Feedback about MDN

[Henri Nathanson]

Hi Guys,

I am doing web developing and lately moving from backend to frontend. I
was really happy about the sources found under "MDN" on the web. I do
click its Google search results more likely than e.g. w3schools. The
site is just nicer and the information seems more distinct. But I was
wondering all the time "Boah, hello! How come Microsoft is setting up
such a resource website after all? They really make themselves likeable
here.". So what my thinking. About a dozen times and more in the last
months. And just today I realize MDN is not MSDN. I am just the most
stupid idiot in the world. To excuse myself, I probably just mixed it
up, because some resources about Javascript are provided by MSDN. But
you guys should really think of your branding here. Where is your
Mozilla-power? How can it be possible you create a website which I do
not recognize as Mozilla??? You can work with big teeth, glowing eyes,
monster power and just the whole fun of Kaiju and - let's just have a
bit more fun with work - attitude. ... I think you guys have a marketing
problem.


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[Janet Swisher]

Hi Henri,

Thanks for your feedback. As it happens, we are in the middle of a
rebranding and redesign of the site, which takes into account some of
the factors you mention (such as many users don't realize MDN is from
Mozilla).

You can read about the changes in these blog posts:

https://blog.mozilla.org/opendesign/future-mdn-focus-web-docs/

https://blog.mozilla.org/opendesign/mdns-new-design-beta/

And you can see the impending changes for yourself by becoming a beta
tester:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/MDN/Contribute/Howto/Be_a_beta_tester

On 7/2/17 05:32, Henri Nathanson wrote:
> Hi Guys,
>
> I am doing web developing and lately moving from backend to frontend.
> I was really happy about the sources found under "MDN" on the web. I
> do click its Google search results more likely than e.g. w3schools.
> The site is just nicer and the information seems more distinct. But I
> was wondering all the time "Boah, hello! How come Microsoft is setting
> up such a resource website after all? They really make themselves
> likeable here.". So what my thinking. About a dozen times and more in
> the last months. And just today I realize MDN is not MSDN. I am just
> the most stupid idiot in the world. To excuse myself, I probably just
> mixed it up, because some resources about Javascript are provided by
> MSDN. But you guys should really think of your branding here. Where is
> your Mozilla-power? How can it be possible you create a website which
> I do not recognize as Mozilla??? You can work with big teeth, glowing
> eyes, monster power and just the whole fun of Kaiju and - let's just
> have a bit more fun with work - attitude. ... I think you guys have a
> marketing problem.
>
>

--

Janet Swisher <mailto:jREMOVE...@mozilla.com>
Mozilla Developer Network <https://developer.mozilla.org>
Community Strategist

[Felix Miata]

https://blog.mozilla.org/opendesign/mdns-new-design-beta/

It's not clear on landing there directly whether the above is an example of the
new design, or simply discusses it. Only after loading
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/ can it be reasonably assumed to be an example.

A-minus for its styling. Maximum contrast (black on white) of optimal text size
(1rem) in the primary content area only misses perfection in:

1: its usurping of the font designer's leading specification (line-height 1.6
instead of normal);

2: overriding my optimal default sans-serif font-family with a web font.

Both of these faults are minor, especially compared to the disaster of anemic
gray mousetype that pervades today's web generally, and flagship sites like
mozilla.org in particular, e.g. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/ .
--
"The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant
words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation)

Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/

[Eric Shepherd (Sheppy)]

I agree entirely about the prevalance of gray text on the web today.
Designers assure us that the reduced contrast is easier on the eyes and
therefore easier to read, but I think that’s untrue — I think it must makes
the text not stand out enough to be legible. We’re looking to strike a
happy medium by using a very deep gray rather than black, but not the
lighter gray most sites seem to use nowadays.


Eric Shepherd
Senior Technical Writer, MDN
MDN: https://developer.mozilla.org/
Blog: https://www.bitstampede.com/

[Felix Miata]

Eric Shepherd (Sheppy) composed on 2017-07-07 12:14 (UTC-0400):

> I agree entirely about the prevalance of gray text on the web today.
> Designers assure us that the reduced contrast is easier on the eyes and
> therefore easier to read, but I think that’s untrue

It's absolutely untrue, and proffered from a biased perspective[1], eagle-eyed
youthful designers who think it's exclusively their domain to determine
what's best for users of the sites they style. On the contrary, it is expected
that personal computing devices become personalized to the tastes, needs and
whims of their users. Too much of either contrast and/or brightness is most
often hardware configuration fault. Too little of either could be configuration
fault, but nearly always is designer fault.

WRT contrast, *if* the contrast is in fact too high, it's almost certainly
because contrast and brightness of the display is inappropriately configured.
Those with too much brightness and/or contrast, unless artificially
constrained, can *always* reduce them to appropriate levels. Such is not the case
in the reverse. It's impossible for those in need to increase them beyond 100%,
which is probably where they are set on displays used by designers that think
reduction is called for in their styles.

Hoards of displays have been shipped with inappropriately configured brightness
and contrast, in order that they stand out in brightly lit stores alongside
other displays or brightly lit office spaces; often as high as 100%, which makes
reduction the only personalization option available.

WCAG on the subject is absolutely nuts, from a just-good-enough-to-get-by mindset
rather than be-the-best-you-can-be. There's no addressing the compounding effect
when the text size it's coupled with is sub-default, saying only that less contrast
will "pass" with text that is larger.

More about gray:
https://backchannel.com/how-the-web-became-unreadable-a781ddc711b6
https://jebswebs.net/blog/2013/07/whats-with-all-the-gray/
http://contrastrebellion.com/
https://www.sitepoint.com/community/t/why-are-so-many-sites-using-gray-text/4667

> We’re looking to strike a
> happy medium by using a very deep gray rather than black, but not the
> lighter gray most sites seem to use nowadays.

That may indeed be the case with some of the more recent revisions, but there's
still too much gray, not so much because it is gray, but because gray is usually
coupled with sub-default type size, compounding the detrimental impact of both.

Especially disturbing is gray has escaped into the Firefox UI, usurping the UI
(black) font color configured for the rest of the DE:
http://fm.no-ip.com/SS/Moz/ff55-fontprefs.jpg

[1]cf.
a: https://mises.org/library/everything-popular-wrong-malinvestment-and-consumers
b: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20161026-how-liars-create-the-illusion-of-truth