Template talk:Hint

Font Size / Colour

 * James: I would have "preferred" the Hint template had smaller font size, as I think this works quite well where the hint is a secondary statement/does not affect everybody, which is the main purpose of this template. The green div in the GSoC page is more of an instruction than a hint, and probably I should not have used it, my only idea was to break up the yellow. That brings me to my other point that I think the yellow is slightly too strong if there are more than about 8 lines or so - therefore I think I'll make a slightly paler shade. Gale


 * If you want to change the font size back, that's OK with me, but please don't use 'hint' on the GSoC Ideas page then. To me a smaller font size signifies something that is of interest to a minority of people - very much like a footnote.  Here it's something we want everyone to read.  In O'Reilly books, hints and tips ARE set in a smaller font, but the significantly reduced text width, the extra 'whitespace' around and a 'tip-or-trap' icon to draw attention make up for the small font size....  The small font size also makes people slow down as they read...  which may be part of the psychology.  I don't think our hint template yet does as much to show the hint is something you DO want to read, not enough yet to counteract the smaller font size.
 * On the GSoC Ideas page I think it would work with both boxes yellow. That said, the green and yellow colours do work very well together in my opinion.  However, the blue box later on is a bit jarring with the yellow and green....  Should this blue box (and the info at the top of GSoC FAQ), be yellow too?  I don't know.  One of our problems is that it can at times be hard to draw a boundary between instructions/advice/information/hints.

Here's what in my view currently works well.
 * On the Feature Requests page, I think the green boxes in each section work well. They are navigation-information, information about the content of the section, rather than the content itself.  Setting them off in a green box is good.
 * On the Release Checklist, there's an orange 'who this page is for' notice a yellow 'instructions for editing this' and a green 'navigation-information' box. Apart from the orange being too strong, a paler orange could fit in with the yellow and green better, I think this works well too.  It probably would still work if the orange box were green (regarding it as a kind of navigation info) or yellow (regarding it as a kind of instruction for editing).

- James


 * I think what this is coming down to is that in a page with quite a lot of important/instructional information, we need a second template to break the yellow up or as you say to be used for a slightly different/specific type of important information (could be instructions on sorting the page, or other relevant pages to be taken into consideration where Template:introrel does not sufficiently convey the importance). So the current Hint template is pretty much OK isn't it for this second instructional template - if you use it, you will get the text left and right indented compared to the yellow instruction template. Another template is then needed for the "real" hint or tip/trick which should have smaller font and yes maybe some counteracting way to draw attention to itself. I actually liked green for a hint, but if you think green and yellow works well for side by side "instructions" then we need another colour for hint. Or we could keep green for hint and make instructions a slightly stronger colour, and the indented variant a slightly weaker variant of the same type of colour.  But the colour can't be much stronger if we want to keep black text, which I think we do.   Gale


 * Agree we want a whiter yellow.
 * For breaking up long instructions, it may be enough to just use another box of the same (yellow) colour - If we don't find some other compelling division of function such as instructions-for-editing, instructions-for-navigation.
 * I'm fine with keeping green for hints. If we want to be strict about that, a yellow-orange alternation might work if we do need to alternate colours for very-long-instructions.
 * Yes, the GSoC ideas key and Mentor list and many other tables should be in the same colours, they do seem to be 'the same kind of thing'. Maybe I'm wrong about the blue not working well with the green and yellow, or maybe the blue just needs to be whiter too (same whiteness as the yellow will be?).  We need to look at the colours and templates not one-by-one, but as an ensemble because that is what makes pages look nice.  I'm very inclined to try to keep all the templates at the same strength (whiter than currently) and only use stronger variants of the same colour for column headings...  Anyway Gale, if you want to revert the experimental colour in the GSoC Ideas Key, and-or try other ideas out, that's absolutely fine with me.

- James

Older text:

You asked in an edit summary if I wanted the text black.Yes I would like that!

I think when we're using light non-white backgrounds black text is generally the right thing, and when using dark coloured backgrounds white text is generally the right thing - though we've still a bit of a problem with dark link colours on dark backgrounds.

I would guess this will work well if done across all templates. Different people have different colour perception. Years ago I wrote a high-definition imaging application where I set the colours as yellow on red, as that for me (at that time) gave the strongest and best contrast. Other people couldn't look at it! I eventually ended up with light green on grey or white on grey as the combination that gave good contrast and was restful on the eye, not just for me but for other people too. Most wikis use colour in a more restrained way than we do. Wikipedia is a good model to follow when looking for choices of colours....

Suf was strongly in favour of green text in the Hint Template, but my eyes hurt with the green we had, and it took a long time to find a green that was acceptable (to me) both as standard weight and bold. I think like most things it's a bit of a balancing act - it's good to remember that not everyone can see colours the same way, on the other hand colours *can* be very useful in web design and I don't think we necessarily have to slavishly follow what some people would see as the drab Wikipedia colour model. I have actually seen some quite colourful pages using other Wiki software.

Anyway, though I like the current green text in Hint, I'll make it black as I think it's safer, and the pink on grey Code template colours are not really satisfactory either, as Edgar pointed out. I would suggest for this, black text on a light pink background - such a background was what the old software used - though I am open to argument.

Gale