Red links in the new haskell theme

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Victor Oliveira

27 Oct 2010 27 Oct '10

9:41 p.m.

Hi Cafe, I really liked the new colors of haskell theme, but... Is really red a good color for links? At least for me, red links looks like broken or already visited ones. And the worst is hackage docs. It is really eye tiring to read. It's just a thought. Maybe it just with me. What about you? []s Victor

Show replies by date

Christopher Done

28 Oct 28 Oct

3:50 a.m.

On 28 October 2010 03:41, Victor Oliveira wrote:

...

Hi Cafe,

I really liked the new colors of haskell theme, but...

Is really red a good color for links? At least for me, red links looks like broken or already visited ones.

And the worst is hackage docs. It is really eye tiring to read.

It's just a thought. Maybe it just with me.

What about you?

This was my initial impression. Red means broken. Links are blue. I thought maybe no one would be bothered by it, but I see one person at least.

Michael Snoyman

3:52 a.m.

On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 9:50 AM, Christopher Done wrote:

...

On 28 October 2010 03:41, Victor Oliveira wrote:

...
Hi Cafe,

I really liked the new colors of haskell theme, but...

Is really red a good color for links? At least for me, red links looks like broken or already visited ones.

And the worst is hackage docs. It is really eye tiring to read.

It's just a thought. Maybe it just with me.

What about you?

This was my initial impression. Red means broken. Links are blue. I thought maybe no one would be bothered by it, but I see one person at least.

I'm not incredibly bothered by it, but I did find it a bit strange. Michael

Victor Oliveira

6:41 a.m.

Maybe we can keep at least the docs without red links. It's very eye tiring to read. One option is to keep the links black with :hover red. []s Victor On Oct 28, 2010, at 5:52 AM, Michael Snoyman wrote:

...

On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 9:50 AM, Christopher Done wrote:

...
On 28 October 2010 03:41, Victor Oliveira wrote:

...
Hi Cafe,

I really liked the new colors of haskell theme, but...

Is really red a good color for links? At least for me, red links looks like broken or already visited ones.

And the worst is hackage docs. It is really eye tiring to read.

It's just a thought. Maybe it just with me.

What about you?

This was my initial impression. Red means broken. Links are blue. I thought maybe no one would be bothered by it, but I see one person at least.

I'm not incredibly bothered by it, but I did find it a bit strange.

Michael

Sebastian Fischer

7:30 a.m.

...

Maybe we can keep at least the docs without red links.

Pick the "Classic" style in the style menu. It will remember your choice. Sebastian

Andrew Coppin

3:42 p.m.

On 28/10/2010 12:30 PM, Sebastian Fischer wrote:

...

...
Maybe we can keep at least the docs without red links.

Pick the "Classic" style in the style menu. It will remember your choice.

Yes, at least with new Haddock you can *change* the style without having to actually patch (and recompile) Haddock itself. :-) In the category of annoying things: Is there any particular *reason* why "Source" appears before "Contents"? I would think the latter is going to get clicked infinitely more often than the former... (Also, for reasons I can't quite pin down, sometimes the "Style" button appears on top of the "Source" button. I don't know what causes this glitch yet...)

Antoine Latter

9:51 p.m.

On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 2:42 PM, Andrew Coppin wrote:

...

On 28/10/2010 12:30 PM, Sebastian Fischer wrote:

...
...
Maybe we can keep at least the docs without red links.

Pick the "Classic" style in the style menu. It will remember your choice.

Yes, at least with new Haddock you can *change* the style without having to actually patch (and recompile) Haddock itself. :-)

In the category of annoying things: Is there any particular *reason* why "Source" appears before "Contents"? I would think the latter is going to get clicked infinitely more often than the former...

Well, I can almost always use the back button to go to 'Contents,' however I don't have any other options for getting to source. I guess I use them about equally when I'm browsing Hackage. Antoine

Victor Oliveira

29 Oct 29 Oct

9:36 a.m.

Thank's. I didn't see the menu style on top of the page. It helps a lot. I think it's just a matter of getting used with the new colors... []s Victor On Oct 28, 2010, at 11:51 PM, Antoine Latter wrote:

...

