[QUOTE BY= bduffy] Hi,<br /> <br /> I've just joined, and I have a technical concern about the site: why does this site use (I think) Helvetica as its default font? In any browser I use, it looks aliased, scratchy and is hard to read. Why not use a nice, legible font like Arial or Verdana, or even Courier? I don't know if this is a problem for other users? <br /> <br /> Love the site otherwise! <img align=absmiddle src='images/smilies/biggrin.gif' alt='Big Grin'> [/QUOTE]<br /> <br /> The use of helvetica is an aesthetic one; it's quite a common font, and in my humble opinion looks the best. (technically, Lucida Grande was set as the font, but few people have that so it would fall back to helvetica). <br /> <br /> I haven't run into aliasing problems on any of my test browsers; what browsers and OSes are you trying it with?

   

I don’t have Helvetica, so it looks like the SuperBlue style falls back to Arial in most cases. Between Arial and Verdana, the text comes across rather large at a given point size — and boldface multi-line signatures look like they don’t have enough leading (<code>line-height</code> in CSS).<br /> <br /> Personally, I’d prefer to see Frutiger Linotype come after Helvetica but before Arial. I don’t think that Frutiger is installed on computers by default, but it’s available gratis on Windows by installing the Microsoft Reader software (available in <a href="http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/0/9/d099ad62-41d1-4e92-9935-67955a437460/MSReaderSetupUSA.exe">English</a> or <a href="http://download.microsoft.com/download/c/0/5/c054434d-6075-4d3f-bd47-3936e9ebc707/MSReaderSetupFRA.exe">French</a>). Does Helvetica come installed on all Macs?<br /> <br /> Would it be relatively easy to include the other (Dynamic) stylesheet as an alternate style through generating a <code><link rel="alternate stylesheet" …></code> statement in the HTML? I’ve gone back to the Dynamic style due to the typefaces in the SuperBlue style.

   

[QUOTE BY= Brother Jonathan] I don’t have Helvetica, so it looks like the SuperBlue style falls back to Arial in most cases.<br /> [/QUOTE]<br /> <br /> Indeed it does.<br /> <br /> [QUOTE]<br /> Between Arial and Verdana, the text comes across rather large at a given point size <br /> [/QUOTE]<br /> <br /> That's somewhat a tricky area; I have sized the text to be readable across most(all?) browsers and OSes; I can't make it smaller across the board or it will be too small in some cases, and I am not going to start putting in browser-specific hacks. Most modern browsers allow you to override the font sizes anyway.<br /> <br /> [QUOTE]<br /> — and boldface multi-line signatures look like they don’t have enough leading (<code>line-height</code> in CSS).<br /> [/QUOTE]<br /> <br /> I just removed all instances of setting line-height; please try the SuperBlue theme again and let me know if the problem persists. Please let me know what browser and OS you are using as well.<br /> <br /> [QUOTE]<br /> Personally, I’d prefer to see Frutiger Linotype come after Helvetica but before Arial. I don’t think that Frutiger is installed on computers by default, but it’s available gratis on Windows by installing the Microsoft <br /> [/QUOTE]<br /> <br /> We are not going to depend on or recommend a non-standard font. Ever. <br /> <br /> [QUOTE]<br /> Does Helvetica come installed on all Macs?<br /> [/QUOTE]<br /> <br /> I do not know; all I know is that it is easily obtained as just a font, without requiring any new programs to be installed. The code already falls back on Arial, which I think looks fine, so there's no reason to toss in a rare and non-libre font into the mix. <br /> <br /> [QUOTE]<br /> Would it be relatively easy to include the other (Dynamic) stylesheet as an alternate style through <br /> [/QUOTE]<br /> <br /> No, as the theme involves no small amount of PHP code. I am only going to maintain a single theme at any point. <br /> <br /> Regardless, your typeface issues have hopefully been resolved.

   

The boldface line-height problem persists in SuperBlue. More often that not I use FireFox 1.0.4 on crusty old Windows 98 SE.<br /> <br /> Remaining independent of non-standard fonts is certainly a reasonable position — but note that Helvetica is <a href="http://www.linotype.com/526/helvetica-family.html#more">non-libre</a> [warning: link is to large HTML document] and non-standard on screen (although it’s certainly standard on PostScript printers). Its non-libre status is the reason why Microsoft resorted to creating Arial, its Helvetica knockoff, rather than pay Linotype to licence Helvetica.<br /> <br /> If libre fonts are truly preferred, check out <a href="http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page">DejaVu Sans</a>.

