Suggestion for removing excess whitespace: (re-)combine Events and Facts
One of the recurring complaints in the (unsurprising but unfortunately mostly much too vague) recent commentary is about "the font". Given that the typeface hasn't actually changed at all, I think what those people are actually objecting to is the increased vertical whitespace compared to the old layout. This is especially blatant in the Other Information section.
Even when empty, the box takes up half of my screen vertically.
There's a lot of vertical padding there that could easily go away without harming legibility,
but you could kill two birds with one stone by combining Events and Facts into a single subsection, perhaps with a two-column drop-down to make the length manageable (although some of that could again be handled by removing excess padding).
Having the list combined would remove the current illogic: some things that are not events (such as occupation or religion) are filed under Events, while other equally-non-events (such as physical description or nationality) are filed under Facts.
Comentarios
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Given that the typeface hasn't actually changed at all...
Well, Lyle has conceded it has, and I have illustrated the change in fonts with screenshots. In fact, one of the reasons given for "having" to introduce the new page was that certain fonts and design features were no longer supported, hence had to be changed.
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I'm going by the fact that I can type things in Verdana on a screenshot and not be able to tell which is which, along with the fact that the same exact thing was true of both the now-old version and the one before that.
The typeface hasn't changed (yet). Either Lyle's information is incorrect, or there are future changes in process.
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From Lyle's comments at https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/142818/known-issues-and-current-status-of-the-newly-released-person-page#latest
Fonts
- The font is new, While it is slightly larger its weight is slightly lighter.
Perhaps we are talking at cross-purposes, Julia. There might be no difference in typing the comments:
The problem lies in viewing them from the Details page. Of course I can still read the reason statements, but they do not stand out anywhere near as clearly as on the old page. (Too small, too faint and now only includes one line of text, without expanding.) Incidentally, is there a name for the font used in the "Reason:" field? I hadn't seen it in use until the new page was introduced:
Surely at least two lines of the reason statement could be displayed without clicking on MORE? (But, apologies - as usual, I digress...)
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(I concur wholeheartedly that if every "more" link in creation went away, it would be no loss.)
I just looked it up: technically, a typeface is a set of letter-shapes, such as Verdana or Times New Roman, while a font is a particular weight or style of the typeface, such as Verdana italic or Times New Roman bold. So if Lyle was being precise in his terminology, then he meant that they're fiddling with text sizes and weights. If he was using "font" more broadly -- as most people generally do -- then there may be changes in the works.
Currently, nearly everything on the Details page is Verdana, including the reason statement. There are differences in size and weight (regular for most things, boldface in the Family Members section for the person whose page you're on).
The name I retyped at 26.5 points, the reason at 22.7 points. (And no, I did not need to make any room for my additions. I think that's a demonstration that there's a bit more padding than necessary.)
Even the menus are Verdana, some of it in a dark turquoise-blue, most of it black, in various sizes.
The only part that's a different typeface is the name in the full header bar; I don't know which one that is, but it's a serif typeface of some sort. (Verdana is sans-serif.) (I tried asking my browser what it is, but was unsuccessful. Webpages nowadays are waaay more complex than what my ultra-basic knowledge of markup languages can handle.)
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Yes, I just googled typeface vs font and got the explanation, "...In other words, a typeface is what you see and a font is what you use." So, I am talking about the typeface(s) now being different - especially my "bogey" one, which is produced when displaying reason statements. (Now far too small and faint to make their presence immediately noticeable.)
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The typeface hasn't changed. That's the shapes of the letters: whether they have little blips at the ends or not, whether the bottoms of letters like T or l are straight or have a foot or a curve, which kinds of 'g' or 'a' are used, if there's a crossbar on the capital J, and so forth and so on.
To the best of my recollection and ability to look up online, the weights/styles haven't changed much if at all: things that were boldface are still boldface, things that were regular are still regular. (I don't think Family Tree uses italics anywhere.)
One thing that has changed is the sizes: they've made the reasons inexplicably smaller, for example. However, I seem to recall a side-by-side comparison at some point showing that under Vitals and Other, only things like labels and attributions ("Birth", "Last Changed") had changed size; the actual conclusions ("Balassagyarmat, Nógrád, Hungary", "12 April 1882") were the same size as before. Of course, I cannot find said side-by-side screenshot. (I think Gordon posted it.)
The other thing that has changed, drastically, is the line spacing or padding or whitespace: the empty area between the lines of text. It has increased greatly from before, and I think the consensus is pretty clear that this is not a change for the better. For the reason behind the change, Lyle has mentioned something about needing to account for other scripts for other languages, but surely there doesn't need to be this much extra?
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I appreciate my terminology leaves a little to be desired, so here is a straight, illustrative comparison (copied from a post at https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/comment/487907#Comment_487907). All I want is for the typeface / font, or whatever, to appear as it used to on the old page (first screenshot):
The difference (to me, at least) is far more than subtle - but surely anyone can see the appearance has changed (for the worse). Why reverse the grey / black from the heading to the text - and decrease the size of the text? Did someone deliberately decide to make the statement less easy to notice?
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Yes, as I said, the reason has been made smaller.
Both the old and the new seem to have basically two sizes: approximately 28 and 24 point type (modulo whatever variation is introduced by the multiple screenshots involved). The difference is that in the old version, the conclusion's type ("Birth") is the smaller size while the reason's contents ("GRO index ...") are the larger size, whereas the new version has those switched: the type is now the bigger size, while the reason's contents are the smaller size. No idea why.
I like the new version's short label for "Reason".
I'm unsure about the added line spacing here in the Vitals section. It's far more extreme under Other, and I really hope they can tighten that up.
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Thank you for pointing out the differences Julia Szent-Györgyi. I also think the icon helped to distinguish the place from the rest of the text. It was removed in the new version.
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(@JulieKlar, at the risk of going completely off-topic, I have to point out that the dratted map pin icon wasn't always there in the old version, but people unfortunately believed that it needed to be, causing them to destroy good data in favor of less-good data. So it is a Very, Very Good Thing that it Went Away.)
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(My sister the web programmer says the name in the full header uses a typeface called Museo. Dunno how/why, but my image editor doesn't offer it, although clearly my browser is perfectly capable of finding and using it.)
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@Julia Szent-Györgyi I agree 100%! All that space... is ridiculous! That padding has got to go! There's zero reason to have it like that, and that More/Less needs to go, too.
The Reason is just as important, and should just remain that same size font as the rest.
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