/packages CGI HTML modernization

/packages CGI HTML modernization

[Warren Young]

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The current CGI code that generates the package and file lists for 
http://cygwin.com/packages emits highly redundant HTML, and it is laid 
out using a huge slow-to-render table.  The attached patch shows a 
minimal way to use <ul> instead of <table>, along with some CSS and JS 
to style it in a similar way to the current look.

If JavaScript is verboten on cygwin.com, you can empirically find an 
appropriate value for the width of the package name column and put that 
in the CSS:

     ul.pkglist span {
         float: left;
         width: 185px;
     }

All the jQuery code does is find that width value programmatically, 
which makes it robust in the face of different font sizes and such.

I have also attached a simple example HTML and CSS file, which show the 
basic idea of the change with all the distractions of the real /packages 
page stripped away.  Just put packages.* in a directory and open 
packages.html in your favorite browser.

I lack the ability to generate packages.inc here, but I expect applying 
the same concept to that script as well will have a measurable effect on 
the load time of cygwin.com/packages.  I expect it to roughly halve the 
size of the file and measurably reduce the page render time.

The contents of the attached CSS file should be inserted into one of 
cygwin.com's normal CSS files.

(I've attached all this as a tarball only to placate the text/html MIME 
filter on this list.)

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Re: /packages CGI HTML modernization

[Achim Gratz]

Warren Young writes:
> The current CGI code that generates the package and file lists for
> http://cygwin.com/packages emits highly redundant HTML, and it is laid
> out using a huge slow-to-render table.  The attached patch shows a
> minimal way to use <ul> instead of <table>, along with some CSS and JS
> to style it in a similar way to the current look.

+1

> If JavaScript is verboten on cygwin.com, you can empirically find an
> appropriate value for the width of the package name column and put
> that in the CSS:
>
>     ul.pkglist span {
>         float: left;
>         width: 185px;
>     }

I'd try something like this to keep it more nicely scalable:

ul.pkglist li {
   background: url('http://sourceware.org/icons/ball.gray.gif')
   no-repeat center left 0.2em;
   background-size: 1em 1em;
   padding-left: 1.4em;
   display: block;
   align: center;
}

ul.pkglist span {
   float: left;
   width: 30%;
}


Regards,
Achim.
-- 
+<[Q+ Matrix-12 WAVE#46+305 Neuron microQkb Andromeda XTk Blofeld]>+

Factory and User Sound Singles for Waldorf rackAttack:
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Re: /packages CGI HTML modernization

[Warren Young]

On 6/19/2014 22:43, Achim Gratz wrote:

>    background-size: 1em 1em;

No.  The original gray ball bitmap is 20x20, and the current layout 
scales it to 10x10, on purpose.  Scaling it to "em"s makes the size 
font-dependent.

Ideally, cygwin.com would have its own bullet image so it doesn't have 
to be scaled in the browser.  The result wouldn't need to be padded, 
either, since CSS can take care of positioning and margins.

>     width: 30%;

You can do both, of course.  Set the width of the package name column to 
30% -- or whatever -- in the static CSS, so that at least you'll have a 
sensible default in the noscript case.

I do now see that the page already uses JavaScript.

On revisiting this, I've come up with several refinements, with the end 
result that the new concept fully replicates the existing look.

First, the <span> around the <a> is redundant.  You can address the 
package name link element directly.

Second, by putting the description in a span, you can make it wrap 
inside the second column width just as the current <table> based 
implementation does.

The second change makes the gray ball list bullet disappear for some 
reason if you leave it on the <li> element, but I figured out how to get 
it to appear as part of the <a> element.  It means the bullet is now 
clickable, which is odd, but this doesn't bother me.

Each <li> now looks like this:

     <li><a href="x86/pkg">pkg</a><span>description</span></li>

The CSS is now:

   <style type="text/css">
     ul.pkglist li {
       display: block;
       clear: both;
     }

     a {
       background: url('http://sourceware.org/icons/ball.gray.gif')
                   no-repeat;
       background-position: 0px 0.7em;
       background-size: 10px 10px;
       float: left;
       padding-left: 20px;
       padding-top: 0.4em;
     }

     span {
       float: left;
       padding-top: 0.4em;
     }
   </style>

and the JS is now:

     <script type="text/javascript">
       var lw = $('ul.pkglist').width();
       var mw = 0;
       $('ul.pkglist a').each(function(i, e) {
         mw = Math.max(mw, $(e).width());
       }).css('width', mw + 10 + 'px');
       $('ul.pkglist span').css('width', lw - mw - 40 + 'px');
     </script>

The "40" constant subtracts out some of the padding the browser adds. 
If it gets too small -- or you leave it out -- the <span> becomes too 
wide and has to wrap below the <a>.

I made these changes to a copy of the /packages generated HTML, and the 
page weight and render time both dropped roughly in half.

Re: /packages CGI HTML modernization

[Warren Young]

On 6/20/2014 10:54, Warren Young wrote:
>
> The CSS is now:

Sorry, left a few things out:

   ul.pkglist li {
     display: block;
     clear: both;
   }

   ul.pkglist a {
     background: url('http://sourceware.org/icons/ball.gray.gif')
                 no-repeat;
     background-position: 0px 0.7em;
     background-size: 10px 10px;
     padding-left: 20px;
     padding-top: 0.4em;
     float: left;
     width: 30%;
   }

   ul.pkglist span {
     float: left;
     padding-top: 0.4em;
     width: 67%;
   }

The main thing is that I forgot to include the "ul.pkglist" parent 
qualifiers on the second two CSS rules.

Note, however, that I also added the width attributes to the two <li> 
children, which has the nice effect of making the JS completely 
optional.  The default values will make the package name column wrap, 
but if JS is available, the jQuery script I posted previously will 
increase the column width to fix that.

The (30%+67%) < 100% thing is another hack around the margins the 
browser uses, just like the 40px magic constant in the JS.

Re: /packages CGI HTML modernization

[Christopher Faylor]

Please take this elsewhere.  website patches are off-topic for
cygwin-patches.

But, FYI, when it comes to the web site, I'm not really too interested
in fixing something that isn't broken.

cgf