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Celebrating the new year, the KernelTrap.org theme has been updated to a new and improved look. The Drupal software that manages the website has also been upgraded to a newer version. If you run into any problems with the new website, please post a comment here or send me an email. Improvements to the website will continue to be implemented in the upcoming weeks.
The new theme was designed by Kristjan Jansen and implemented by Trae McCombs. Trae is the founder of themes.org and linux.com and long time Drupal theme developer. He can be contacted at traemccombs {is at} gmail {d o t} com, or visit his personal website. Kristjan is a Drupal veteran as well, now working as an interaction designer for Skype. He can be contacted via his personal website.
The Drupal software that manages KernelTrap.org has been updated from version 4.5 to version 4.7. I aim to port the old KernelTrap theme from 4.5 to 4.7 in the upcoming weeks to make it available to those that wrote earlier saying they preferred it, but it's a large effort and I may not complete it as quickly as I'd like.
Happy New Year!
Yay!
the look is excellent, and perfect timing...
Happy New Year, Jeremy!
Very nice theme
Very nice theme, much better than the old one ;)
Happy New Year! :) :) :)
too much white imho... black
too much white imho... black terminal window, switching back to browser, hit eyes.
Great job!
Great job. And happy new year everyone :)
New theme
I like it.
Happy New Year!
Minor change request
I think the new theme is very good. However, I'd like it more if the story text was aligned to the left margin, below the story icon, instead of leaving that much blank space to the left. Anyway, congratulations.
Just a comment...
But, first, congrats on the new theme. It looks very refreshing, which is important considering the technically heavy nature of the discussions it carries.
Now, responding to my anonymous colleague, there's a principle in lay-out that lines should have a limited number of characters, because reading is easier that way. That is why books have rather large blank margins and newspapers use many columns in articles. Besides, in the present configuration, icons work as bullets, helping separate stories without the need of extra lines.
Maybe /. could take a hint or two from this excellent design.
PS: I've tested the site in 800x600 and it still looks good, but the empty spaces get more evident. This is important for older people or in poorer countries using older PCs.
Maximum Characters per Line
Happy New Year!
I am 56, and have pair of high quality 19" LCDs with a good graphics card using the latest graphics driver for Linux.
However, I find it easier to read lines that do not have too many characters, or more specifically lines that are not too wide. And I once read guidelines suggesting no more than 56 characters in any one line and preferably less - this is probably why multiple columns are often used in not only newspapers, but also in reference books. Short lines of text means it is easier for the eye to pick where the next line starts.
My eyesight varies in quality (due to humidity?). At best I have to read a screen from about 300mm or less. On bad days everything is misty and I have extreme difficulty unless the there is good contrast between letters and the background, I also often boost the font size.
So for people with good eyesight: short lines are best, and for people with poor eyesight they are very much preferred!
In general your web site is easier to read now, having more space between lines helps. I think you may have also improved the font.
Re: Just a comment...
(I'm the anonymous poster in the grandparent post)
I agree with you. Indeed, short lines are easier to read, and if you make the text flow below the story icon you have several possibilities, because the part I'm not happy about is the icons-as-bullets part. They look a little weird, in my humble opinion.
You could solve the too-long lines problem by increasing the font size, which never hurts, or maybe add some left and right margins in the column and have the text centered.
The point is that I think putting the icon above the story text and maybe adding more vertical whitespace between stories would look better. Or maybe decreasing the icon size. You can do that without affecting readability.
In my opinion, using bullets or something that looks like bullets is better when the text is short, like in a brief list. This look works fine in sites like digg.com, in which the story text is usually very brief. However, kerneltrap.org stories are usually long, and I prefer a "drop caps" style on the icon, with vertical spacing between stories.
My 2 cents.
re: Minor change request
I'm happy with the look of the front page, icon and left margin included, and do not plan any major changes. However you'll note that when you click on an article to read it, the article is then left aligned and the icon is hidden.