On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 2:42 PM, Andrew Coppin wrote:

...
On 28/10/2010 12:30 PM, Sebastian Fischer wrote:

...
...
Maybe we can keep at least the docs without red links.

Pick the "Classic" style in the style menu. It will remember your choice.

Yes, at least with new Haddock you can *change* the style without having to actually patch (and recompile) Haddock itself. :-)

In the category of annoying things: Is there any particular *reason* why "Source" appears before "Contents"? I would think the latter is going to get clicked infinitely more often than the former...

Well, I can almost always use the back button to go to 'Contents,' however I don't have any other options for getting to source.

I guess I use them about equally when I'm browsing Hackage.

Antoine _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

Henning Thielemann

30 Oct 30 Oct

7:51 a.m.

Sebastian Fischer schrieb:

...

...
Maybe we can keep at least the docs without red links.

Pick the "Classic" style in the style menu. It will remember your choice.

I don't see a style menu. Does it require JavaScript? I find it still strange, that the unusal style is the default.

Daniel Fischer

8:04 a.m.

On Saturday 30 October 2010 13:51:25, Henning Thielemann wrote:

...

Sebastian Fischer schrieb:

...
...
Maybe we can keep at least the docs without red links.

Pick the "Classic" style in the style menu. It will remember your choice.

I don't see a style menu.

I do, top right, next to Index. In seamonkey, though, it's sometimes half hidden and displayed below the Source resp hackageDB links.

...

Does it require JavaScript?

It seems so. If I disallow scripts for haskell.org, I don't see it either.

...

I find it still strange, that the unusal style is the default.

Most people who responded when opinions were collected about the new theme preferred that.

Henning Thielemann

8:15 a.m.

On Sat, 30 Oct 2010, Daniel Fischer wrote:

...

I do, top right, next to Index. In seamonkey, though, it's sometimes half hidden and displayed below the Source resp hackageDB links.

...
Does it require JavaScript?

It seems so. If I disallow scripts for haskell.org, I don't see it either.

If I enable JavaScript in Konqueror, I still see no style menu. However I would like to get it without JavaScript. It can certainly be achieved using a cookie. I never understood why Cascading Style Sheets were used to configure the appearance of a website from the server side. To me it would make more sense if users could configure the colors of links in their browsers, like they configure fonts and font sizes.

...

...
I find it still strange, that the unusal style is the default.

Most people who responded when opinions were collected about the new theme preferred that.

Possibly when seeing, how it looks like, people change their mind. :-)

Sebastian Fischer

8:37 a.m.

On Oct 30, 2010, at 9:15 PM, Henning Thielemann wrote:

...

To me it would make more sense if users could configure the colors of links in their browsers, like they configure fonts and font sizes.

Most browsers support user style sheets: google.com/search?q=user+style +sheet

...

...
Most people who responded when opinions were collected about the new theme preferred that.

Possibly when seeing, how it looks like, people change their mind.

During the poll, the new style was shown on a demo page. Sebastian

Daniel Fischer

8:49 a.m.

On Saturday 30 October 2010 14:15:58, Henning Thielemann wrote:

...

On Sat, 30 Oct 2010, Daniel Fischer wrote:

...
I do, top right, next to Index. In seamonkey, though, it's sometimes half hidden and displayed below the Source resp hackageDB links.

...
Does it require JavaScript?

It seems so. If I disallow scripts for haskell.org, I don't see it either.

If I enable JavaScript in Konqueror, I still see no style menu.

In the Extras menu or in the global settings menu? If I disable JavaScript in the global settings in Konqueror, the Style menu is gone and no futzing with HTML settings in the Extras menu will change that, while if JavaScript is enabled globally, I can turn it on/off per site and the Style menu will appear/disappear according to the setting (requires a reload, though). I don't particularly like Konqueror's configuring behaviour, it's not easy to understand.

...

However I would like to get it without JavaScript. It can certainly be achieved using a cookie.

I never understood why Cascading Style Sheets were used to configure the appearance of a website from the server side. To me it would make more sense if users could configure the colors of links in their browsers, like they configure fonts and font sizes.

...
...
I find it still strange, that the unusal style is the default.

Most people who responded when opinions were collected about the new theme preferred that.

