the latest : liberti.org

squaredeye · 2006-11-07 12:24:14

jstubbs,
I used section/article for mine.

You can either throw a category list in a <ul> list (using a the native txp tags or a plugin), or if you have few enough categories, you can do it by hand.

It depends on the level of site you are going for, but often, if you can afford the space, I prefer a good submenu.

:)

Matthew

jstubbs · 2006-11-07 13:22:18

Hi Mathew,

Thanks for that. Its for a client actually, and they are likely to add/delete categories as they go, and ask questions later ;-) So, it would be better not to hardcode it.

I am not sure which plugin you are thinking of to list the categories? cbs_category_list perhaps?

Also, did you use the son of susckerfish technique?

Sorry for lame questions, but will for sure get me started ;-)

squaredeye · 2006-11-07 21:52:14

jstubbs,
I used a hacked version of son of suckerfish, and its all there in the css/js/xhtml.
You can use any blugin which will give you the ability to control the categories through a form.

Be aware there are many drawbacks to a dropdown in terms of accessibility, and it should only
be used in ways that limit that as much as possible (IMHO)

M

jstubbs · 2006-11-08 03:08:05

Thanks Mathew, I will take a look at putting something together when I get some time. I don’t really want to make this menu, but a client wants it, probably because its “cool”!

johan_vm · 2006-11-12 10:22:12

Amazing site!
Could you tell me which plugins you use for:

the events? Where can I find more info about this plugin? I’m curious how the backend interface to it looks…
the gallery
the Lightbox_v2 effects

regards,

Johan.

squaredeye · 2006-11-12 22:14:53

Johan,
Thanks. Its working, and that’s what counts!

The events are handled by a new plugin (yet to be released). Which needs more funding. Feel free to contact me about it
if you are in a position to help.

the lightbox and gallery by bas_lightbox

:)

marios · 2006-11-13 00:31:37

It’s nice to see, how much this thing has evolved.
Lot’s of nifty cruft.
I’ve spent a couple of minutes to dive through ( on Safari ) and it was quite clear to me, where I could find what I need.
(+ The space available is ultimately well handled)

One thing that I kept on thinging, when I scanned through the articles and comments, was, that some little styling on the p
elements could help empasize the text for the former.

regards, marios

squaredeye · 2006-11-13 00:33:33

Marios,
thanks man, I’m always up for new thoughts.
Were you thinking some more margin(top and bottom) might help?

M

marios · 2006-11-13 00:52:01

A ditch of top and side padding, will help to improve readability.
How about some p:first-letter ?
Are you allowed to use a ditch of color, then may be you could apply a subtle tone on the header elements.

BTW.: I just discovered a small problem:

TXP seems to wrap double p open tags around some of the headers.

Open this URL and watch out around line 153 of the source code:
http://liberti.org/blog/wisdom-apparent-contradictions-some-lessons-from-3-years-in-a-church-plant#c000039

The first Header, where this occurs is h4 and
reads:
One issue I’ve needed to grow in wisdom on, is my work & rest habits

regards marios

Last edited by marios (2006-11-13 01:07:08)

hakjoon · 2006-11-13 01:24:29

I’m with marios on a little more top margin on the comments.

A couple minor thoughts:

On the home page I would drop the non bold text in the New service New site section maybe one unit, it would make it work more like a headline to me.
The text size on the events sidebar seems a little too large in comparison with the rest of the text sizes.

Again these are extremely minor and strictly opinion.

guiguibonbon · 2006-11-23 23:21:54

Yes, nice to see how it evolved. And it shure evolved positively! I like the backgrounds a lot.

But one thing seriously bothers me : vertical spacing. I used not to work on that aspect either, but I’ve really come to appreciate it a lot. It makes everything so much nicer to read.

Try to get all the text to fit on one baseline grid. It’s painful but gives amazing results.

BTW, it’s funny to see how common ignorance of vertical spacing is. It used to be #1 of all typographical rules, until magazines came in, where paper restrictions didn’t allow for decent spacing. And now we don’t have the slightest sign of paper-restriction anymore (on the web), we sadly tend to keep the bad habit.

squaredeye · 2006-11-26 02:33:05

ggbb,
By vertical spacing I’m assuming you mean line-height (to use the web term). What height would you use? I’m not trained in typography at all, wait, I’m not trained in any of this, I’m basically learning as I go, so yeah, fill me in.

Matthew

guiguibonbon · 2006-12-03 14:08:22

I wasn’t trained about those things either; those graphic design schools over here don’t always teach you what you’d want. It takes a lot of reading to fill the gaps.

Well, vertical spacing is actually the space between two lines (I guess that’s sort of what line-height tries to do indead). You’re generally better off with more of it than not enough. There’s no real perfect formula, it also largely depends on the length of your line. The larger the line, the more vertical spacing you’ll need in order to find the next line easily.

Good practice, in the old golden age of books, the Renaissance, was to first decide what “line-height” you’d need for your main text, and to set just about any text anywhere on what is called the “baseline grid”. So, say you choose to have a line-height of 20px, you would draw lines spread apart by 20 px on your whole page, and set any text on them. This way, when you looked “through” pages, everything aligned perfectly, and your reading wasn’t disturbed by what was on the other side of the page.

Usability-wise, it has the advantage of easing the reading, because the eye knows where to expect the next line, be it when going from a heading to a paragraph, from a button to another, or from one paragraph to another. It makes “scanning” a page much easier. And everthing “breathes” a lot more too.

But it’s a real pain in the arse to do with css. I usually end up with many “line-height:1.354 em; margin: 0 0.235em;” kind of things (I set the baseline grid as a background-image of the body). But you don’t have to follow it this “christianly”, it’s more of an easy guide-line, when your eye isn’t trained enough to space things naturally the way they should.

There was also another rule, that could be useful to your site, which was not to use too many font-sizes. Usually 3 were enough : one for the very big headings – like chapters; one for the main-text; and one for side-notes. Capps, small-caps, italic, bold, alignment, colour etc. are enough to give the needed hierarchy to text, and a web-page. Again, makes scanning much easier.

If you’re interested, Mark Boulton has a lot of articles on his blog about designing for the web.

jstubbs · 2006-12-11 16:42:25

Mathew, in your dropdown menu, how are you getting the menu item to reflect the current state/location?

I know its easy with ako_nav (which sets the current link class), but in my case, I am outputting the a list of sections as the links, then checking for categories which will be the dropdown links, so I can’t think right now how to set the current state class on the main (section) link.

Any ideas?

dbulli · 2006-12-11 17:31:31

jstubbs wrote:

Mathew, in your dropdown menu, how are you getting the menu item to reflect the current state/location?

How he did I can only guess that he is using the body id …

i wrote up how i did mine here which is very similar … there are many ways to do it.

and jm .. had another way

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#16 2006-11-07 12:24:14

Re: the latest : liberti.org

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