Site designs, upgrades, and Konqueror

Hello all!

I've been thinking some about the site design but haven't done actual
coding since the last time I posted site addresses.

However, I am now the proud owner of a Mac sporting Mac OS X (with
Safari, IE, Mozilla, Mozilla Firebird, Camino, Omniweb, and Opera), Mac
OS9 emulation (Classic Mode) for Netscape 4.7 (considered moot, I know)
*and* (drumroll please) KDE running in XFree86 with Konqueror! Yes, I
know, this is all probably old hat to you guys, but it's a bit of an
accomplishment for me and this 266MHz G3 I've had for ages. I think
total compile time was something like 48 hours, testament both to the
processor and my inexperience installing software that isn't already in
a beautiful, simple, installer package. (Though I have installed
PostgreSQL from source, I most often use Marc Liyanage's handy binary
packages available at entropy.ch). I'm pretty happy about it. And I'm
looking forward to installing PostgreSQL 7.4 from source in the near
future. Thank you for listening, or at least remaining silent as you
roll your eyes :)

But, now that I've got Konqueror (3.1.2, running in KDE 3.1.2)up and
running, I have a better chance to see what you've been seeing, Josh.
And unfortunately, I can't seem to reproduce the same things. The pages
look pretty close to what I've been seeing in the other browsers. I
have noticed a slight glitch in page loading: I first see the page
unstyled *very* briefly, but then the page is properly displayed. I
think this mostly has to do with the speed of my machine and perhaps
running KDE in XFree86 (XDarwin). Another difference is on the "basic"
page (http://www.grzm.com/postgresql_org/html/index.htm) is the way
Konqueror renders the middots used as bullets. I've implemented those
css :before pseudo selectors, e.g.,

#latest dl dd:before {
content: "\00B7 \0020"
}
for the Latest News list. I hard-coded the middots in the "Upcoming
Events" box, and those work.

But I unfortunately I'm not seeing a wide white space pushing center
elements to the side. Maybe a Linux/Darwin difference? Anyway,
something I'll need to solve some other way.

One thing I was kind of surprised with in Konqueror was that the
minimum font size on my installation defaults to 7px, which is pretty
small. Is this the same on your installation, Josh? This is just out of
curiousity, as you didn't mention the size being too small in
Konqueror. I found the text in the Latest News and Upcoming Events too
small in Konqueror. It seems a bit bigger in Firebird and Safari.

Anyway, not a lot constructive here, just want to get some things
straightened out. Now that my machine is now finished compiling, I'll
be working on designs more. I'm aiming to get basically a good-looking
reproduction of the current site using XHTML and CSS, with the intent
on doing more "overhaul" type work at a later date when what's actually
to be on the page is a bit firmer. That sounds in keeping with Dave's
comments:

> Some priorities:
>
> 1) *All* elements of the existing site must be translatable through
> Andreas' new framework. Some are php/html static pages, some are
> php/html dynamic pages and some are fully dynamic.
>
> 2) We need to sort the basic design issues. Resizeability, is the main
> one.
>
> 3) We would ideally like to be XHTML strict/CSS2 compliant.
>
> Let's get those basic things done, and live with the existing content,
> and *then* start looking at merging sites and restucturing content etc.
> Once everything works, that should be a lot easier.

Am I on the right page? Or reading the wrong book?

By the way, congratulations on getting the presskits and pages up! From
the flurry of mail earlier this week, you guys put together a lot of
stuff in a short time.

Michael