EasyToRead

Posted by Simplify3 on June 10 2007, page edited by Simplify3 on Aug. 4 2007, (popular)
Source: http://free.naplesplus.us
3 rates

Tags: Skin Skins BBS EasyToRead Deskmate simplify3 yacs black text accessibility

From Kenneth Udut (simplify3@aol.com). Skin used at: http://free.naplesplus.us/ , a Collier County Florida community website.

I created a new skin at:

http://free.naplesplus.us

It's easy to read, old-school BBS style skin.

Black background, colored text, highlighting of links on hovering.

The colors are based directly on an old program that came with my computer in 1988 - Deskmate from Tandy Corporation (Radio Shack).

I lifted the colors directly from it.

[I liked the colors back in '88 and I still like them today).

The text size is quite large - larger than most websites. I did this because:

1) my eyesight is poor. 2) I read on a study done on usability that, while hackers and programmers like small text, teenagers, adults, kids and just regular common people who use the WWW DON'T like small text but rather, prefer large text sizes.

I don't know how to package up the skin and share it, - I could use some help with that.

But please - check it out and let me know what you think. I used the skeleton skin as a basis. The skin seems to test out perfectly with XHTML checkers.

It resizes well. My development computer (a Pentium 166 32Meg laptop from 1998 - Compaq Armada 7730MT) is running at 800x600 resolution and everything shows up perfectly.

On my bedroom computer, 1024x768 - also fine.

On my brother-in-law's 21" gaming CRT monitor, running at 1600x1200, the pages also resize perfectly.

Thank you for the excellent skeleton.

Works under Lynx (text browser), Opera 8+, some buttons do NOT work on Opera 5, perfect under Mozilla Firefox (gadget boxes do not show up in two columns, but rather in one column, which is a fine variation).

http://free.naplesplus.us/

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Files

EasyToRead Skin 307,647 bytes, 76 downloads
EasyToRead Skin.

From Manifest.PHP EasyToRead is a OldSchool BBS style. Colors are based upon Tandy Deskmate, circa 1988, whose colors I found pleasing to the eye both then and now. Large blocky colorful text with hovering color changes. By Kenneth Udut (simplify3@aol.com) June 2007 See: http://free.naplesplus.us/
Edited by Simplify3 on June 11 2007
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1 file

Comments

Bernard on June 11 2007
To package the thing you just have to archive all files from the skin directory. For example, for a skin named foo, you should compress all files from the directory skins/foo. Then attach the archive to this page, and provide a screenshot as well.

Simplify3 on June 11 2007

Thanks for the assistance!

Feel free to move the EasyToRead Skin to whatever other place you may have Skins.

[I don't know the proper place to house Skins online]

Hope I did it right!

Simplify3 on June 13 2007
Hi! Ken again from http://free.naplesplus.us

I'm going to use Alfresco for now as I've received word that I have a LOT of information for a large font skin like EasyToRead, so if you click on my site you might not see "EasyToRead" in action at the moment.

Feel free to make changes and update EasyToRead and upload your modifications here. I need to make the links breakdown (1-30, 31-60, 61-90) much smaller but I don't want to investigate that tonight.

So for now, I'll be using Alfresco (which is very similar to what I had in layout - just with the smaller font I need for the news portion of the website and nice bright boxes, which I also like).

If you DO use EasyToRead, lemme know - and lemme know if there are any good modifications you've made to it. I'd like to return to using it and probably will.

Ken, who hopes he doesn't disappoint anybody here!