assets/style.css: deemphasize panels

[nmartensen]

The panels with links, table of contents, other versions/languages/sections dominate the visual appearance of the manpage display: They use graphical elements (white text on red background), a large font size, and on wide screens are located close to the center of the screen. This distracts from the actual manpage content.

With this pull request I'd like to propose a few small changes:

• move the panels to the right of screen (from right next to the manpage content)
• just use black on white panel titles
• decrease the panels' font size

What do you think?

(And while I am here: Thank you for the new manpages.debian.org service. This is absolutely fantastic.)

[stapelberg]

Thanks for the pull request. I can’t test it right now, so a before/after screenshot would be helpful for the discussion.

Note that the design was copied from the Debian package tracker, and I’d like to keep it consistent with the package tracker and other Debian properties. We can make small adjustments where they make sense, but in general, we shouldn’t deviate too much.

[nmartensen]

Before:

After:

[nmartensen]

Yes, the similarity in style to the package tracker is immediately recognizable. It just takes the focus away from the manpage text (IMHO). The style works for the tracker since it does not have any plain text main section.

The proposed style update makes this more similar to packages.debian.org (example: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/bash)

[stapelberg]

Thanks for providing the screenshot, that helps.

I understand your argument, but personally, I still prefer the panels as they are, mainly for consistency with the tracker.

It’s unfortunate that Debian doesn’t yethave enough web properties with shared elements to establish a consistent design language. Maybe we can ask Kalle Söderman (contact details at https://nm.debian.org/public/process/13089) for advice on how to reconcile our two different points of view? He seems to be the main driver behind the current design, see https://wiki.debian.org/KallesDesign.

As a stop-gap (or permanent, depending on how this discussion concludes) solution, consider using a user style sheet. See http://superuser.com/a/319322/108037

[nmartensen]

Well, the tracker does not (yet?) follow Kalle's design? Feel free to ask him, I'm not going to insist on anything :)

[bdrung]

I like the proposed change. The panels visual dominate the page, especially when they are not on the right side. The design from packages.debian.org (example: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/bash) would be better than the one from tracker.debian.org IMHO.