Possibly when seeing, how it looks like, people change their mind. :-)

Possible. But I don't understand how people can get so worked up on such things so much¹. Both look fine to me. [¹] Website design in general. Things look mostly so-so, until a professional designer comes in. Then, with a very few exceptions, things become horrible [that's not particular to _web_ design, it applies to all designers (post Wilhelm Wagenfeld)].

Daniel Fischer

9 a.m.

On Saturday 30 October 2010 14:49:01, Daniel Fischer wrote:

...

Both look fine to me.

Oh and btw. Regarding the topic of this thread, I don't see red links in the new theme, they're an orange-ish brown here.

Tillmann Rendel

9 a.m.

Henning Thielemann wrote:

...

If I enable JavaScript in Konqueror, I still see no style menu.

However I would like to get it without JavaScript. It can certainly be achieved using a cookie.

Both stylesheets are linked to from the text of the HTML files: <link href="ocean.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" title="Ocean" /> <link href="xhaddock.css" rel="alternate stylesheet" type="text/css" title="Classic" /> Firefox uses this information to populate a menu (View | Stylesheet) with the following choices: - no style - Ocean - Classic No need for JavaScript or cookies. Tillmann

Henning Thielemann

9:09 a.m.

On Sat, 30 Oct 2010, Tillmann Rendel wrote:

...

Both stylesheets are linked to from the text of the HTML files:

<link href="ocean.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" title="Ocean" />

<link href="xhaddock.css" rel="alternate stylesheet" type="text/css" title="Classic" />

Firefox uses this information to populate a menu (View | Stylesheet) with the following choices:

- no style - Ocean - Classic

No need for JavaScript or cookies.

This would be optimal for me, if it would work this way. From the answers I understood that "the style menu" is something that is part of the document body, not something of the browser navigation toolset. It seems that Konqueror does not let me choose between different styles. However it has a menu item for checking the CSS. :-) It forwards me to http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?uri=http%3A//hackage.haskell.or... and shows 7 errors.

Daniel Fischer

9:41 a.m.

On Saturday 30 October 2010 15:09:39, Henning Thielemann wrote:

...

On Sat, 30 Oct 2010, Tillmann Rendel wrote:

...
Both stylesheets are linked to from the text of the HTML files:

<link href="ocean.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" title="Ocean" />

<link href="xhaddock.css" rel="alternate stylesheet" type="text/css" title="Classic" />

Firefox uses this information to populate a menu (View | Stylesheet) with the following choices:

- no style - Ocean - Classic

No need for JavaScript or cookies.

This would be optimal for me, if it would work this way. From the answers I understood that "the style menu" is something that is part of the document body, not something of the browser navigation toolset.

It seems that Konqueror does not let me choose between different styles.

Mine does, with JavaScript globally disabled or enabled: Ansicht -> Stilvorlage verwenden * Autom. feststellen * Basisstil * Ocean * Classic

...

However it has a menu item for checking the CSS. :-)

I can't find that in mine, however.

...

It forwards me to http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?uri=http%3A//hackage.haskel l.org/package/base and shows 7 errors.

Tillmann Rendel

10:25 a.m.

Henning Thielemann wrote:

...

...
Firefox uses this information to populate a menu (View | Stylesheet) with the following choices:

- no style - Ocean - Classic

No need for JavaScript or cookies.

This would be optimal for me, if it would work this way. From the answers I understood that "the style menu" is something that is part of the document body, not something of the browser navigation toolset.

Yes, the body of the document contains an additional style menu, so on well-behaving browsers, there are two style menus. See screenshot at http://www.informatik.uni-marburg.de/~rendel/style-menu.png Tillmann

Henning Thielemann

11:14 a.m.

On Sat, 30 Oct 2010, Tillmann Rendel wrote:

...

Yes, the body of the document contains an additional style menu, so on well-behaving browsers, there are two style menus. See screenshot at

http://www.informatik.uni-marburg.de/~rendel/style-menu.png

Wow, I have also such a menu item "Ansicht" with sub-item "Stilvorlage" and subsubitem Ocean and Classic in Konqueror! I still wonder why Ocean looks red, and not blue. But ok, Classic looks as I like it.

Kevin Jardine

28 Oct 28 Oct

10:48 a.m.

