Monthly News – August 2021

Releases and other announcements.
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clem
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Monthly News – August 2021

Post by clem »

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Terryphi
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Re: Monthly News – August 2021

Post by Terryphi »

Very sorry to heat that the Darker theme variant is to be removed. For me this gives the perfect balance between dark and light. Please reconsider!
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greengreen
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Re: Monthly News – August 2021

Post by greengreen »

Terryphi wrote: Thu Sep 02, 2021 11:32 am Very sorry to heat that the Darker theme variant is to be removed. For me this gives the perfect balance between dark and light. Please reconsider!
Hi,
What does a variant mean?
I look at the theme window and I don't see one.
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Terryphi
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Re: Monthly News – August 2021

Post by Terryphi »

Mint-Y-Darker. (Look in Appearance>Theme.)
Last edited by Terryphi on Fri Sep 03, 2021 6:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
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greengreen
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Re: Monthly News – August 2021

Post by greengreen »

Terryphi wrote: Fri Sep 03, 2021 2:18 am Mimt-Y-Darker. (Look in Appearance>Theme.)
Thanks.
Then I agree with you.
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Deanello
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Re: Monthly News – August 2021

Post by Deanello »

clem wrote: Wed Sep 01, 2021 2:35 pm https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4130
Titlebars are being redesigned. Ubuntu’s default titlebar is very similar to ours but with a more intuitive maximize/unmaximize icon and larger buttons. We’re bringing this in Mint-Y.
This is definitely not necessary to do. I assure you. Please do not change this part. What is now and so incredibly intuitive and beautiful looks.
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greengreen
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Re: Monthly News – August 2021

Post by greengreen »

Deanello wrote: Sun Sep 05, 2021 4:27 pm
clem wrote: Wed Sep 01, 2021 2:35 pm https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4130
Titlebars are being redesigned. Ubuntu’s default titlebar is very similar to ours but with a more intuitive maximize/unmaximize icon and larger buttons. We’re bringing this in Mint-Y.
This is definitely not necessary to do. I assure you. Please do not change this part. What is now and so incredibly intuitive and beautiful looks.
If you have a backup of your current theme, you may be able to use it in 20.3.
/usr/share/themes
However, it would be a shame if the specifications were changed so that the window border part and control part could not be selected individually.
What will happen?
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Re: Monthly News – August 2021

Post by arvY99 »

greengreen wrote: Sun Sep 05, 2021 7:13 pm
If you have a backup of your current theme, you may be able to use it in 20.3.
/usr/share/themes
Which folder within /usr/share/themes are you speaking about to backup the current theme? All of them or a specific one (Default? Linux Mint?)? :oops:
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greengreen
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Re: Monthly News – August 2021

Post by greengreen »

arvY99 wrote: Sat Sep 11, 2021 6:06 am
greengreen wrote: Sun Sep 05, 2021 7:13 pm
If you have a backup of your current theme, you may be able to use it in 20.3.
/usr/share/themes
Which folder within /usr/share/themes are you speaking about to backup the current theme? All of them or a specific one (Default? Linux Mint?)? :oops:
It can be all of them, or just Mint-Y-Darker. It's up to you.
If you want to use it in 20.3, you rename the backed up folder (eg Mint-Y-Darker2)
Move that folder here.
~ / .themes
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callagg2
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Re: Monthly News – August 2021

Post by callagg2 »

I am another one that uses Mint-Y-Darker-Aqua as my theme ( Mint-X-Teal as icons) - I will be sad to see the darker theme go ;-(
For me, I think it was easier to determine which window is active, the other themes made it really difficult. Would love to be able to assign a colour such as Teal to the titlebar of the active window like in Windows.

On another note, I was looking at the website, very impressed, great job by all involved. It's always a good sign when you go looking for bugs and all you can find are predantic ones.

Anyway, what i think are bugs on the new website...

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1) Main landing page. Scroll down to the section for blogs. Open any blog, then try to return to original website again. I found it difficult to return, selecting the Linux Mint logo at the top of the screen did nothing. Selecting the hotdog menu on blog.linuxmint.com did not give me an option to return to the main Linux Mint webpage.

2) On a tablet browser, open a website, say www.sailfishos.org. Select the browser's hotdog menu and then choose save the URL to the home screen. The browser saves a shortcut URL and the sailfishos logo is used for the shortcut. Likewise, open https://reopen.europa.eu/en and again chose save the URL to home screen, the logo for Europa appears. Now, try doing the same for Linuxmint.com, all I get is the letter "L", no logo.

