Vertical Rhythm

[inderpreetsingh]

The current design lacks the typographical hierarchy and vertical rhythm which would shape the website better. Currently due to lack of vertical rhythm, the website looks like a blob of text smooshed together.

To know about vertical rhythm visit http://typecast.com/blog/4-simple-steps-to-vertical-rhythm
and typography in general visit practicaltypography.com/what-is-typography.html

[brlcad]

For what it's worth, this new site is a merging of concepts from 3 or 4 other GCI landing page concepts, which you can find several galleries of on the old google-melange.com site and at http://yash-m.github.io/BRL-CAD-Portfolio/.

I agree that there needs to be more attention to the flow and typography as the css currently only really addresses the appearance on Mac, maybe Windows. Having you work on that would be fantastic.

Note that the whole "What is BRL-CAD" section (and most everything below) still needs to get worked on, get changed, be simplified, etc.

[inderpreetsingh]

Okay, what is the issue on Mac? Can you please share a screenshot with me?

[brlcad]

Didn't say there was a problem with Mac -- I'd said that Mac was the only platform where the typography had really been looked at, so I would expect it to look even worse on Windows and Linux. It's not great on Mac either, but it's not terrible -- certainly good enough to go live quickly.

[pl-semiotics]

I can provide Linux screenshots (and possibly help with debugging inconsistencies, but not today, unfortunately) if anyone wants them. If not, sorry to intrude; later this week, or next week, I might be able to help with the development if anyone would be interested.

[brlcad]

Definitely interested in your help Peter! The more the merrier, we just need to knock this out fast.

[pl-semiotics]

Great, I'm glad to help. Right now I can do a few fast things (like taking Linux screenshots, etc.; let me know if you need any), but I'll probably miss the big rollout before I can do any serious work, unfortunately... I'm sure that there will be plenty to do afterwards as well, though

[inderpreetsingh]

@brlcad aah! I misread your comment.

I am not talking about any special type treatment. It's just that there are some principles of typography. Like there's ought to be a relation between say "the heading size" and the "content size". Or "the font-size of content" and width of the content. Like there's a limit to length of the line in text after which user forgets on which line she is. That limit depends upon the font-size.

There is a ratio, (1:1.5, 1:1.61 etc) that's followed in the whole design to decide on what size to give to each element, which is the vertical rhythm I am and the article is talking about. Without which, the text won't look good or professional.

P.S. I think I haven't shared it earlier but if you look at the mediawiki theme, it's sizes are a piece of mathematical art. The sizes everywhere are mostly in the ratio of or multiples of 1:1.61.

[Gauravjeetsingh]

Hey!
I would like to contribute in this.
Hoping to send my first pull request in this repo soon.

[brlcad]

Almost through our server migration issues to get back on this, but had to share this awesomeness :) http://adventurega.me/bootstrap/

[inderpreetsingh]

It is awesome, and I hope we would surely make something that's not as generic as our current design for the next iteration. We would need to start from scratch (on the design part) for that. If we could get enough interest, we must do it after GSoC selection is over

[brlcad]

We need to fully deploy and integrate efforts already contributed before starting over. There are still many design elements from GCI that need to be leveraged, and consistently using our new logo + theme.

[utkarshsingh341]

AMA. I wrote this code..

[brlcad]

@utkarshsingh341 Anything? ... How about, what's next? :)

By that I mean, you helped us get this far -- help us get further along. Do you think you (or anyone else here) could itemize a set of specific tasks that would help improve the website incrementally? I mean succinct tasks that would take less than a day each... what would they be?