Puppy Website: Looks, Bugs, Wishlists

A home for all kinds of Puppy related projects
Message
Author
wiak
Posts: 2040
Joined: Tue 11 Dec 2007, 05:12
Location: not Bulgaria

keep it friendly for the blind user

#21 Post by wiak »

I would ask that you carefully take accessibility issues into account.
Overly complex websites are not friendly, for example, to the blind user.
Graphics should include text link alternatives.
Flash etc is no use.
Frames can be a real pain.
Complex javascript doesn't work with the text browsers available to the blind (e.g. edbrowse, and e links).
They can handle some simple javascript, but that's all.
Even the way text is written can make it unlistenable to by screen readers.
For example, email should be written as e mail.
Screen readers often don't work well with long lines of text.
The lines need to be broken up better.
Basically web pages need to be run through a screen reader to see how they 'sound',
not just tested on alternative browsers...
Unfortunately, almost no-one bothers doing that.
Generally people don't think about the problem,
but it is high time they did.
The web is becoming more inaccessible to the blind all the time.

User avatar
Lobster
Official Crustacean
Posts: 15522
Joined: Wed 04 May 2005, 06:06
Location: Paradox Realm
Contact:

#22 Post by Lobster »

Generally people don't think about the problem,
People are selfish. I spend my time dreaming of shell fish.
As the web site develops, provide feedback on what needs changing and improving.
If you do this, I feel sure it can be incorporated. :)

Does that smiley sound as "colon close bracket"?
Puppy Raspup 8.2Final 8)
Puppy Links Page http://www.smokey01.com/bruceb/puppy.html :D

nic2109
Posts: 405
Joined: Mon 01 Jan 2007, 20:24
Location: Hayslope, near Middlemarch, Midlands, England

Re: keep it friendly for the blind user

#23 Post by nic2109 »

wiak wrote:I would ask that you carefully take accessibility issues into account.
Overly complex websites are not friendly, for example, to the blind user.
Graphics should include text link alternatives.
Flash etc is no use.
Frames can be a real pain.
Complex javascript doesn't work with the text browsers available to the blind (e.g. edbrowse, and e links).
They can handle some simple javascript, but that's all.
Even the way text is written can make it unlistenable to by screen readers.
For example, email should be written as e mail.
Screen readers often don't work well with long lines of text.
The lines need to be broken up better.
Basically web pages need to be run through a screen reader to see how they 'sound',
not just tested on alternative browsers...
Unfortunately, almost no-one bothers doing that.
Generally people don't think about the problem,
but it is high time they did.
The web is becoming more inaccessible to the blind all the time.
Thanks for introducing this aspect of the design-criteria. Here in the UK the Disability Discrimination Act (aka "DDA") applies to everyone who "provides a service" and while an amorphous forum like this may not be considered to be "A Service" within the meaning of the Act, if we want to take our social responsibilities seriously we should behave as if we ARE covered.

So; what can we do? Quite a lot actually, and wiak has spelled out much of it already.

The main thing is to ensure that W3C Accessibility Guidelines are followed. This one act alone will deliver almost everything necessary to (a) be DDA Compliant and (b) ensure a clear, clean, easy to read and easy-to-navigate-around design that will be good for everyone to use.

The other thing to do is to try it out with suitable testers and take their feedback into account. This probably means sitting side-by-side for a while trying things out and re-working where necessary.

The downside of all this is that if you've not started out in the right direction then it's potentially a lot of re-work. The upside is that once the framework is built to the proper standards adding and changing content is simple as it will inherit the necessary characterisitics and fit in easily.

And the chief benefit is that following the guidelines will deliver a better design all round so everyone benefits.

For the Guidelines themselves take a look at http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/ for version 1 of the Guidelines, at http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag20 for version 2, and at http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-frien ... s-20.shtml for a discussion about the differences between the two. (Many other web pages are available and Googling for 'WCAG' will find you more than enough!)

