Text browser screenies

From KallestadWiki

Layout Comparison in eLinks

If you didn't follow my strange train of thought that brought me here, I am working on some new layouts. Reading some guidelines for websites and working on a new design myself, I decided to have a look at how the new layout looked in eLinks (a text based web browser), and compare my old and new layouts. The old layout I'm working with is at Stop Mom Stop, whereas the new layout can be seen as screenshots in this wiki.

Here is a screenshot of the existing layout:

Here is a screenshot of the new layout:

The thing that pops out most to me is that the existing layout makes use of CSS Menus and that takes up a significant part of the screen. In fact, it takes up a significant part of every screen on the web site at the moment.

Looking at the new layout, the pullquote/summary appears before the article text - which I suppose it should since that is where it appears in the HTML. I'm wondering if there isn't a way to label the region - i.e. place a caption of sorts around this div for accessibile/text mode users that explains what this piece of the puzzle represents.

As far as the background color goes - I have no idea why the background color differences exist. White is the default background color for the consoles which I screenshotted, and it looks like grey is the default color for text. I know that the existing layout contains some internal CSS information - I'm wondering if that might be the way to go for at least the font coloring.

The new layout does very little to detract from the main content of the page. The navigation links are simple and unobtrusive - with a small list of links appearing at both the top of the page and the bottom of the page. Certainly there is more work to do with the new design, but I like the way it plays out in a text browser.