From: "Eric Niebler" <eric@boost-consulting.com>
Rob Stewart wrote:
1. My browser's "always underline links" setting is not being respected. <snip>
2. My browser's link colors are not being honored. <snip>
These specific design issues can be revisited, but the larger question is of a style-sheet overriding browser defaults. Are you against any website creating a distinct look-n-feel by customizing settings such as these?
I set those options for a reason. I don't like it when different web sites usurp my settings and decide what links should look like. Each site has its own ideas about how they should look, so it's hard to know what is and isn't a link at any given site.
3. Sans serif text is harder to read. You should use a font with serifs for the body text and sans serif fonts for headings.
This issue was discussed on the boost-docs list. I put up a side-by-side comparison of serif and sans-serif documentation, and without exception, everyone there found sans-serif to be both more attractive *and* easier to read than serif, even those who initially expressed doubt. If you feel strongly about this point, I suggest you re-open the discussion on boost-docs. Many people you would need to convice loiter there.
Perhaps it has to do with the serif and sans-serif fonts selected. I overrode the CSS settings to use my default settings which means New Century Schoolbook as the serif face (and Helvetica as the sans-serif face). The serif text was far more readable. What serif face did you specify, if any, in your test? I also realize that it may not be possible to select a good, portable, reasonably short set of serif faces to get good cross platform results (not to mention that I don't think you can specify a list of fonts, with faces and sizes, to try until one is found on a given platform). That may mean specifying nothing more than serif and hoping that the user has defined a good default. -- Rob Stewart stewart@sig.com Software Engineer http://www.sig.com Susquehanna International Group, LLP using std::disclaimer;