You will observe that some of the discussion centres on how un-readable the standards are, which is a rich but sad irony!
[color=darkblue][b][size=150]Nick[/size][/b][/color]

User avatar
Aitch
Posts: 6518
Joined: Wed 04 Apr 2007, 15:57
Location: Chatham, Kent, UK

#24 Post by Aitch »

That's a big thumbs up from me for nic2109, & wiak's suggestions, as you know I'm a great supporter of 'support for the disadvantaged'

Not only will this give great 'kudos' to Puppy & the development team, but in the future could turn out to become cited as a model 'howto' for other 'not so aware' distros in future reviews

Not only that, it will save a lot of work, having to rework it all, once the DDA starts giving rise to prosecutions, which will eventually happen
[PS there are grants from the EU for disability oriented projects, for those who don't know & fancy getting involved]

Just think how long it took to get ramps in pavements, & lo floor buses
Just because you cannot see or hear, or have some other 'difference'
does not make you an alien
but sadly we live in a world of norms, which explains m$'s success

It's the simple things that matter, IMHO
Awareness is simple

Good Post, Nick

Aitch

User avatar
prit1
Posts: 542
Joined: Fri 04 Jan 2008, 00:10
Location: Los Angeles

#25 Post by prit1 »

I have started a thread for collecting the Puppy package lists.

Here is the thread.

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 368#185368

If anyone know of any package list files, please reply in that thread.

The idea is to provide a Software Search feature in the Puppy Website.

User avatar
tombh
Posts: 422
Joined: Fri 12 Jan 2007, 12:27
Location: Bristol, UK
Contact:

#26 Post by tombh »

I've made a couple of changes on the website, I think they're all visible from the front page.

*Using rastapax's master images for the logo now.
*Hyperlinks underline on hover.
*Paw background opacity reduced (still no 4th paw yet!).

*One main screenshot of the latest official Puppy on the front page.
*Bare minimum of information and links on front page -- but seems a little empty to me. But then the persistent navigation gives a good indication of what is in the site. I would personally like to see as much timely (therefore automatically updated) content as possible on the front page. Like latest news, latest forum discussion, most discussed forum thread, recent software package, snippet from Barry's blog, latest Puplet etc... These can all be programmed to update without user intervention you see.

@LOF: As you can see I've implemented some of the changes you've suggested. If I provide the original images that go to make up the blue rounded boxes and tabs, would you be able to make some new ones? I would suggest offering a broader redesign but I'm a little apprehensive about redoing everything from scratch. I'm sure you appreciate that it is a lot of work to make sure a design can stretch to different text sizes and resolutions so I would only want to rethink the whole design if it was really necessary.

Here are the images: navbar.jpg and tab.jpg

If the dimensions and background colour remain the same then I will not need to recode any CSS to implement the changes, just simply replace the images over FTP. I use this single-image-rounded-corners technique for the Puppy website.

@wiak, nic2109:
Thanks very much for your thoughts and suggestions. Making the website as widely accessible as possible is something I am very interested in. The more I get into web design the more I see that all the various facets are actually aspects of the same thing. Design, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), Usability and Accessibility are really just there for the simple act of getting nuggets of information from one person to another as efficiently and as painlessly as possible. Aesthetics is not a purely subjective thing, where is the elegance in something that simply isn't usable!? An accessible website may be useful to the visually impaired but it will also be easier to spider by google thus also making it more search engine friendly.

And it is from this perspective that the W3C standards are written, they're not just some pedantic collection of nerdy checklists, but they're there to support the whole process of communication over the Web. So I'm a keen zealot of W3C compliance, not every page I've created has been valid code, sometimes it is just impossible, but most of them have been. So naturally I've considered the standards for the Puppy site and I hope that most of it will validate. There's certainly not going to be any flash, well maybe if we integrate some of Rhino's videos (depends what format they're in), there is a tiny bit of AJAX (ie Javascript) to enable the custom puppy google search to display results in the page and there will be no frames.

There's a lot to read through in some of those W3C links, I definitely won't be able to get through it all. Also I guess it might be harder to implement these considerations in the WIKI and the Manual because of volume and diversity of contributors. So I'll keep rummaging through those links, strive to make the code compliant and then would someone be able to test out the main pages through a screen reader to see how we're doing?

raffy
Posts: 4798
Joined: Wed 25 May 2005, 12:20
Location: Manila

800px screen

#27 Post by raffy »

Just noted that the text gets way below the screen in 800px wide screen in the manual pages, example is at http://74.54.199.50/~whodo/manual/english/how-get-puppy

The need for allowing 800px-wide screen was discussed somewhere else, but it seems logical to post this issue here. Thanks.
Puppy user since Oct 2004. Want FreeOffice? [url=http://puppylinux.info/topic/freeoffice-2012-sfs]Get the sfs (English only)[/url].

