The Website: jKs Site Changes

[Forboding Angel]

Of the web fonts available by default, the highest in readability are Times New Roman and Arial (there are others, but these two are the most used).

If you're not afraid of google (like all the engine devs are), then you can use something like: http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Open+Sans

Arial makes up a very large part of news articles you read. This is because arial is very easily and quickly read.

Monospace is good for things like terminal and marginally good for reading code, but for general reading purposes it is very bad.

[malric]

Now these data uris are quite long, but the point remains. Introducing horizontal scrolling makes code very difficult to read because lines that would normally wrap will no longer wrap and will instead be covered up by the right edge, making the user horizontally scroll to read even relatively short lines.

My opinion on wrapping is it depends on the type code that you read. For me, some code (for example code written by people to compile) scrolling is fine as I prefer to see the structure. Also, now the site is resizable, so for people with large monitors this is much less of a problem. For other types of code (that do not let you format the code) maybe word wrapping is preferrable.

Forb, isn't it possible to override the css of the website by the browser (per site)? (remember opera was having something like that but I am not quite sure how powerfull it was). Or any other way to do this? It would be cool for people to select if they want wrapping or scrollbars (functionality present in any decent text editor).

[Forboding Angel]

Edit: Too tired for this crap.

Malric, yeah you can. There are a few chrome extensions that make it easy. This forum theme is crap though, and as a result, what you can do is fairly small without rewriting a lot of css. Also, it's in tables, so you start getting really limited in what you can do wrt the layout.

[abma]

i want scrollbars for quotes and code, i don't want the webpage to wrap it arround as it makes most code unreadable as you don't see what it is. if you copy and paste automaticly word-wrapped text, and paste it, it looks different, i don't want this.

we can vote about the behaviour, but i think having scrollbars vertically AND horizontally fits much better in most use cases. also most quotes won't hit the max line width limit any more with the increased width of the forum. imo there is nothing to discuss about this as its a personal preference (if you really think we/i'm wrong, call a vote please).

[gajop]

Wrapped code should definitely include line numbers, even the unwrapped version could potentially.
But as abma said, it's really just preference, I'd actually prefer a syntax highlighting feature, e.g:
[code=lua][/code] or [code=cpp][/code].

[AF]

*sigh*

1. No, code wrapping has its benefits and its disadvantages, and while it does improve things in the case you outlined of a very long line, it makes things less readable when you have several levels indents of indents on a thin screen. In this case, scrollbars is the appropriate solution. Since a long line is both unreadable with and without line wrap, it's not a case to optimise for

2. The text editor for new posts and editing, should not be monospaced, for the simple reason that the result isn't.

I would suggest instead:

2.a Use the same font, colour, and spacing as the main post styling on the frontend
2.b Add padding to the text so it doesn't go right up to the edge of the input box

The first item appears to have been actioned.

3. There are far better ways of increasing readability with what we currently have than by arguing about Times New Roman or Arial. Arial and its cousin Helvetica have proven themselves effective, and they have a use case that other fonts don't cater for. Helvetica characters are designed to look very similar to each other, and not to embellish themselves. They're general/generic fonts intentionally, and they aren't the most readable, that's dependent on the context and situation.

For example studies have shown that Georgia is a more trustworthy font than helvetica or Times New Roman. Times New Roman indicates laziness and a lack of sophistication ( in the same way that using the default palette or neon flyer papers doesn't indicate professional expertise or that someone has thought about things ). Arial and Helvetica style fonts as I said before are intended to be neutral, generic fonts, what you would use for Operating system menus and generic corporate documents.

If we want to increase readability we more options such as:

3.a Limit the maximum width of paragraphs of text to reduce horizontal eye movement to comfortable levels
3.b Increase and adjust the spacing and font size at the appropriate levels

It is not as simple as a font choice. I recommend we keep the current font choice, as it is not suboptimal

If there was anything i would change that grated in particular though,

[Jools]

There's also the environmental aspect: use a lighter font and save tons of money. So how about Garamond?

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/27/livin ... d-schools/

[AF]

http://www.thewire.com/national/2014/03 ... ey/359925/

It won't, but putting printing aside, I don't think Garamond as a font has the right feel or flexibility for a game engine site.

Perhaps if it was used for documentation, but then a font such as Georgia, Open Sans, or Arial/Helvetica for such a purpose, combined with a suitable heading font ( most likely one of those 3 ).

Instead there are plenty of unusual edge cases to be accounted for typography wise, for example, the "Post a reply" text in the reply form is orange text on a red background. There's black text on a mid dark grey background, and there are a lot of margin and padding improvements that would increase readability and legibility.

[Jools]

Interesting. Of course the study should control for font legibility and not just height.

But don't use arial ffs. Rather use comic sans, it is more professional.

http://www.ironicsans.com/helvarialquiz/

[FLOZi]

i want scrollbars for quotes and code, i don't want the webpage to wrap it arround as it makes most code unreadable as you don't see what it is. if you copy and paste automaticly word-wrapped text, and paste it, it looks different, i don't want this.

we can vote about the behaviour, but i think having scrollbars vertically AND horizontally fits much better in most use cases. also most quotes won't hit the max line width limit any more with the increased width of the forum. imo there is nothing to discuss about this as its a personal preference (if you really think we/i'm wrong, call a vote please).

Scrollbars for code yes.

For quotes, why on earth?

[Anarchid]

Can something be done about the blurred favicon plz?

[AF]

Legibility vs readability, you're going to have to pick one, the two are not the same thing and you can't optimise well for both

I'm concerned we agreed to deploy jKs changes. A lot more than jKs changes are being deployed however, and it's being done without consultation. Since my last post 2 thumbnails and a light box have appeared on the front page. No public discussion approval or consensus on this and other changes have taken place.

[jK]

Since my last post 2 thumbnails and a light box have appeared on the front page. No public discussion approval or consensus on this and other changes have taken place.

what light box? Also those changes were already made on test.springrts.com and the changes I did on forum were based on the discussions here (fixing font in post reply box etc.).

[Forboding Angel]

Since my last post 2 thumbnails and a light box have appeared on the front page. No public discussion approval or consensus on this and other changes have taken place.

what light box?

[AF]

Those new changes such as the two thumbnails that appeared next to the main banner on the front page were not discussed here and they were made after your changes were approved. You are still making direct changes to git master and not following procedures.

[AF]

I'm noticing regressions on iOS

[Anarchid]

Topic titles are no longer used to generate the <title> tag.

I'd like that back if possible, since i find it very useful when having multiple tabs open.

[Silentwings]

Yes, I'd be grateful to have more descriptively named tabs too. (I'm using FF on Win7)