   

[QUOTE BY= Brother Jonathan] The boldface line-height problem persists in SuperBlue. More often that not I use FireFox 1.0.4 on crusty old Windows 98 SE.<br /> [/QUOTE]<br /> <br /> Alright, I'll be setting up a win98 test system sometime very soon, and will hopefully sort it out then. (We've got an IE/win98 bug that needs fixing as well)<br /> <br /> [QUOTE]<br /> Remaining independent of non-standard fonts is certainly a reasonable position — but note that Helvetica is <a href="http://www.linotype.com/526/helvetica-family.html#more">non-libre</a> [warning: link is to large HTML document] and non-standard on screen (although it’s certainly standard on PostScript printers). Its non-libre status is the reason why Microsoft resorted to creating Arial, its Helvetica knockoff, rather than pay Linotype to licence Helvetica.<br /> <br /> If libre fonts are truly preferred, check out <a href="http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page">DejaVu Sans</a>.[/QUOTE]<br /> <br /> Again, Helvetica is already on *most* computers, and the issue is more that people would need to download DejaVu Sans. I'll look into inserting it before Helvetica, but it will only benefit a very small number of users.

   

jesse,<br /> <br /> I think that this snippet (from a template?) contains the problem with the SuperBlue signature rendering:<br /> <br /> <blockquote><code><hr style="color=:black; text-align:left; margin-left:0; margin-bottom:5;padding:0"></code></blockquote><br /> <br /> and that this modification might take care of it:<br /> <br /> <blockquote><code><hr style="color:black; text-align:left; margin-left:0; margin-bottom:5px; padding:0"></code></blockquote><br /> <br /> i.e. change the <code>margin-bottom</code> property’s value from <code>5</code> to <code>5px</code> — and while it’s being updated, might as well remove the extraneous equals-sign from the <code>color</code> property.

   

well, fixed that, but now the display is too wide again. I also got rid of about 100 validation errors in the process; will fix the width issue tomorrow.

   

Ahh, the width issues was because of the code you included. Fixed that, and everything seems happy to me... Let me know if things are still broken!

   

The SuperBlue signature looks good now. The Dynamic signature still looks a bit cramped. Perhaps it should have <code>margin-bottom:5px</code> instead of <code>padding:5px</code>?

   

The 'Dynamic' theme is no longer being maintained, and will be turned off once superblue is considered stable enough.

   

Will SuperBlue inherit the “Most Recent Post” feature of the front page articles from the Dynamic style? Personally, I find that feature more useful than, say, the original posting date of an article.

   

no, that got cut in favour of the 'recent replies' sidebar block, which offers much more useful data.

   

It looks like the Recent Replies block shows only which articles I’ve recently replied to, and how many times I’ve replied to each of those. That may well be useful to many people, but until tonight I never paid any attention to that block. I find the Most Recent Post more useful that the Recent Replies because I can see at a glance whether there have been any replies since I last read a article and its comments.<br /> <br /> The front page link to the <i>Canadian Police To Be Given More Power To Snoop</i> article seems to be in a different style tonight than the other article links are, in both SuperBlue and Dynamic; is that part of a style revision experiment? If so, I’d be content with just enhancing SuperBlue by inserting a Most Recent Post line above the “more on this from Google News” line.

   

[QUOTE BY= Brother Jonathan] It looks like the Recent Replies block shows only which articles I’ve recently replied to, and how many times I’ve replied to each of <br /> [/QUOTE]<br /> <br /> Actually, it shows how many replies have been made to each of your own comments.<br /> <br /> [QUOTE]<br /> those. That may well be useful to many people, but until tonight I never paid any attention to that block. I find the Most Recent Post more useful that the Recent Replies because I can see at a glance whether there have been any replies since I last read a article and its comments.<br /> [/QUOTE]<br /> <br /> It has been added. <img align=absmiddle src='images/smilies/smile.gif' alt='Smile'><br /> <br /> [QUOTE]<br /> The front page link to the <i>Canadian Police To Be Given More Power To Snoop</i> article seems to be in a different style tonight than the other article links are, in both SuperBlue and Dynamic; is that part of a style revision experiment? If so, I’d be content with just enhancing SuperBlue by inserting a Most Recent Post line above the “more on this from Google News” line.[/QUOTE]<br /> <br /> Apparently one of our editors set that story as archived, which gets its own style for some reason. also fixed.

   

Thanks for adding it!<br /> <br /> If you’re interested, I can provide an updated section of <code>config.php</code> that brings the <code>$_CONF['user_html']</code> and <code>$_CONF['admin_html']</code> arrays into compliance with HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0.