Right now, this style sheet is a draft, and not open to anyone outside User Services and OLI/FacTS. The purpose is to create a set of guidelines for creating Confluence content that can be the basis for campus-wide use, tutorials, workshops, and so forth. This will be a set of best practices to encourage standardization of Confluence content around proven styles, arrangements, and use of macros. ITS pages should model this practices as far as possible.
We want campus users to basically follow these standards because:
- Continuity means it is much easier for us to troubleshoot problems for them.
- We can ensure that the macros and arrangements they use will look good on a variety of screens: desktop, notebook, tablet, phone, and so on.
On the other hand, we should be careful not to insist users stick to a narrow list of tools, options, and content arrangements, because:
- We are selling the internet as a diverse, flexible and versatile way of conveying content and promoting engagement. Telling people they must follow a strict style guide offers them much less incentive to bother with it. (Simply touting the efficiencies of paperless communication has a poor record for on-boarding ordinary users to digital technology, for various reasons.)
- We will need to police this, occasionally telling people they "must" change their sites. The more of this that happens, the more disaffection we can anticipate among users.
I suggest:
- We offer tutorial content showing the basics of building attractive content: technical as well as design considerations. We sell standardization as a program for making content effective.
- We indicate that other, "more advanced" features are available, but should only be used with a thorough commitment to testing. We can assist with this process.
Developing a best-practice stylesheet will require testing to ensure consistency and reliability of macros, markup, or content arrangement.
Headings
Headings are easy to explain. The Table of Contents Macro is also easy to explain, and draws from headings. I recommend this as a basic element usable by all users.
Panels
Panels are easy(ish) to explain, and are a quick way for users to have callouts that are brightly colored (unlike tables, which are limited to pastels).
Tables
Testing:
- Android: Chrome browser. Tables usable. Look OK.
Recommend Tables as standard form of organization, especially for tutorials.
Columns
Page Layout: Confluence displays columns within sections one after another in mobile. Thus, two parallel columns in desktop are delivered left over right.
I do not recommend columns, because they are in one way or another complicated. Yes, they work in mobile, but they require a level of attention to testing that most users simply won't bother with.