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

[Jesse Vincent]

On Fri, Oct 08, 2004 at 10:56:56PM -0700, Steve Traugott wrote:
> 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.)

So, I think that's fixable without the extensive hackery in that version
of the app. (I'll note also that it's _wider_ than RT 3.2 on some
browsers :/

> 
> 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.)

I'd like the date fixes as soon as you can manage.

For XML, I'd love to hear what you think of the RT::Atom addon, which 
gets you much more comprehensive XML support.

> 
> 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. 

I'm glad you like the new stuff. It's the direction we're headed in. But
RT 3.4 is a couple bug fixes away from a beta release and I'm not
prepared to destabilize it as much as a major UI overhaul.

> 
> My own vote would be to prioritize ease-of-use on common browsers.

Well, the priority is being _functional_ in just about everything. and
that includes on my phone. After that, pretty and easy on common
browsers. And I can tell you that the current "CSS Preview" is _not_
pretty on modern IE, which is pretty damn common among RT's userbase.

> Follow Google's lead; simple, clean, minimal is the best way to get to
> portable.  CSS is anything but that.  

CSS is all about being minimal and portable in your markup.
Tables and inline styling make portability much, much harder. 


	Best,
	Jesse