User avatar
tombh
Posts: 422
Joined: Fri 12 Jan 2007, 12:27
Location: Bristol, UK
Contact:

#28 Post by tombh »

is that better?

raffy
Posts: 4798
Joined: Wed 25 May 2005, 12:20
Location: Manila

Nice 800px screen

#29 Post by raffy »

Hey, am looking at a nice 800px screen right now - thanks, Tom!

raffy
Posts: 4798
Joined: Wed 25 May 2005, 12:20
Location: Manila

server error

#30 Post by raffy »

(After more than 24 hours at hostgator.com)
Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@puppylinux.org and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Apache/1.3.41 Server at www.puppylinux.org Port 80
Puppy user since Oct 2004. Want FreeOffice? [url=http://puppylinux.info/topic/freeoffice-2012-sfs]Get the sfs (English only)[/url].

User avatar
tombh
Posts: 422
Joined: Fri 12 Jan 2007, 12:27
Location: Bristol, UK
Contact:

#31 Post by tombh »

Mmm, so I see. It seems to be intermittent, there is a chance it could be to do with high traffic. I have emailed support to look into this. I'll keep you update with progress.
[url=http://www.tombh.co.uk/colour_memories/contribute.php]Colour-Memories Database[/url]

User avatar
HairyWill
Posts: 2928
Joined: Fri 26 May 2006, 23:29
Location: Southampton, UK

#32 Post by HairyWill »

I'm still having problems with intermittent dns resolution results

http://www.puppylinux.org/wikka gives
Fatal error: session_start(): Failed to initialize storage module: user (path: /imports/phpsessions) in /mounted-storage/home7/sub003/sc14300-FRIH/puppylinux/wikka/wikka.php on line 1150

http://www.puppylinux.org/ and index.html
redirects to
http://puppylinux.com/
index.php or index.htm gives the same 404 as below


http://www.puppylinux.org/admin gives a custom 404
File not found - could we help?
The requested URL /admin was not found here.
Please click here to search Puppy Linux sites
for what you need, or visit puppylinux.com.
(The server is being changed. Thanks for your patience.)
Will
contribute: [url=http://www.puppylinux.org]community website[/url], [url=http://tinyurl.com/6c3nm6]screenshots[/url], [url=http://tinyurl.com/6j2gbz]puplets[/url], [url=http://tinyurl.com/57gykn]wiki[/url], [url=http://tinyurl.com/5dgr83]rss[/url]

raffy
Posts: 4798
Joined: Wed 25 May 2005, 12:20
Location: Manila

mix-up

#33 Post by raffy »

Will, those outputs are from servage pages, so the old domain pointer must be working in those cases.

As to resolving the URL containing "wikka", maybe these cases have to be handled in the 404.php page:

puppylinux.org/wikka/ (it's there already, but does it go to the new wiki main page?)
puppylinux.org/wikka (no trailing slash)

Thanks.
Puppy user since Oct 2004. Want FreeOffice? [url=http://puppylinux.info/topic/freeoffice-2012-sfs]Get the sfs (English only)[/url].

User avatar
tombh
Posts: 422
Joined: Fri 12 Jan 2007, 12:27
Location: Bristol, UK
Contact:

#34 Post by tombh »

I've just spoken to support at Hostgator and the account is suspended due to "excessive CPU load". The formal email notification has been sent to WhoDo, so I only have a few details. It is not 100% certain that high traffic has caused this, there is a chance that it is just inefficient PHP code. However, it seems that the traffic was reaching 4000 visitors per day (for the front page alone) after the domain was redirected, which is a fair amount.

It would be good to know for certain what caused the CPU load, but it does seem we're going to need more power. I think it would be best to discuss this with Hostgator to see what they say, because it'd be worth getting a package that isn't going to do this to us again the future. Excessive CPU usage is not something I have had to deal with before so I'm not sure what the minimum requirements will be for a site such as puppylinux.org.
[url=http://www.tombh.co.uk/colour_memories/contribute.php]Colour-Memories Database[/url]

User avatar
WhoDo
Posts: 4428
Joined: Wed 12 Jul 2006, 01:58
Location: Lake Macquarie NSW Australia

#35 Post by WhoDo »

tombh wrote:It would be good to know for certain what caused the CPU load, but it does seem we're going to need more power. I think it would be best to discuss this with Hostgator to see what they say, because it'd be worth getting a package that isn't going to do this to us again the future. Excessive CPU usage is not something I have had to deal with before so I'm not sure what the minimum requirements will be for a site such as puppylinux.org.
I have emailed you the ticket from Host Gator so you can see the cause. Basically, we chose an inopportune time to repoint the domain. Barry's announcement of Dingo 4.0 Final has hit Distrowatch at exactly the same time as the domain was repointed. The problem is on the Download page, where there have been 4000 requests in a short space of time.

