Please critique the new online version of the Telecom Digest [telecom]

[Bill Horne]

The "online" version of the Telecom Digest is now ready for Beta test, and I need your help.

The new version is at https://telecomdigest.net/rsi/latest-issue.html .
Please let me know what your opinions are concerning the web-based
version, and answer these questions for me:

1. Is it readable on your device, and if not, why not?

2. Does it present a professional appearance? In other words, does it look good?

3. What would you change if you could? Why?

Thank you for your help. I appreciate it. If you'd rather your
comments weren't published, please change the "[telecom]" tag in the
Subject line to "[nfp]," which means "Not For Publication." If you
would prefer that your comments were published anonymously, then the
"[anonymous]" tag will tell me that.

Please see the FAQ for details about the tags: http://telecomdigest.net/faq.html

Bill Horne
Moderator

--
(Please remove QRM from my email address to send your reply to my personal account)

[Fred Goldstein]

On 10/1/2022 3:46 PM, Bill Horne wrote:

The "online" version of the Telecom Digest is now ready for Beta test, and I need your help.

The new version is at https://telecomdigest.net/rsi/latest-issue.html .
Please let me know what your opinions are concerning the web-based
version, and answer these questions for me:

1. Is it readable on your device, and if not, why not?

2. Does it present a professional appearance? In other words, does it look good?

3. What would you change if you could? Why?

I don't like the white text on black background. It is harder to read than black on white properly rendered.  The text is also a notch too large. I don't like tiny text but the current text is too  large. Sans-serif is also harder to read than serif typefaces.  Look at the Boston Globe site (articles, not home page) for an example of readable text -- note the type is a bit tighter and smaller but retains wide leading (space between lines).

I'm sorry, Bill, but it looks like Geocities called from 1998 and wants its designs back.

-- 
Fred R. Goldstein      k1io    fred "at" interisle.net
 Interisle Consulting Group 
 +1 617 795 2701

[Bill Horne]

Well, I NEVER! ...

... took a course in typography, or learned how to run a Linotype
machine. ;-)

But, seriously: I was so impressed with the increase in readability I
got by enabling "High Contrast" in Windows 10, that I decided to try
white-text-on-black-background for the "online" version of the Digest.

My eyes are old, and I've had cataract surgery, and I'm probably not
the "typical" web-page reader. That doesn't necessarily mean that I'm
doing something unproductive: younger eyes are more adaptable, and the
whole idea is to make the page easily readable by *EVERYONE* - so I'll
crabwalk a bit, and ask that other readers with more expertise on
these matters than I contribute their suggestions for improvements.

To keep the debate focused on essentials, we'll stick to a single
issue and make only suggested changes. The list of changes is at -

http://telecomdigest.net/rsi/experiment.html

... and readers can click through to any of the demo pages.

Bill Horne, writing only for himself as a self-taught, slightly
out-of-date web designer.

P.S. Geocities? REALLY? I'm going to ask Northeastern University to
revive the lynx machine: we'll set the WayBack machine to 1982!

--
(Please remove QRM from my email address to send mail to my personal account)

[Dave Garland]

On 10/1/2022 2:46 PM, Bill Horne wrote:

> The "online" version of the Telecom Digest is now ready for Beta
> test, and I need your help.
>
> The new version is at https://telecomdigest.net/rsi/latest-issue.html .
> Please let me know what your opinions are concerning the web-based
> version, and answer these questions for me:
>
> 1. Is it readable on your device, and if not, why not?

Looks fine to me, and normally I hate white on black. Maybe having the
font large enough makes the difference. I've got old eyes too.
(Running Pale Moon browser, which at the moment is sending a UserAgent
claiming it's Safari on a Mac.) It also works with Brave and Opera,
and doesn't care if I'm in AK or on VPN from the Netherlands. Using
Vivaldi on my Android phone, the messages read fine but the masthead
stuff is too tiny to read without significantly expanding the view
(then, of course, the messages are too big to read without much
scrolling). (I think there's a way for you to detect screen size and
adjust the size of the masthead accordingly. But I don't know how
myself.)

> 2. Does it present a professional appearance? In other words, does
> it look good?

It looks fine. It does not look contemporary (i.e. frames, graphics,
videos, and a gigabyte of Javascript). So it does look old-fashioned.
Yeah, a little Geocities, except no "blink" or "marquee" tags. But it
works. And LOADS INSTANTANEOUSLY!!!! I had forgotten what that was
like, in this CSS-choked Javascript hobbled world, even though I've
got a 500M connection.

> 3. What would you change if you could? Why?

I think it's great. Fast loading, no autoplay videos, what more could
one ask? But maybe not enough eye candy for today's yoof.

Dave

************************** Moderator's Note **************************

Thanks for taking time to send in your ideas, Dave: I appreciate them.

I'm puzzled by your comment about the masthead: I would have thought
it was "too big" if compared to the individual messages, so please
tell us more about which part of it is out-of-proportion: the Table of
Contents? The top-of-page banner and images?

As to capturing screen size, that's a good idea: with so many tiny
mobile devices and so few 80x40 green-screens from the days of my
youth, I'm willing to adapt a little bit (kicking and screaming, of
course ...), but I'll need some help from those whom didn't learn HTML
by way of the IBM Script manual I had to study to make use of the
"Laser" printer attached to the cms mainfrome we used with our 3278
tubes. Oh, and you mentioned something called "Javascript:" what's
that? ;-)

Again, my thanks: yours is EXACTLY the kind of feedback I need to make
this work.

Bill Horne