Debian website redesign proposal

A resource for documenting, developing and discussing the design proposal.

TODO

• Make breadcrumbs work on w.d.o. Adjust wml template to print parent dirs.
• Solve navbar scaling for mini font sizes.
• Extend and document style "templates".
• Define workflow to update stylesheets on all sites
• Make sure search boxes specify what is being searched. Ie. replace "Search" above with "Search Wiki"
• Resolve side bars to avoid clashes with content/footer when sidebar is very long
• Define how to treat the footer, consistency across sites is quite important for reoccurring elements. How should site specific links be formatted?

Architecture

Files

• debian.css
• deb$(subdomain).css
• changes to backend templates

The proposal works by having one global debian.css that should be the same for every subdomain and backend. Site specific tweaks and overrides are then added in a separate css file following the deb$(subdomain).css naming convention. The subdomains link to their css file which in turn includes the debian.css file via a @import line at the top of the css file.

Design

Top Navigation

• Logo
• Navbar
• Breadcrumbs

The above elements are designed to fit together quite tightly. The textual part of the logo forms the first breadcrumb therefore a slash should be the first item in the breadcrumbs before any actual link. This can be achieved with the css content tag if changes to the backend are difficult.

div.breadcrumb:before {
                content: "/";
        }

replace "breadcrumb" above with the tag your backend provides

Typography

Font Size

After much consideration the font size is left at the browser default and uses em's to vary font size around the default body text. This means that font size as set by the user in the browser settings is respected.

Tabular, listed or otherwise heavily structured data should where appropriate use the smaller 0.75em font size. This is particularly useful for information intensive sites such as gitweb or the debian cd vendor page.

Sites in progess moving to kallesdesign