Our CPU usage has been pegged at 25% of capacity. I presume that means we are sharing with 3 other sites. Usage went to 33% at times due to downloads. I have asked Host Gator to accept communications from you to sort out the underlying problems, if any.
[i]Actions speak louder than words ... and they usually work when words don't![/i]
SIP:whodo@proxy01.sipphone.com; whodo@realsip.com

raffy
Posts: 4798
Joined: Wed 25 May 2005, 12:20
Location: Manila

404

#36 Post by raffy »

To begin with, the 404.php (missing URL catch page) queries Drupal for a matching wiki page. If there are many wikka visits, then this will certainly load the CPU.

How about a simple htaccess redirect to pupweb.org/wikka for puppylinux.org/wikka URLs, but I post in the skin of the old wikka the new/correct wiki URL? (I would need the recommended new wiki URL for this.)

This way, we minimize (avoid) the use of 404.php for wikka URLs.

EDIT: Just saw WhoDo's post. A static front page could help cope with visitors simply looking for download URL. There are also many feeds in the current front page - I wonder if they use CPU time (i.e., if scripts are run by the feeds)?
Puppy user since Oct 2004. Want FreeOffice? [url=http://puppylinux.info/topic/freeoffice-2012-sfs]Get the sfs (English only)[/url].

nic2109
Posts: 405
Joined: Mon 01 Jan 2007, 20:24
Location: Hayslope, near Middlemarch, Midlands, England

#37 Post by nic2109 »

This thread might be relevant to this issue :-

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=196203

It's a suggestion for putting BitTorrent into all Puppies with the option to start seeding whenever you boot.

This is a longer-term fix but would spread out the server load, so might help us avoid being suspended again. Especially if Distrowatch could quote a Torrent link as well as ftp and http.
[color=darkblue][b][size=150]Nick[/size][/b][/color]

User avatar
Aitch
Posts: 6518
Joined: Wed 04 Apr 2007, 15:57
Location: Chatham, Kent, UK

#38 Post by Aitch »

@tombh/raffy/WhoDo

hi guys,

don't know if this may be any use for the website[s] you're working on?

http://www.networkuptime.com/tools/netflow/

Aitch

User avatar
WhoDo
Posts: 4428
Joined: Wed 12 Jul 2006, 01:58
Location: Lake Macquarie NSW Australia

New Website back LIVE!

#39 Post by WhoDo »

Just a note of congratulations to Tom for the hard work he put in last evening to sort out the new website and its problems with CPU usage.

The new website is now back up and LIVE!

Problems have been handled in the short term with caching and throttling on downloads, to ensure we don't exceed our 25% CPU allocation again. I'm sure Tom will be refining things over time to take care of the longer term issues.

I've had a browse through the new site and everything looks just great! A great big THANK YOU to Tom and his team of wiki maintainers and helpers - Lobster, HairyWill, prit1, oli, and everyone else.
[i]Actions speak louder than words ... and they usually work when words don't![/i]
SIP:whodo@proxy01.sipphone.com; whodo@realsip.com

User avatar
tombh
Posts: 422
Joined: Fri 12 Jan 2007, 12:27
Location: Bristol, UK
Contact:

#40 Post by tombh »

Thanks Whodo :) And a big thanks to everyone else too, there's a lot of you who have genuinely put a lot of work into this project.

Well goodness me, that was quite a ride! First hostgator suspended the account, then WhoDo was in bed so couldn't answer the ticket, then when he was up, I was in bed and so the re-opened account just underwent the same CPU overload as before and went under again. Then I waited all day for Hostgator to re-re-open the account, so I could get my foot in the door to turn off all the heavy PHP scripts. Then there were a few niggles with optimisation and throttling but finally the site is up and running and I have reduced the CPU load from 20 to 1, not bad.

I'm away all day tomorrow, but when I get back I'll be able to slowly start turning things back on to see what is causing the hikes. We'll get there yet :)

Onwards and Upwards.

PS The account was suspended for CPU overload not bandwidth usage, puppylinux.org does not provide any ISOs itself so torrenting would not really help this site directly. Thanks for the idea though.

PPS Hairywill, SSH is re-enabled if you want to keep an eye on CPU load whilst I'm away.
[url=http://www.tombh.co.uk/colour_memories/contribute.php]Colour-Memories Database[/url]

Post Reply