[Pmwiki-users] CSS layout in pmwiki-0.6

Patrick R. Michaud pmichaud
Thu Jan 22 19:20:48 CST 2004


On Thu, Jan 22, 2004 at 11:36:32PM +0100, Christian Ridderstr?m wrote:
> 
> I actually frequently go via that page to the documentation index :-)
> But perhaps it'd be better in general for sites to have a help page that 
> covers both the site and has links for tips on how to edit etc
> (e.g. PmWiki/WikiHelp could simply be included in that page).

Indeed.  In fact, WikiHelp used to be in group 'Main' for just this reason.

> My general impression is that the current layout is a bit too wasteful 
> with vertical space...  I'd like to keep the top stuff minimal 
> height-wise, because it'll always be there taking vertical area away from 
> you (so that you don't have to scroll more than you have to).

I fully agree--I much prefer to conserve vertical space also.  Indeed, 
in Windows I keep my toolbar on the right-hand-side of the screen
because vertical space is much more valuable to me than horizontal space.
But I also feel that in general the page title needs to remain in the
same box as the page contents (i.e., not in the page header), especially
if there's a left sidebar involved.

Looking at the page layouts of the commercial sites that I frequently
visit (CNN, Wired, Google, Amazon, Weather.com, bbspot.com), they all
tend to have headers that are 80-120 pixels in height *excluding* the
page title.  On my browser PmWiki's header height in the new layout
is right at 100 pixels including the page title.  (This still doesn't 
mean that the layout is making effective use of that space--it just 
means that the height is consistent with what I've observed on 
other sites. :-)

I may see if I can shrink the vertical height of the PmWiki logo down
a bit further, and move Recent Changes back into the header before the
Search link and see how that works out.

And of course, this is all designed to make it very easy for someone
to make substantial changes to the layout--i.e., to change any of the
regions to be exactly what is desired.

> Do you mean horizontal space? (If so, I agree). Oh, speaking of the width, 
> maybe we should try and take into account that a "good" width for text is 
> about 72-76 characters (don't know if that includes spaces though :-)

PmWiki's default width is set to 600 pixels with a 20-pixel left margin.
This generally keeps the pages readable on 640x400 displays, if there
are any such beasts still out there, and on my screen it limits text
lines to about 100 characters (incl spaces) or 7 inches in width, which
is probably appropriate for a viewed display.  On those sites where
I have a left sidebar, I generally increase the body width to 760 pixels
(still fits in an 800x600 screen).

Pm



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