3) On the page entitled Donors on a tablet, on a 7-inch tablet in portrait mode, the bar chart overlays the text. It is better in landscape mode, only a small amount of the right of the bar chart overlays the text on the right. Maybe it should be a dynamic table/chart (see the table of Latest donors) or a thumbnail image that you can select to view a zoomed up image. On desktop, LMDE4, Firefox 78.14.0esr the graph doesn't even appear.

4) On the page entitled Donors, the bit on "How to donate", there is a euro symbol missing in the sentence "You can make a donation in $ USD or € euro. As per the ECB standards in 1999, "euro" is never written with a capital "E" nor with a plural (not that the British or US media ever read the standards but a quick visit to www.Europa.eu or www.bis.org would tell them that's the case.)

5) The page on "About Linux Mint", the bullet points listed under Purpose, where a bullet point wraps to a second line, the first letter of the second line should appear directly under the first letter of the first line. Currently, the first letter of the second line is appearing under the bullet point dot. It looks really poor on a 7inch tablet, not great on a desktop.

6) The page on "About Linux Mint", Second last bullet under Purpose currently ends with a comma, it should end with a full stop for consistency. Arguably, we should have a comma or en-dash instead of a full stop after "It's safe and reliable"

7) The page on Privacy & Cookies, again same issue with bullet points under Guiding Principles, the first letter of the wrapped second line should be under the first letter of the first line

8) The page on Privacy & Cookies, under the heading Google Analytics, should "which" read "whose" in the sentence "Linux Mint uses Google Analytics for pages which URL starts with linuxmint/start/."

9) The page on Teams, the second table should be a dynamic table like that of "List of Donors", currently it looks fine on desktop but looks poor on tablets

10) Bottom of the page says "If you can't find what you're looking for contact us", aside from the comma omitted after the word "for" in that sentence, it doesn't say how to contact you. Should the Contact Us not be hyperlinked to the Contact Us page?

11) The page on Mirrors, should those tables not be dynamic like those on the "Latest Donors" table. I find that on tablet, you miss a lot of the table on the right unless you physically drag the whole page to the left. Also, should the location of mirrors and repository mirrors not be sorted alphabetically?

12) The arrows in the dropdown down menu are tiny on tablets - barely see them, on desktop they are better but yeah not for me anyway.  
I've no doubt that many of these are subjective, but to me, they would look like bugs.
Apologies for typos here and there, I didn't read back over my own comments ( I know, the irony! :D )
callagg2
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Re: Monthly News – August 2021

Post by callagg2 »

I did have some feedback that is more subjective than my comments above.

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1) On the main page, where we say "Install it on your computer today" - I would be try to de-emphasize the word "installation" as it sounds final, and might deter less technical people. Could say something along the lines of "Give it a spin on a memory stick on your computer today,  and if you like it, you can install it at no cost”.

2) While surfing on a 7-inch tablet, on the main page of the website, if i scroll a bit down, then select the hotdog menu in the top right, the drop down menu is practically the same background colour as the website background colour (or at least it is in my browser). So, when i have dark mode on the browser both are dark, and if i choose light mode, both are white. Surely it would make sense to have them reversed. If I have dark mode chosen, the website background colour is white but the dropdown menu dark. If I have light mode chosen, the website background colour is dark but the dropdown menu light. At least on desktop, it’s not as bad, because the dropdowns for Download, Project, and Links have a green banner at the bottom, but About does not. As I said, I would prefer alternative light/dark, or even a dropped shadow around the dropdown menu.

3) Again on 7-inch tablet, in the dropdown menu, should i choose Project, the dropdown menu only goes as far down as About, actually it cuts off some of the work About, and it hides Links, you physically need to put your finger on the screen and drag up the menu to see Links. Similarly, choosing About sees the word Links being cut off by the bottom of the drop down menu.

4) Dropdown menu - If i choose Download, it is not abundantly clear that Latest version and Other versions are not clickable. You would have to know that Linuxmint 20.2 in 2021 is the latest version to click on that. I know you've bolded the headings  but still think having some form of table outline under the headings might be better. Also, looks a bit odd for the title to have a small letter "V" in "version" and "versions", yet "Mint" and "Versions" both have capital letters and they are the second word also. If anything the titles "Latest Version" and "Other Versions" should be title case. Furthermore, "All versions" can't be underneath "Other versions" because it includes the "Latest versions" by definition. It's a contradiction. Also, LMDE4 is the current version of LMDE. You would have been better removing the headings Latest version and Other versions, and leaving it as one column. Then you could say Linux Mint 20.2 (Ubuntu Package Base), under that say LMDE 4 (Debian Package Base), and then other that just saying Archive or Older Versions.

