use of alerts on the help wiki

[Matthew East]

Hi Andrew,

On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 7:34 PM, Andrew Sayers
<andrew-ubuntu-doc at pileofstuff.org> wrote:
> I mean that someone wanting to write an OMGPONIES theme
> should be able to create bright pink alerts, preferably with bright pink
> icons.

No, I don't think that's necessary: it's adequate to have a macro
which is the same colour and uses the same icons for all themes. We
don't change themes too often on the help wiki, nor do we provide
alternative themes, and in the very unlikely event that a future theme
takes a drastically different direction, then we can always amend the
macro accordingly.

For that reason I've merged your revision 26, but not the other two.

I think the macro is now ready for use. Having said that, I'd quite
like to change the icons used - it's occurred to me that the icons on
http://library.gnome.org/devel/gdp-style-guide/stable/infodesign-18.html.en
are much more modern than the ones we use in the system help. The
transparency is also cleaner than ours, because ours have little white
edges around the image, because they were created manually.

> I might put a GPL2+ label on there later.

Great, I'll merge that revision if you give me a poke.

> Matthew East also wrote:
>> We wouldn't be ignoring it, it just wouldn't have transparent icons in
>> the Alert... The page should still be readable, right?
>
> Sure, for low values of readable.  I've attached an example icon using
> the proto-alert I used in https://help.ubuntu.com/community/VNC,
> although the effect will be the same.

That looks fine to me. The alert is readable and the rest of the text
on the page is unaffected.

> I've been using the following hack to get position: fixed in IE6:
>
>        http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/fixedPosition.html
>
> A Google search for "position: fixed ie6" shows that there may be better
> solutions now though.
>
> I hate IE6 as much as anyone, but to be blunt, if we don't optimise the
>  site for a browser with a 5% share, how are we any better than the
> people who wouldn't optimise for Firefox when it was in that position?

I think the answer is admirably expressed in the first paragraph of
the page you've linked above!

-- 
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF