[Rt-devel] RT CSS Overhaul (ATTENTION W3M AND IE USERS)]

[Steve Traugott]

Hi Jesse,

I just checked out what's currently running on rt3.fsck.com as of this
moment, and I really like it.  In both w3m and Firefox, I no longer have
to scroll sideways to see the home page or most of Jumbo.  (This is w3m
in an 80-column xterm, and Firefox in a 1024x768 window but with tabs
down the side, which cuts it to about 900 wide.)

Of all of the web sites and web-based tools (incuding Bugzilla) that I
commonly use day-to-day, RT is the *only* one which has this sideways
scrolling problem.  This almost turned me off of RT when I first saw it;
only after I dug deeper into features did I decide to switch us from
Bugilla.  I've already spent a total of around 15 hours messing with the
3.2 stylesheet and templates; still not happy, still don't use the web
interface except when I absolutely have to.  This will be a problem with
other users -- I've hacked at REST to get it to do what I want; other
people won't be able to do that.  (I've fixed some REST date-field bugs
and added an XML full-ticket-and-history dump template; I owe you code.)

Compared to 3.2-RELEASE, what you have up there right now is a *much*
better layout -- the font size mix is much prettier, the lack of
horizontal scrolling is enough to make the difference between me wanting
to use the web interface at all or not.  One major way I can see to make
it better would be to get rid of the horizontally stacked boxes; people
are used to vertical scrolling in all browsers; horizontal is just
strange.  Another big bang for the buck would be to allow users to set
Jumbo as the default, to reduce number of mouse clicks to make a
single-field change (or is that in there and I just haven't found it?)  

My own vote would be to prioritize ease-of-use on common browsers.
Follow Google's lead; simple, clean, minimal is the best way to get to
portable.  CSS is anything but that.  Do the fixes that clean up font
sizes and remove fixed-width elements, release some of this in 3.3, take
it in bite sizes. 

Wonderful tool, great customizeability, I'm glad I found RT.

Steve


On Thu, Oct 07, 2004 at 05:06:24PM -0400, Jesse Vincent wrote:
> And after another day of beating my head against the CSS-brick wall, I 
> don't think this is going to happen for RT 3.4. It was sort of wishful 
> thinking that it would, but the state of CSS layout engines is still a 
> bit too varied and broken to roll out what I've got anytime terribly 
> soon.
> 
> I've committed the CSS work to 
> /bps-public/rt/branches/PLATANO-EXPERIMENTAL-CSS, a sub-branch of the 
> platano (will likely be 3.5 or 4.0) development branch. Patches (and 
> additional style sheets are welcome)
> 
> 
> Jesse
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Rt-devel mailing list
> Rt-devel at lists.bestpractical.com
> http://lists.bestpractical.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rt-devel

-- 
Stephen G. Traugott  (KG6HDQ)
UNIX/Linux Infrastructure Architect, TerraLuna LLC
stevegt at TerraLuna.Org 
http://www.stevegt.com -- http://Infrastructures.Org