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#1 10 May 2016 09:22

moconnell
Member
Registered: 13 Dec 2006
Posts: 8

Bring back the road signs

I thought the old road sign buttons looked 'cool'. (as shown at https://www.rarst.net/web/ss64/ )I've only just noticed they've gone although it's probably been years, but I still think it was an unusual look that 'worked' and added to ss64.com's 'brand' without detracting form the simplicity.

Anyway I'd like them back  smile the 'home' page looks a bit boring now..

Last edited by moconnell (10 May 2016 16:29)

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#2 10 May 2016 23:43

Simon Sheppard
Admin
Registered: 27 Aug 2005
Posts: 1,130
Website

Re: Bring back the road signs

Those menus ran from 2008 until May 2013 and for most of that time we had duplicate text and image links on the home page like this:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120317170 … /ss64.com/

While text is good for SEO it starts to make the home page look rather busy once you have more than 8 sections. (We now have 12)
Switching from images to 'all CSS' allows the navigation buttons to be actual text, which has a number of advantages. The text is sharper, it scales with different sized displays, it can be searched and it's much smaller which makes the page load time much faster.

I did test some designs that recreated the old look using CSS and SVG or background images, but I couldnt get that approach to work reliably on more than one browser at a time. It also used more bandwidth than the old design. There probably is some way to do this with CSS polygons, but those don't yet work with Internet Explorer - maybe one day.

One hidden feature is that you can navigate using the keyboard, pressing TAB moves between the buttons and RETURN will click them, so you can navigate the whole website without needing a mouse.

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#3 18 May 2016 12:31

moconnell
Member
Registered: 13 Dec 2006
Posts: 8

Re: Bring back the road signs

" I couldnt get that approach to work reliably on more than one browser at a time"
Yeah it was just a thought, I guess it's the type of site that's got to work on all platforms, including legacy ones smile

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