Theme Problems
As I pointed out before when the new theme was first mentioned:
1. The navigation pane on the right side of the page overlaps the article text.
2. The small burgundy italic font used for quotes is HARD TO READ.
3. The yellow dotted underline for links is virtually invisible.
4. The box around comment previews is also virtually invisible.
This theme is absolutely appalling with regard to human factors.
I'll second these
Also, the current font is too small, making paragraphs too dense to read comfortably on a 12" 1024x768 laptop screen. It's like kerneltrap.org is aspiring to become the next ars technica, going from pretty good to fashionable layout of the year. (I liked the non-white background better, too.)
I find it slightly amusing that the one website with most of the usability factors I cared about "improved" those away in the name of looking like every other random website on the net. The bad thing is, Kerneltrap.org is really very important especially given that kernel traffic is on an indefinitely long hiatus.
That might've sounded more brutal than it strictly needed to. I guess I could just use a custom stylesheet on this site. However, I can't honestly think that I'm the only one with these issues.
re: Theme Problems
Thanks for your feedback. There do seem to be some configurations where the new theme does not display perfectly, though in all my testing (from 12" laptops up to 24" desktop screens, on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux) it displays much better than the old theme.
Sadly, I personally am not a theme developer. If anyone with Drupal theming skills is interested in getting involved in improving the overall readability of KernelTrap.org, please email me and I'll get you everything you need to start working on an improved stylesheet. As always, this website remains just a spare-time hobby.
re: Theme Problems
I've addressed several of your issues.
> 2. The small burgundy italic font used for quotes is HARD TO READ.
I agree the italic was unnecessary, so it has been removed.
> 3. The yellow dotted underline for links is virtually invisible.
I increased the thickness of the underline so it is now easier to see.
> 4. The box around comment previews is also virtually invisible.
I increased the thickness of the box, and subtly modified the background color of new comments. They stand out more now.
I do not yet have a solution for #1.
Improvements looking good...
Thanks, Jeremy, the links look awesome. The pink (at least I think it's pink) preview box is still very hard to see in both Firefox and IE, though. The burgundy quote text looks great in Firefox, but is still italic in IE.
Another poster mentioned the font size being quite small. It looks good to me in Firefox, but in IE it is a few points smaller and the spacing seems too crowded.
Yet another poster mentioned the menubar. The menubar looks and works great in IE, but in Firefox, there are problems. The line below the menubar obscures the hover underlines. Also, even after a complete refresh, the entire page is still bumping down for me when I hover.
After rereading my previous post, I realized that I came off as being considerably rude, for which, I apologize. Please don't take it as a personal attack, as it was meant only as an observation and answer to your query. You do a fantastic job with *your* site, and we readers appreciate what you do.
Good job, but please add a
Good job, but please add a redirect from the old RSS feed to the new one, or you're going to annoy all your RSS readers :)
fixed
Thanks for pointing that out, I've fixed the RSS feed.
Missing feed links
As of today I'm missing the RSS feeds link
Performance Issue
The new theme causes high CPU usage under Firefox 2 and Fedora Core 6 on a Pentium 4 2.4ghz machine.
When you hover over a link the CPU usage goes through the roof. Can you use a different CSS method for link rollovers?
This was also a problem when this theme was in BETA but it seems you didn't care to fix it.
mouseover judder
When I mouse over entries in the top navigation (forums/news/journals...), a thick line appears underneath them. This causes all the content below that line to jump down 1 pixel or so, and then jump up again when the mouse leaves that area. Quite strange- looking.
I'm using Firefox 2.0 on Ubuntu Edgy, with Verdana 16px as my default sanserif font.
re: mouseover judder
I reduced the width of the navigation underline and that appears to have resolved the "mouseover judder" issue. You may need to do a forced reload to cause your web browser to load the latest CSS.
slowdown
yeah, but it didn't fix the slow down from hovering over links. i'm on a Core 2 Duo 2ghz and its taking up 100% of one core when I hover over links with my mouse. can you fix this by using a different css a:mouseover?
fedora core 6, firefox 1.5.0.9
Re: slowdown
I'm unable to duplicate this on my Ubuntu laptop with various browsers, nor on a Mac OS X server. Dragging on and off a link really fast burns up CPU, but this is true for all websites, not just the new KernelTrap theme. Is it only happening on some links, or all?
Yes, its when you hover over
Yes, its when you hover over a lot of links.
The CPU usage spikes highest on this theme. Digg.com or websites I have created do not exibit this high CPU usage when hovering over links quickly and they use various CSS hover effects.
Mozilla/Firefox always had
Mozilla/Firefox always had this high CPU usage when displaying CSS hover/mouseover styling. Somewhat improved in Fx2... but anyways I think it's not a big issue.
The new theme rocks!
Poor colour choice in comments and mouse-over strangeness
I think it would make more sense for the main body text in a comment to be black and use the grey for the poster's name. Surely the text is more important than the name, so should be in the easier-to-read higher-contrast colour?
Also, in Mozilla 1.7.13 (latest update on FC5), mousing over links on the main page causes the layout to shift around a little. The "read more | add new comment | ..." lines usually shift to the right, while hovering over a link inside an article summary sometimes causes the summary text to reflow. It's almost as if a mouse-over causes the right margin to move to the right a bit.
Actually for some people
Actually for some people (like me), low-contrast is MUCH easier to read that high-contrast.
As for the mouseover strangeness, that looks like a Mozilla bug because Fx2 works fine.
(You can get Firefox 2 on Fedora with
yum --enablerepo=development install firefox)I'm new to this site, but it
I'm new to this site, but it looks fabulous ;), you can install the firefox 2.0 and higher version 2.00.1 from http://remi.collet.free.fr/ (it installs the english version, not only french ;))
I looked on this blog to find that ;)....
http://philoking.com/2006/11/15/how-to-update-to-firefox-20-on-fedora-co...
Kikker
Nice clean layout with a
Nice clean layout with a good use of colours to differentiate sections, however the font size is far too small for me.
A user-selectable font size saved in a cookie similar to ars-technica would be a welcome addition - saves me having to increase it manually each time I visit the site :)
Couple minor tweaks
Hi Jeremy,
What do you think about making the following changes in the foundation style.css:
Make the hover lines a solid color. This is much less distracting, especially over short links:
a:hover { border-bottom: 2px solid #d4a72b; text-decoration: none; }I like the boxed-in look for new comments. Make all comments be bordered by a thin 'protruding' border. New comments still have the background color and stand out a little more. Also gets rid of the dashed lines again:
.comment-new { border: 2px outset #d4a72b; padding: 5px; margin: 5px; background-color: #ffffea; } .comment { border: 1px outset #d4a72b; padding: 10px; margin: 10px; }It looks like the <pre> tag style may also need tweaking, but I find this a lot more appealing.
Regards,
Chris
re: Couple minor tweaks
I like it... Thanks for providing specific suggestions with your feedback, that is very helpful! I've made all of your suggested changes.
tweaked again
I decided the solid border around new comments makes them blend in too much with the look of old comments, I've restored the dashed line to make them stand out more. I have to scan pages quickly for new comments in my continual hunt for spam, and it's important to me that I don't miss any.
I have left the solid line around old comments, as I do like that.
Please do not use fixed
Please do not use fixed pixel values for the font size! This is against a very basic idea of HTML, namely that the display of a web page should auto-adapt to the display device. The actual size of a pixel varies a lot, PLUS there are personal preferences regarding font size which you ignore with a fixed value.
So, pretty please use relative font sizes, e.g. "font-size: 100%;" Actually, "100%" should be the default, i.e. if the user selected 12pt in his browser settings, the main text of the page should appear in 12pt.
Unfortunately, years ago more and more sites started using smaller-than-100% font sizes, so users selected larger default font sizes, so some sites used even smaller font sizes, so users.... :-(
We're now at a point that 80% to 90% is considered "normal size".
So my wish would be for you to use a relative font size of 90%. Meanwhile, you're another entry in my growing user stylesheet...
Cheers, Richard
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