Feedback Request on new Forum Index Format

If you have time, I'd appreciate your input on a proposed new format

for the forum listings. The <a href=/bboard/forum?topic_id=1562>

Site Feedback Forum</a> is currently in this format. I've checked

this out in a few browsers, but I'd particularly like to know how it

looks in various browsers.

Brian, IE6, Windows XP PRO. A little congested. The titles are rapping and causing a bit of confusion.

Dave, could you post a screen shot?

Looks good in Safari 1.0.

If you want to support Netscape 4.7, then the Post Question/Search/Etc. panel does not right align, it sits on the left over top of the "photo.net Site Feedback Forum" heading. I suspect not a big concern.

 

On IE I would like to see how it would look with the 'name' in a different color and the icons about 25-50% smaller.

Looks good under XP Home and Opera 7.0.1 as well as IE 6.0.2800. No problems with layout even when the window is made smaller.

 

Also looks fine in Mozilla 1.2.1 under XP Home.

 

I guess Dave is refering to the fact that long thread titles wrap onto a second (or third) line with the somewhat narrower page, which is a little confusing, but the alternating grey and white backgrounds do show where each title starts. Maybe a slightly darker shade of grey would help?

 

The "hero" and "subscriber icons don't have a transparent background so they don't blend into the grey bars. That's a easy fix through.

 

Otherwise, looks great!

 

I'd still like to see threads sorted "ORDER BY user-status, time" so that subscriber threads would float to the top (or at least have that option on a forum by forum basis form the admin page) so we could give forum subscribers a little more "bang for the buck"!

There is a lot of wasted space. While the old format wraps according to screen resolution, the new uses only have of my screen and readibilty drops like a leaden duck swims. Thumbs down.

Brian, I find the alternating gray and white bars a little visually confusing, partly because they do change from 1 to 2 lines with some entries. Within the thread itself, I'm afraid that crunching the screen to 800 will make long threads very long.

 

Overall, though, it is usable, and people find improvement in it, that's what is most important. Enjoy.

Bernhard, are you sure the readability really drops? You know, there are tons of studies that show that the optimal line width for readability is about 5 to 6 inches. It isn't really more readable to have lines the width of your 17" or 19" monitor.

This new format has *definitely* improved readability. As my eyes have aged it's gotten more and more difficult to scan long lines across the full width of the monitor. Studies have already proven that narrower columns, within reason, scan better.

 

This is better. Especially considering that many photo.netters either don't use paragraph breaks or their formatting gets lost in the translation.

 

As for other formatting issues, so far I see no problems on my PC using Netscape 7.1.

 

The alternating gray/white on the topics page and rules between comments is neither an improvement nor a distraction. If anything it's a slight improvement because photo.net's paper-white background has always tended to fatigue my eyes. This tends to break up the overwhelming white-out.

 

Kudos.

Since you asked for opinions, I feel it looks great for the listing of the various forum topics and perhaps not all that great on the page where you are reading this post, but it's okay. What I think would make the present page and all content pages look better may be to have some white space left and right of the body copy (with no lines at the border). Right now, the words are almost touching the monitor's edge on the left and the gray barr on the right, and that's where the discomfort comes from. We are used to book presentation and all you need is a bit of space and whites margins, then it would look great imo. Regards.

Marc, how about this?

Please keep the name AFTER the post. For us old-time-photo.netters, it will confuse the heck out of me to have the name first.

Well, wait a sec on my last post. For some reason, after I made that post, I think I like the name first now.

I put the name first because it saves vertical space. (It does look nicer, though, somehow.)

I made my first post way too quickly. Yep, the more I look at this format, the better I like it. The best part is the readability of the shorter line length. MUCH better. Very cool idea, Brian.

Brian here ya go....

Tony, the real reason for doing this wasn't actually to improve the cosmetics, but to make space for that gray bar on the right, which allows us to put in more text links, such as links to ads in the classifieds section that might be relevant to a forum, or google ad sense links.

I think the comment itself should drop down one line rather than

immediately follow the name and time stamp. That's about it.

Everything else is sweet. :)

I lied. :) And maybe the comment be indented just a tad.

Well, that surely was quick ! :-) I think it's much better now with the little white margins. I like it. Regards.

It seems we have now lost the grey barr, Brian... Temporarily, I guess...?

I find the new format for presenting/reading a thread does not work well. Starting the actual message on a new line, rather than having it follow the user's name separated with the vertical bar would do a lot to clean it up. I find it "very" hard to read/scan the way it currently is.

My previous comment is trying to say the exact same thing as J. Belton in his first comment.

Cluttered looking. Those little vertical horizontal vertical horizontal vertical horizontal vertical horizontal vertical horizontal vertical lines look like crap. For extended reading I like to wrap the text tightly by narrowing the browser window in the old format. Makes for *much* faster reading. However, thanks for your efforts.