Site design tweaks

Community news posted by the SSC staff.
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Specter
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Re: Site design tweaks

Post by Specter » Fri Jun 27, 2008 5:19 pm

Mine doesn't overlap at all. It might be the size of your window. Changing the size of the window sort of moves the clickable area around.
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cantab
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Re: Site design tweaks

Post by cantab » Fri Jun 27, 2008 5:28 pm

See screenshot. EDIT: OK, screenshots don't show the mouse pointer :-(

It's to do with the text size. Seems the image link's size is defined absolutely, but the size of the top blue bar, and correspondingly the position of the forum stuff below it, depends on the text size used. The screenshot shows my normal size (by doing Ctrl+0).

I suggest one of a few options (in order of which I think are best):

Make sure the top bar is always big enough to hold the full image
Define the image link size in terms of the font size (using the em and ex units)
Make the image link have a z-index below the forum text, as the image itself appears to.
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Silence
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Re: Site design tweaks

Post by Silence » Fri Jun 27, 2008 6:59 pm

Do you usually zoom in and out on pages? Or is your default zoom not 100%?

Firefox 3 polished most of the zooming functionality - I'm not having problems here. Now, zooming in and out changes image and link sizes too. It looks like Iceweasel 3 is out already so that might be worth a try.

That said, the prudent solution would be to fix the problem so it works in all browsers. HTML isn't Turing-complete so I can't say "make sure you're at least this big." I'm not a web wiz at all though, so there may be a way to do it.

The second solution probably won't be precise enough - it won't be easy to specify the exact height using the font size. Plus, fonts change (for example, if the appropriate font isn't installed, which is unlikely but possible).

The third solution should work. Negative z-levels are valid so I'll set the image to -1 and the link to -2.

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Silence
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Re: Site design tweaks

Post by Silence » Fri Jun 27, 2008 10:41 pm

Cantab, I tried the third solution but it didn't work. I set the link to -1, but that obscured it because even the background appeared in front of it. I set the header div to -2 and the link to -1 (which would stop the overlap in the forums, but not within the header itself), but that's not possible since the header uses position:relative, not position:absolute.

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cantab
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Re: Site design tweaks

Post by cantab » Fri Jun 27, 2008 10:53 pm

Hmmm...ok. Seems there's not much that can be done about it. As you say it works in firefox 3. It probably works on most systems - just my default font sizes break it. I can always increase them if I really want to.

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SSCBen
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Re: Site design tweaks

Post by SSCBen » Sat Jun 28, 2008 1:33 am

Weird that it looks like that for you cantab. The height is fine for me and I guess everyone else. I think I can set it manually in CSS. Let me try that...

I've had weird issues with fonts being the wrong size on webpages before and I run Linux too. I think the problem has to do with the drivers being a little funky, but that's speculation. Right now I'm running several month old Gentoo and it's working well.

Edit: I'll need to make a few more code changes but this can be fixed. Right now I've reverted to the original code after trying a few things. Thanks for letting us know about this cantab. I intended for the logo to be taller. I guess this is what happens when you futz around with using background images and logos.
Last edited by SSCBen on Sat Jun 28, 2008 1:39 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Silence
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Re: Site design tweaks

Post by Silence » Sat Jun 28, 2008 1:53 am

Ben, is there any reason we can't just dump the background method and display the image normally? After seeing that article about the link box, I'm guessing it should work the same for the actual image too. With absolute positioning, at least, we don't need to worry about where the image ends up in the header. We may be able to set the z-index then, although I'm not sure if both the image and the link would end up behind the header box then.

I'll try it now...

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SSCBen
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Re: Site design tweaks

Post by SSCBen » Sat Jun 28, 2008 2:24 am

There's no serious reason to keep the background method now that I think about it. If I remember correctly I choose a background so that it works on very small windows without issue, but that's not a serious problem compared to the ones we're seeing now. Be sure to keep backups in case we want to go back to the old one and try something out. ;)

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Silence
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Re: Site design tweaks

Post by Silence » Sat Jun 28, 2008 3:47 am

Eh...didn't really work out well. I probably missed a few of the CSS changes in my haste. I had things in comments so it was reversible, though.

*yawn* I'll try again tomorrow.

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SSCBen
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Re: Site design tweaks

Post by SSCBen » Sat Jun 28, 2008 6:07 pm

I undid your test. I think something more extensive is necessary to fix all the problems. I'm going to redo the page header on my local machine to get it right quickly.

Also, I've decided on a page backup convention. I copied the old page.php script to page.php.062808. The last bit is the date. Do that from now on so we can more easily tell what time the backup is from.

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Silence
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Re: Site design tweaks

Post by Silence » Sat Jun 28, 2008 11:16 pm

Oh, shoot...sorry about that. I realized I hadn't fixed everything and then I forgot to do so last night. Thanks.

Good call about the backups. Those files aren't being used so the actual extension doesn't matter.

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