Webmasters: please use the following style guide when creating new pages on www.freedos.org, or creating new FreeDOS-related web sites.

For the webmasters: This is a note for any webmasters that want to update content on the FreeDOS web site. Please note that as of June 2006, the www.freedos.org site is hosted as a VHOST on freedos.sourceforge.net. The document root on SourceForge starts at /home/groups/f/fr/freedos/htdocs.

Site organization

Some files and directories to know about:

/index.php
A php page that generates the front page, using content from include (from outside the doc root.)
/freedos
The main FreeDOS web site content. Web pages may exist elsehwere, but please try to keep main site content under /freedos.

It's a good idea to avoid using "http://www.freedos.org/" as part of your URLs, since the FreeDOS web site is also accessible from different VHOSTs, including: freedos.sourceforge.net, freedos.kernel.org, and dos.kernel.org.

Page elements

The web design unites FreeDOS web pages to make them easily recognizable to our visitors and provides enough flexibility to allow related sites to maintain their own unique style.

Required The following are required elements for all FreeDOS web pages.

Header:

Footer:

  • The text "FreeDOS is a trademark of Jim Hall"
  • Link to the Legal notice (www.freedos.org only)

Sidebar:

  • Web site search box
  • Links to related content

Also required is the SourceForge.net logo (www.freedos.org only). It's placement on the page is not strictly mandated, but is usually placed in or near the footer.

Recommended The following are recommended elements. While these may not be currently used on the www.freedos.org web site, they are under consideration for future revisions.

Header?

  • Parent links
  • Breadcrumbs

Footer?

  • Copyright statement
  • "Last modified" date

Text and color standards

Blue and white are the colors of the FreeDOS web site, and should be prominent on any web page. The official colors are:

  • light blue [#336699]
  • dark blue [#003366]
  • light grey-blue [#c0c9e2] (fish)
  • dark grey-blue [#0a3569] (logo)
  • black [#000000], white [#FFFFFF]

Web pages should use standard, widely available fonts for HTML typography. Tahoma is the first choice for the FreeDOS web site. Text size is set at 90%. Alternative fonts for HTML typography include Arial and Helvetica. Trebuchet, Verdana, and Lucida are also widely available for both PC and Mac users, but you should be sure to specify a more common font as an alternative just in case. For example, a comprehensive style sheet specifies at least two fonts for each style, beginning with your preferred style, such as:

font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;
font-size: 90%;

Body text must be black [#000000] on white [#FFFFFF] background. Links are set to medium blue [#0000CC] and turn dark blue [#000033] when visited.

Browser accessibility

As of July 2007, we recommended that your web site support the following browsers:

  • IE 6 & 7 (Windows)
  • Firefox 1 & 2 (multiple platforms)
  • Safari 2 (MacOSX)
  • Arachne (DOS)

Note that Arachne is somewhat limited in CSS styles it supports. Be careful when using an all-XHTML design.

Before posting your web page, consider the following: Have you tested in as many browsers as you can? Windows and Mac? (a good answer: yes) Can you scale your fonts up to 150% in Firefox? (a good answer: yes) Do you get a horizontal scrollbar at 800x600? (a good answer: no)

For best results, all pages should validate using the W3C XHTML validator, and all CSS files should validate using the W3C CSS validator. Note that the Webring links on the front page will fail validateion; please validate the front page using www.freedos.org/?webring=no instead.