I know this isn't a big issue but I think having the headings, specifically the h3 tag lighter than the rest of the text makes the page hard to follow, especially since the text color is already pretty light. Just to try it out, I used Firebug to change the headings color to black and I think it really made the page come together much better. I think even a few shades darker would be an improvement. While reading, our eyes are accustomed to headings and titles having more weight than the rest of the text, otherwise the flow of the eye movement breaks making it much harder to scan for information because the elements are competing visually. We tend to skip smaller and lighter elements while scanning any type of text which is why I think in this case the elements really clash and the eyes are forced to shift back and forth between the paragraph text and the headings (specifically h3 tags). Anyway, just a thought.
Comments
Comment #1
drummWhat specific page is a good example?
Comment #2
silverwing commentedI'll jump in here and present http://drupal.org/books which I just revamped as an example of a page that uses a lot of h3s. Also http://drupal.org/about/drupal-planet
I believe a darker color (or even an underline) would help readability.
Comment #3
Sborsody commentedI've noticed this on http://drupal.org/node/501578. The text on that page all blurs together and looks like mush. Plus the gray color of the heading makes it worse as the gray creates less visual emphasis on the heading than the black text. The test here is to squint your eyes or blur the image and see if you can, in a flash, get an idea of differences in the text. I don't know if changing the weight to bold or changing the color will fix it. I've attached example screenshots for illustration purposes only.
I realize a lot of work has gone into the redesign and I appreciate it. I especially like features like the dashboard and am enjoying the new layout. But it seems to me like a lot of the complaints with the new design have been about colors and readability. Issues like this are visual communication design issues. I think a lot more work needs to be done on that aspect.
Comment #4
silverwing commentedComment #5
Sborsody commentedMoving to Bluecheese project as this request is more about the theme.
Comment #6
Sborsody commentedAfter reading #912936: Change font family, I am realizing now that the font in use may affect how h3 looks. On the infrastructure.drupal.org website (https://infrastructure.drupal.org/drupal.org-style-guide/typography.html), h3 in Helvetica Neue with normal font weight at 21px size looks slightly bold. It would appear that the issue is more complex. All I can report is that h3 disappears into the page text too much in FF3.6 on Windows Vista with whatever font it seems my browser is using.
Comment #7
verta commentedThere is also discussion of text color here: #919640: Darker font color -- and justification for gray, which finds some people modding Firefox with profiles\[profile]\chrome\usercontent.css to get the text black(er).
Comment #8
drummI committed a change bumping this from 16px to 18px. There is a test page at http://drupal.org/node/1051742.
Comment #9
drummDeployed
Comment #10
Sborsody commentedThank you. That looks much better!