The style template for the web page used for announces does not interact well with the internal WIKI

[Kate Stewart]

When preparing for a release announce, the information is gathered on Ubuntu WIKI pages:
  https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NattyNarwhal/TechnicalOverview (as of 2011/03/03)

translates to:
  http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/natty/alpha3

The external web style guide has some unfortunate side effects that make the information look unprofessional.

1) space before section headings is not preserved for 4th level headings.
    see:
The effect of deleting an override file is to revert the job (immediately) back to its original configuration.
Socket Bridge

2) outdenting of bullet forms from text looks ugly

3) table of contents as formatted irritates, rather than helps with comprehension of document.
    - interferes with flow of text,
    - doesn't change width to improve readability if page resized, stays narrow.
    - has spaces between sections
    - only single space between hierarchy level

4) Lots of white space on either side of real text that seems a waste, esp. around that table of contents.

5) hard to tell hierarchy and information ordering (ie. what's a sub heading vs. sub sub heading).

This is being run on a default Firefox configuration on:
Description: Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS
Release: 10.04

Let me know if you need some screen shots.

I think this needs to get filed against ubuntu-website-content, but that doesn't seem to be recognized by https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebug as a valid option.

[Kate Stewart (kate.stewart)]

ok, another bug, filebug doesn't recognize ubuntu-website-content, but I can select it once the bug has been created... *sigh*

Given we're putting out releases, several times a year, and its our public face to developers, it would be nice if this looked a bit better. Have marked it as medium priority for now based on that.

[Jono Bacon (jonobacon)]

+1 from me on this - I think a screenshot would be useful in seeing what Kate is referring to.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

I don't believe this bug report needs fixing in Ubuntu the distribution rather just in the ubuntu-website-content project so I am marking the Ubuntu task as Invalid.

[Inayaili de León (yaili)]

We're looking at solving this problem at the moment. I'm wondering though, is this content directly replicated from the Wiki, or is edited in any way? If it is simply a copy, do we want to address the fact that we're duplicating content?

[Ellen Arnold (ellenjanearnold)]

Just had a chat with Kate, Steve and Matt about the best way to tackle this issue. For the Alpha 1 release, Matt was able to clone and redirect to the wiki page. As this was successful, we'll continue with this for the remaining Alpha releases. There is concern regarding load and access rights for higher volume releases, however.

Action plan:

Test if load is an issue and look into reducing access to the wiki. If successful, we will continue.

*Steve to liase with IS regarding the load and access issues.

If either of the above proves to be an issue, we will create a template to resolve the design issues before the beta release.

DEADLINE FOR THIS DECISION: July 15th

I will update as we receive more information. :)

[Ellen Arnold (ellenjanearnold)]

Hi all,

What's the status on this? My understanding is that this is being fixed without the need for web team support. Can anyone confirm that please?

Thanks!

ellen

[Steve Edwards (steve-edwards)]

Resolved. Future release notes are to be published on the wiki only and referenced from Ubuntu.com by way of a redirect (e.g. http://www.ubuntu.com/release-notes/oneiric-ocelot). The web team will strive to improve the design of the wiki page – a new stylesheet has been created and will be uploaded to Launchpad shortly.