To be fair to the Haddock designer, red links are common these days. Here's two examples (among many): http://www.bbc.co.uk/ http://www.slate.com/ In the second case the site uses blue, black *and* red links to distinguish different types of content. They are all in bold and underline when hovered over so are not hard to distinguish from ordinary text. Kevin. On Oct 28, 9:52 am, Michael Snoyman wrote:

...

On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 9:50 AM, Christopher Done

wrote:

...
On 28 October 2010 03:41, Victor Oliveira wrote:

...
Hi Cafe,

...
...
I really liked the new colors of haskell theme, but...

...
...
Is really red a good color for links? At least for me, red links looks like broken or already visited ones.

...
...
And the worst is hackage docs. It is really eye tiring to read.

...
...
It's just a thought. Maybe it just with me.

...
...
What about you?

...
This was my initial impression. Red means broken. Links are blue. I thought maybe no one would be bothered by it, but I see one person at least.

I'm not incredibly bothered by it, but I did find it a bit strange.

Michael _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-C...@haskell.orghttp://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

Christopher Done

7:33 p.m.

On 28 October 2010 16:48, Kevin Jardine wrote:

...

To be fair to the Haddock designer, red links are common these days.

Here's two examples (among many):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ http://www.slate.com/

In the second case the site uses blue, black *and* red links to distinguish different types of content. They are all in bold and underline when hovered over so are not hard to distinguish from ordinary text.

I don't think two examples of big sites prove good usability. Both of those sites are jumbled messes anyway. For what it's worth, (1) links are blue, (2) red means error, (3) search goes on the top right, (4) login goes on the top right, (5) logo goes on the top left, (6) breadcrumb goes at the top left above or below the logo, (7) menu goes on the left or top, (8) basket goes on the right. These are standards, the fact one big web site decides to go against the standard doesn't mean you should. What colour are the links your email web client is using right now? But eh, whatever, no one listens to me on the topic of design so I guess I don't know what I'm talking about.

Henning Thielemann

30 Oct 30 Oct

7:40 a.m.

Victor Oliveira schrieb:

...

Hi Cafe,

I really liked the new colors of haskell theme, but...

Is really red a good color for links? At least for me, red links looks like broken or already visited ones.

And the worst is hackage docs. It is really eye tiring to read.

It's just a thought. Maybe it just with me.

I'm also used to red=broken, blue=link, as in Wikipedia.

Mark Lentczner

11:11 a.m.

Some notes on the Haddock re-design: 1) HTML supports the concept of alternate style sheets. If present, then the idea was that browsers would give the user the choice, somewhere, to choose among them. While Firefox does this (View > Page Style), and I'm told that Opera (View > Style), and Konqueror (View > Use StyleSheet) do, the other big-name browsers, IE, Safari, Chrome, do not. Since support is so lacking, the common thing to do, and what I implemented for Haddock, is to use Javascript to pull the alternate style sheet information out of the page and build a menu that is then placed back into the page. This is the "Style" menu in the top right of the page. If you have Javascript turned off, it won't appear as it is not part of the markup. The cookie, which is set from Javascript is so that you don't to re-pick the style on every page load. I'm assuming that those browsers that do implement a style sheet menu remember this per-site, but I don't know. It is a limitation of cookies that it can only remember your choice per-site. 2) What styles appear depend on what was specified when Haddock was run to produce the pages. By default it includes just the new Ocean theme. If --default-themes is specified (as it is on Hackage), then both Ocean and Classic are included. You can build your own themes and include them with --theme, alone or in combination with the built-in themes. If the resulting theme set is a singleton, then no "Style" menu will appear on the page. 3) Without really doing a tracking analysis (preferably by tracking eye movements, or at least mouse movements, and in all cases recording accurate view times and location of clicks), it isn't possible to optimize a web page down to the level of which menu links should be in in which order, or other such small changes. That isn't saying such changes won't have a big impact, only that it is hard to reason about them because the tracking results are often non-intuitive. In the absence of such things, all one can do is bring one's experience and design skills to bear. 4) While Haddock tries to minimize the use of Javascript, it still has some. There is a tension between wanting to produce pages that can be printed documentation, and creating a effective on-line reference. Between the theming ability, and the new LaTeX backend, it is now possible to achieve these two aims with separate Haddock outputs. In modern browsers, Javascript is very efficient and even moderate amounts of Javascript can be crafted to not affect load times. Haddock still has an issue here that the Javascript is repeated in every directory, thus ruining caching. When this is fixed, we'll be able to use more Javascript, which will enable us to make the reference easier and faster to navigate.[1] 5) It does not make sense for users to configure colors or fonts for web sites any more than it would for magazines or books. Effective presentation of information requires design including choice of fonts, colors, graphics and layout - and these vary by the information and intent of the content. There is no choice a user an make that works best for all. It is important for accessibility that those users that need to can override fonts and colors. All modern browsers allow this, and one of the major aims of the Haddock redesign was to output clean markup so that it worked in such situations, as well as with screen readers. In other words - if you want to override the fonts and colors you can now do so effectively. 6) Over the Summer the new style was made available on the web for people to look out for several months, and at one point I conducted a poll. In that poll only 81% preferred the newer look, and only 11% preferred the older. - Mark "Haddock web scullion" Lentczner [1] An example of an HTML reference work that is highly usable and uses plenty of Javascript (>700k!) to achieve it, yet works very well: http://developer.android.com/reference/packages.html

Henning Thielemann

11:26 a.m.

On Sat, 30 Oct 2010, Mark Lentczner wrote:

...

5) It does not make sense for users to configure colors or fonts for web sites any more than it would for magazines or books.

For fancy layouts we have PDF. For me, HTML is an online format that shall be as adaptive as possible to font size, window size, screen resolution and other parameters.

...

6) Over the Summer the new style was made available on the web for people to look out for several months, and at one point I conducted a poll. In that poll only 81% preferred the newer look, and only 11% preferred the older.

Somehow I missed that poll, and it seems others have, too. Two notes on the Classic style: The package field names like Version, Dependencies, License are centered, which was not the case in the original style. Also in the original style the table cells had a grey background, what I found quite useful for recognizing the table structure.

Ross Paterson

11:53 a.m.

On Sat, Oct 30, 2010 at 05:26:33PM +0200, Henning Thielemann wrote:

...

Two notes on the Classic style:

The package field names like Version, Dependencies, License are centered, which was not the case in the original style. Also in the original style the table cells had a grey background, what I found quite useful for recognizing the table structure.

This refers to the hackage package pages using the haddock style files, which have no provision for two-tone tables. The alignment is fixed now, though.

Henning Thielemann

12:39 p.m.

On Sat, 30 Oct 2010, Ross Paterson wrote:

...

On Sat, Oct 30, 2010 at 05:26:33PM +0200, Henning Thielemann wrote:

...
Two notes on the Classic style:

The package field names like Version, Dependencies, License are centered, which was not the case in the original style. Also in the original style the table cells had a grey background, what I found quite useful for recognizing the table structure.

This refers to the hackage package pages using the haddock style files, which have no provision for two-tone tables.

I see.

...

The alignment is fixed now, though.

It's still vertically centered, which makes it difficult to see, e.g. where the dependency list starts and where it ends if it is several lines long.

Ross Paterson

12:54 p.m.

On Sat, Oct 30, 2010 at 06:39:00PM +0200, Henning Thielemann wrote:

...

It's still vertically centered, which makes it difficult to see, e.g. where the dependency list starts and where it ends if it is several lines long.

Not any more.

Nick Bowler

1 Nov 1 Nov

9:59 a.m.

On 2010-10-30 08:11 -0700, Mark Lentczner wrote:

...

1) HTML supports the concept of alternate style sheets. If present, then the idea was that browsers would give the user the choice, somewhere, to choose among them. While Firefox does this (View > Page Style),

The implementation in Firefox is such that the style sheet resets to the default if you reload the page or follow any link. This makes the feature completely useless in practice. -- Nick Bowler, Elliptic Technologies (http://www.elliptictech.com/)

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27 comments

14 participants

participants (14)

Andrew Coppin
Antoine Latter
Christopher Done
Daniel Fischer
Henning Thielemann
Henning Thielemann
Kevin Jardine
Mark Lentczner
Michael Snoyman
Nick Bowler
Ross Paterson
Sebastian Fischer
Tillmann Rendel
Victor Oliveira