Comments on: A List Apart Returns

By: Medicinal Food News » learning from the best

Medicinal Food News » learning from the best — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 21:01:04 +0000

[...] cument by Jeffrey’s article. Jason also talks about the redesign on his website and Eric Meyer does the same as well. Although this is the number one site for lea [...]

By: Roger Karlsson

Roger Karlsson — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 07:10:40 +0000

Looks really nice!! Good work.

What I’m missing is fluidity in the layout.

By: Anup Shah

Anup Shah — Sun, 28 Aug 2005 10:13:49 +0000

Very nice redesign.

Not being nit-picky, but just a few quick accessibility type things that come to mind immediately:

Increasing text size:
1) The “No. 201″ circle does not increase in size with the text, so the text starts to get cut off

2) The top menu links disappear one by one off the right.

3) There are some images with Text inside. Where possible, can text be used for some of those instead where branding isn’t impacted? Examples:
a) the image in the bottom left of the home page that reads “From pixel to prose, coding to content.”
b) some of those images in the third column, perhaps?

While the target audience is probably not one that often needs to resize text very much, it would be interesting to see if ALA can somehow incorporate these considerations so as to teach readers pleasant design and accessibility through example.

Using Forms:
The search form does not use labels for the text field or check box

(All this was tested in Firefox 1.0.6 on XP. In bit of a rush to test with other browsers, or screen readers just now. More later, hopefully)

Good job though on the whole!

By: Eric Meyer

Eric Meyer — Sun, 28 Aug 2005 03:26:07 +0000

Eliott: what "image-list mouseovers" are causing round-trips? And in which browser(s)? I'm not aware of any rollover effects that should cause a server hit every time they fire.

By: Lars Kasper

Lars Kasper — Thu, 25 Aug 2005 08:17:54 +0000

At first I thougt: Huh, four columns – where? I only see two. But then I realized that you count the enormous whitespace at the left (which I had called padding, not a column, but the ALA logo might justify that column wording) as column. And the fourth was discovered after scrolling right (I hate doing that). I am not a friend of column layouts on the Web. Especially here, where again two columns, the leftmost and rightmost, consist mainly of whitespace. Oh course, whitespace is important. But a flexible, fluid layout (with shrinking whitespace) and no horizontal scrolling is more important. From what I have read in your comments I am quite happy to have set a large minimum font size in my browser. A quick check with disabling it made me still more happy. I cannot understand those eagle eyed designers using such tiny font sizes on the Web. Of course, people can zoom in, enlarge it, set a minimum font size; but most users do not know how – for them it would be better to respect their readable font size chosen in their browser. Besides all this critique, the new ALA looks quite good in general, escpecially the colours.

By: Ronald

Ronald — Thu, 25 Aug 2005 07:52:20 +0000

Eric,

Excellent piece of work, as expected of course! :D
I just was a little disappointed to encounter ant track text sizing. I know IE gets the standard text sizing wrong, but it’s a little effort to use an approach that works well in both IE and more compliant browers.
Other then that: I love ALA’s new look!

By: Will

Will — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 18:07:52 +0000

Neither alistapart.com or the IP address given above work.

By: Lou

Lou — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 17:19:13 +0000

Whats with the print CSS? tiny type, all menus show. None of the goodness of the old print CSS carried over.

By: Philippe

Philippe — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 13:54:09 +0000

It is an interesting stylesheet. One little (not so little) complain, why is the font-size so damn small ?
body has a font-size of 0.8125em, and then div#main goes even smaller at 0.88em. That computes at 11px on my side, which is my minimum font-size (that is, already uncomfortable to read).

By: Conánn

Conánn — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 07:57:53 +0000

That is a really good looking site and totaly original. Can’t wait to start picking it apart.

By: Just Relax! :: ALA’s new look: ALA 4.0 :: August :: 2005

Just Relax! :: ALA’s new look: ALA 4.0 :: August :: 2005 — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 07:29:49 +0000

[...] er (who else?) who I still see as (one of) the CSS master. I, as some of the commenters on Meyer’s article, was asking about the flexibility of the design. Try usi [...]

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 06:16:30 +0000

Congratulation for the new look. And like some of the previous commenters, I’m quite surprised with the width which require the 800×600 resolution users have to scroll sideways. Or is the 800×600res over yet? Aside from that, I like the new look. A bold change from the old one. I guess I have to keep learning about CSS-ing the web, from one Eric to the other :)

By: Joe D'Andrea

Joe D'Andrea — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 02:32:36 +0000

Congratulations Eric! Some tasty CSS and neat-n-tidy XHTML you’ve got there. Four columns?! “Wow, push the envelope, why don’tcha.”

I liked seeing the id “lucre” for the ad (what an excellent choice) and chuckled at “ish” for the issue … not to mention “ishinfo,” “ishintro,” and “ishoutro.” I can almost hear Mooch exclaiming an approving “yesh!”

By: Maniac

Maniac — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 02:19:57 +0000

I also out of luck seeing the fourth column. I run in 1024×768, just ain’t a big fun of maximized windows.

By: Adrian Rinehart-Balfe

Adrian Rinehart-Balfe — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 01:40:35 +0000

I’m liking the new look. I can’t help wondering if the wider fixed width will spawn a heap of copycats, insiting the small monitored masses to a tabled layout revolt. I just like it because it is more pleasant to read, pure and simple.