Headers are more prominent than data in PPA metadata table

The PPA index page is being vastly overhauled for the 3.0 UI. I suspect this will be automatically fixed as part of that.

That's interesting - we were just discussing yesterday how all the pages that we're updating to the 3-0 template don't have bold th's by default, and whether we should update the 3-0 styles to do so.

I hadn't thought about the font-weight of th elements from that point of view. It's an interesting point.

(Aside: I agree that the data is the important information, but the whole point of putting that data into a table is so that the information can be scanned per column isn't it? If so, the critical piece of information to do this is the column header. But... right, in the end, that's still no reason to make it more prominent than the data.)

I'm not sure about prominence or boldness, but the headers at least need to be set apart from the data so it isn't confusing.

Launchpad uses two general types of table.

One is a key-value table: two columns, labels on the left, data on the right. For example:
* Priority, Definition, etc for a blueprint <https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nav/+spec/offline-devices-report>
* Project, Status, etc for a project series <https://edge.launchpad.net/bzr/bzr.dev>
* Disk usage, Signing key etc for a PPA <https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-toolchain/+archive/ppa>.
All these kinds of table should use class="summary", as blueprint pages already do. (Perhaps "key-value" would be a better name for the class.) This bug report is about adding that class to the PPA metadata table.

The other type is a listing table: any number of columns, heading cells on the top, a dynamic number of rows. For example:
* Summary, Importance, Status for bug reports <https://bugs.launchpad.net/bzr/+bugs>
* Version, Expected Date, etc for milestones and releases <https://launchpad.net/bzr/bzr.dev>
* Source, Uploader, etc for packages <https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-toolchain/+archive/ppa>.
All these kinds of table should use class="listing", and (as far as I know) all of them already do.

If the bold heading for listing tables is being overridden by another style sheet, you are doing something wrong: either your style sheets are in the wrong order, or you have competing style definitions for table.listing, or you are inappropriately using !important somewhere. But whichever it is, it is *not relevant* to this bug report. This bug report is solely about the style of the PPA metadata table, and I have verified with Firebug that it can be fixed with the one-line change I described in the initial report.

Hi Matthew,

As Julian said, the headings you've mentioned in the initial report will all be moving with the ppa ui changes - I'll ensure any tables used have the correct classes etc. If you've got any feedback to add - it'd be great to get it sooner rather than later! (https://dev.launchpad.net/VersionThreeDotO/Soyuz/PPAUI)

Regarding the current bold heading of listing tables, AFAICS on pre-3.0 pages it is actually the user agent stylesheet that is applying the th {font-weight: bold} - at least that's what both FB and chromium's inspector of the ppa source listing shows (or even the affected-software table at the top of this bugs page). With 3-0 templates this is reset with the YUI reset.css.

There's nothing in the style.css now for table.listing th {font-weight...} - table.summary th is, on the other hand, overridden with font-weight: normal. Maybe there used to be a similar rule for table.listing that's since been removed by someone... but the good news is it'll be the default with 3.0 templates :)

Michael said:
> but the good news is it'll be the default with 3.0 templates :)

Actually, I just noticed that the style-3-0.css has recently had an explicit table.listing th {font-weight: bold} added - so if you're keen, it might be worth discussing that issue somewhere.

Cheers,
Michael.

I'm sorry that I assumed the header cells were bolded in the site style sheet. It's a waste of perfectly good bytes to un-bold them in the reset style sheet and then re-bold them in style-3-0.css, but I guess it saves you from making the same mistake I just made, i.e. having to remember that all browsers do it. :-)

r9393 - so this info is no-longer displayed in a table, but uses the standard definition list used throughout the 3-0 design.

This does mean that the definition terms are bold - but I think that's correct for a dl, and needs to be changed site-wide if changed at all.