page literally be independent of pixel resolution, because pixel resolution alone doesn’t mean anything for end-users: a character that’s 10 pixels tall could be eminently readable on one 15-inch display and microscopic on another. On the other hand, points say something very specific about the physical size of something: books on typography, whether for print or otherwise, always state that 9pt is pretty readable. So unless a reader actually has poor vision, I’d prefer for the text to appear the same size whether it’s on an iPhone or a laptop screen.

@Kim and @Dorus: I’m currently playing around with CSS3 columns, but I’m finding them very difficult to use; for one thing, the specification of -moz-column-width doesn’t appear to be accurate, as it seems impossible for me to align e.g. a visual element with the second column of a passage of text. Hmm.

Regarding the use of JS, this is just an experiment, and it’s easiest for me to use all the cutting-edge tools at my disposal. Should it ever become the “new” layout for about:mozilla, I’d definitely set things up so that the page could be easily viewed with JS turned off.

By: Dorus

Dorus — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 18:26:08 +0000

Kim Sullivan beat me to it, but why not use -moz-column-gap and
-moz-column-width? I know of at least one mozilla blogger who uses that, and it makes his blog much more readable.

By: Tomm Eriksen

Tomm Eriksen — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 08:42:01 +0000

I think Jakob Nielsens research from back in the day is still valid for this issue - “Users hate horizontal scrolling”: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20050711.html

It also “breaks” the spacebar as a shortcut to scroll to more content. Something I use all the time when reading long pages like: http://planet.mozilla.org/

By: Kim Sullivan

Kim Sullivan — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 08:20:22 +0000

The new version shows a completely white page if JS is turned off.

By: Kim Sullivan

Kim Sullivan — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 08:18:55 +0000

I have javascript turned off (noscript), and I only get a completely black page. Redesigning an official mozilla newsletter in a way that makes impossible to view without javascript isn’t too nice. If you really want columns (although the disadvantages with regards to scrolling have already been pointed out), why not try something with CSS -moz-column and -webkit-column and make the site gracefully degrade in browsers that don’t support it?

By: Christian Sonne

Christian Sonne — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 07:44:22 +0000

“In an attempt to make it somewhat resolution-independent, the CSS doesn’t use pixels as a measurement unit for anything other than borders; everything else is specified in points and ems.”

I’d note that like px, pt is an absolute unit, which should only really be used for print media. So while it might be independent on resolution, it’ll be dependent on screen/window-size (and you can’t really count on a minimum width here.)

– cers / Christian Sonne

By: Gordon P. Hemsley

Gordon P. Hemsley — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 06:08:26 +0000

It’s also important (I think) to keep in mind that some (many?) people read the about:mozilla newsletter via e-mail.

Although, the e-mail newsletter is formatted a lot more than the web page that you linked to. Perhaps that’s because it’s merely a feed, without formatting?