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Re: Feedback to: Textpattern CMS 4.6.0 beta 2 released
mrdale wrote #300764:
Here’s another question/observation.
I see we’re using a svg sprite for all the little icons. Why use that instead of a typeface?
I decided that I didn’t like the interface being so chatty with text. ie you shouldn’t have to see “expand all” next to an icon when the icon with a tooltip would suffice as it does in so many other places.
So with a sprite with margin offset mapping, making the icons larger, or changing color becomes quite a massive chore, whereas with a typeface it would be trivial.
Thoughts?
Yes, there is a reason we use SVG, this article sums it up fairly well. Basically icon fonts are really bad for accessibility. We also hide some extra nice accessibility helpers in some of the icons via some off-screen text that screen readers can announce.
Regarding the colour change, that will be a doodle once CSS mask is more widely supported by browsers (damn you IE11 and Edge), I already have these commented-out rules waiting in the dev stylesheet for when that joyful day happens:
//mask: url("../img/ui-icon-sprite.svg");
//mask-repeat: no-repeat;
//mask-size: 256px 272px;Then all you have to do is change icon background-color to whatever you desire. Explanation here.
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Re: Feedback to: Textpattern CMS 4.6.0 beta 2 released
philwareham wrote #300765:
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Re: Feedback to: Textpattern CMS 4.6.0 beta 2 released
philwareham wrote #300765:
All good reasons (including ones I would never have thought of) and I respect your decision. That said, I’m with MrDale – I still absolutely love the ease of using icon fonts. fontello and co have made it so much easier to create small icon subsets including custom own icons.
TXP Builders – finely-crafted code, design and txp
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Re: Feedback to: Textpattern CMS 4.6.0 beta 2 released
Erm, so the counter argument is because they want to support old versions of Android? And how do you propose we serve those accessibility helper texts that I enclose in the icon spans if we use a font and glyph and undefined Unicode numbers that may well get defined at any time?
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Re: Feedback to: Textpattern CMS 4.6.0 beta 2 released
Actually I find the whole argument specious as it relates to the admin panel of a CMS.
In that article his points are:
- Screen readers may pronounce the icons (very rarely if PUA is used)
- They Encroach on Emoji Turf (seriously? in this context? how?)
- They Fail Poorly and Often (when and where have you seen failures? I’ve only seen them when a site I build is misconfigured.)
- They Never Looked Right (mine and most people’s seem to, what is he seeing, imperfect antialiasing?)
- You’re Probably Doing It Wrong (So don’t.)
So let’s get down to it. You’ve got a wacking big sprite that you have to know grid positions for in order to adapt and it does not scale easily.
My point is simply do the benefits of providing accessibility to massively edge-cases really justify to inflexibility to all, or is that whole argument just silly?
And if you say “no it’s not silly and sprites are definitely more graceful”, I’ll drop any objection and merrily make a hacked admin like I usually do anyway. But my vote is to provide an admin UI that people can adapt without playing battleship.
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Re: Feedback to: Textpattern CMS 4.6.0 beta 2 released
Ok we’ll have to agree to disagree. Personally I feel SVG is the correct and cleaner solution. Maybe you’re right that accessibility is edge-case where Textpattern is concerned but it is an area I’m interested in and I strive to do it correctly.
I’ll think about ways to help you swap out the logo sprite more easily though.
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Re: Feedback to: Textpattern CMS 4.6.0 beta 2 released
philwareham wrote #300771:
Erm, so the counter argument is because they want to support old versions of Android?
I assume the problem isn’t actually “old versions of Android” but rather that Chrome isn’t available on them and the old Android Browser didn’t support this. I get what he meant but that was kind of an odd explanation.
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Re: Feedback to: Textpattern CMS 4.6.0 beta 2 released
Hi Devs,
Got a chance to give 4.6 a spin on the demo site.
I like the backend changes, really clean, no tagbuilder, etc.
My only concern, being a long time user, is the size of the distribution.
4.5.7 = zip (604kb), disk (2.2mb)
4.6.0 = zip (1.42mb), disk (4.8mb)
The distribution has doubled in size, mostly it’s the vendors and admin-themes folders.
Lean and mean, it’s how I like my PHP apps, which is why I like FluxBB over phpBB, DokuWiki over MediaWiki, etc. It’s one of the main reasons I chose Textpattern as my CMS back in the day. Such a small distribution, made it so easy to keep multiple sites updated, and of course, less code equals less bugs, less security issues.
As always, it’s just my humble opinion, otherwise, 4.6 is looking good.
We Love TXP . TXP Themes . TXP Tags . TXP Planet . TXP Make
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Re: Feedback to: Textpattern CMS 4.6.0 beta 2 released
Yes, theme assets, PSR-style coding and other new libraries which enhance Textpattern (such as jQuery UI and PrismJS) mean a larger download I’m afraid. The price of progress – not much we can do about that.
I will be able to slim down the packaging a bit when CSS Mask becomes more supported (we can ditch the multiple colour variants of the admin theme image sprite).
Tag builder returns in beta3 very soon anyway (although the code has always been in the betas, just not hooked up, so that doesn’t add anything to the download size).
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Re: Feedback to: Textpattern CMS 4.6.0 beta 2 released
hcgtv wrote #300801:
The distribution has doubled in size…
It has, but you know how it compares to other CMS options. 2x tiny – is still tiny.
And while 4.6 has grown – in my tests it is even faster than previous versions.
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Re: Feedback to: Textpattern CMS 4.6.0 beta 2 released
philwareham wrote #300803:
Tag builder returns in beta3 very soon anyway (although the code has always been in the betas, just not hooked up, so that doesn’t add anything to the download size).
Will it be on the right side menu, or is it coming back to the left, where it takes away space from the Pages and Forms?
towndock wrote #300804:
And while 4.6 has grown – in my tests it is even faster than previous versions.
I think the new parser from Ruud and Oleg has kept TXP fast while adding new features.
Mind you, I’m all for moving forward, just nostalgic about tiny code bases.
We Love TXP . TXP Themes . TXP Tags . TXP Planet . TXP Make
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