5) Dropdown menu for Project. Again the separation of the headings could be improved. Say I choose "Get Involved" under Contributing, then I'm met with a thank you message followed by the Financial help (Donations/Sponsorships), Support and promotion (join the community), and contributions. But on the Project part of the dropdown, there are already separate options to choose Donors, Sponsors and Partners under Funding. Just seems strange to separate them on the menu but bunch them together on the "Get Involved" page. I would assume it’s a legacy thing from the old website. Maybe instead of "Get Involved" we should just replace it on the menu with "Support and promotion", and "Project contributions"

6) On the “Latest donors” table, would it be possible to add options on each column title to sort by A-z, or Z-A or maybe that a programming nightmare for little benefit gained.

7) The Page on Sponsors, it looks odd to see the green clickable box reading "Apply to become a sponsor" directly under the lead-in sentence "Linux Mint is proudly sponsored by the following organizations" I would reverse the order of them both.

8) The page on Sponsors, perhaps reduce the gap between each of the gold, silver and bronze sponsors (not too bad on desktop, but the gap can be large on smaller displays). Also, the page is very white, maybe you could shade the background gold, silver, bronze behind the sponsors – though that might look crap in hindsight. Perhaps have them in a table with gold, silver, or bronze shields behind their logo, don't now, but i just think the small green headings Gold Sponsors, Silver Sponsors and Bronze Sponsors are very small – especially on tablet. It’s a pity that some of the logo  use more white space than others, because it can give the impression the whole png/svg logo is bigger, see "Sucuri" versus say "THINK PEGUIN".  

9) While fine on Desktop, on tablets, I think there is too much a vertical gap (padding) in the Green banner between the Linuxmint logo and say the page title Store, or Donors, or Sponsors etc. Maybe while on smaller displays, to save vertical space, the page title should be squeezed between the "LM" logo on the left and the hotdog menu on the right, we don't need the "linuxmint" there. But hell, when looking at it on desktop, i think it would involve too much switching between both orientations so just live with it as it is on tablets/phones.

10) The page on About Linux Mint, the first bullet point under Purpose, i think this should be two bullets. "It works out of the box and is extremely easy to use", "It comes with full multimedia support". I would also rewrite "Based on Debian and Ubuntu, it provides about 30,000 packages and one of the best software managers" to "Drawing upon software repositories from Debian and Ubuntu, it provides access to almost 30,000 packages." "One of the first Linux distributions to offer its users a software manager, continuous innovation has maintained it as one of the leading software managers." or something like that, we should separate out the number of packages from the quality/design of the Software Manager, your Software Manager doesn’t offer a large number of packages, those packages have user reviews and the Software Manager itself is easy to navigate. For that reason, i think it’s best to separate the points.

11) At the very bottom of the page, again not sure why we need these Quick Links and Info headings or the clickable links underneath, as they are all in the hotdog menu. But more importantly, I do think the heading Support should be in the hotdog menu, certainly the Installation Guide could be part of the Download section of the Hotdog menu - currently  it is under Documentation. Also should Forums should be under Contributing in the section of Project on the hotdog menu, it's currently under Links.
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Mick-Cork
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Re: Monthly News – August 2021

Post by Mick-Cork »

callagg2 wrote: Sat Sep 18, 2021 9:54 am On another note, I was looking at the website, very impressed, great job by all involved. It's always a good sign when you go looking for bugs and all you can find are predantic ones.

Anyway, what i think are bugs on the new website...

Code: Select all

5) The page on "About Linux Mint", the bullet points listed under Purpose, where a bullet point wraps to a second line, the first letter of the second line should appear directly under the first letter of the first line. Currently, the first letter of the second line is appearing under the bullet point dot. It looks really poor on a 7inch tablet, not great on a desktop.

7) The page on Privacy & Cookies, again same issue with bullet points under Guiding Principles, the first letter of the wrapped second line should be under the first letter of the first line.
Hi callag, you've put in quite some effort going through the new website.

I agree with you on the bullet point indents and thought I'd just drop in a quick suggestion in case the dev team want to test it: In the external stylesheet 'style.css', line 11913, change:

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ul, ol, dl {
  list-style-position: inside;
  padding: 0;
  margin: 0;
}
to

Code: Select all

ul, ol, dl {
  list-style-position: outside;
  padding: 0;
  margin: 0;
}
I've tested it via the FF inspector, and any wrapped lines in any <ul> <li> bullet list were indented to line up vertically with the start of the first line. This particular CSS setting applies site-wide to all bullet lists as they're not given individual classes in the site build, so will change both the 'About' and 'Privacy' lists as identified by yourself. Looks a lot neater when applied.
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