Re: Modifying topHeader to merge both navbars

["James K. Lowden" <jklowden%schemamania.org@localhost>]

On Wed, 1 Aug 2012 19:12:34 +0000
David Holland <dholland-docs%netbsd.org@localhost> wrote:

> > Most sites that use columns layout have a min-width declared,
> > NetBSD's
>  > does not. I can declare one but in that case: please provide a
>  > minimum wdith please.
> 
> How about 1000? I don't particularly mind if the site grows a
> scrollbar in my default width (as long as the center part doesn't
> extend off off the side, but it won't) but it should try to avoid
> looking silly.
> 
> The reason my browser is 900px wide by default is that this is about
> the limit where pages that are just text become too wide to be
> legible. It's easy to click maximize when wanted.

http://webtypography.net/ is a helpful resource for these kinds of
questions.  

Nice work on the navbar, first of all.  It's a big improvement.  

For the same reason as David's, I usually keep Safari about 1/2 the
width of my screen, which is 1920x1200.  That puts it in the
neighborhood of 900px, which for me is about 50em.  The proposed new
page (http://www.netbsd.org/~jym/netbsd/index.html) looks good that
way.  

While we're on the subject, could I make a few suggestions?  

1.  Why is the default font small?  It's definitely not easy to read if
you're over 50, and enlarging the font makes *everything* bigger.  The
only running text is under "Welcome to NetBSD" (#mainContent).  It
should be normal size.  

2.  I like the new menu, but I don't love the orange-on-orange.  How
about keeping the pale orange background in the dropdown, but using
dark grey for the menu items, and bold instead of reverse-video for
highlighting?  

3.  Maybe it's not too soon to delete the 2007 fundraising text?  

It would be nice if "Of course it runs NetBSD" used left- and
right-quotes.  That's in NetBSD-headerlogo.png, which unfortunately is
a checked-in image.  Any reason it couldn't be HTML instead?  If it
must be an image so browsers don't perturb the fontliness, it could be
done in groff, cf.
http://www.schemamania.org/netbsd/logo/NetBSD-headerlogo.png and
http://www.schemamania.org/netbsd/logo/NetBSD-headerlogo.ms.  That uses
Helvetica; I'm not sure what was used originally.  As long as it's
free, it should be no problem to add to /usr/share/groff_font.  

--jkl