bobatkins Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 While I can change the default to underlining in Nerscape 4.8, and so go back to the "original" interface, in IE 6.0 I neither seem to be able to turn on underlining nor change the color of links, at least on the forum pages. Elsewhere on the site I can change the link colors, presumably because they are not defined by the page and so default to the browser's setting. I don't pretenf to understand CCS fully, but it seems that whatever scheme is being used to define the forum link style is overriding the browser settings in IE 6.0, but not in Netscape 4.8. Any expert comments? BTW just about every change in layout of any website or magazine is initially greeted with some scepticism on the part of readers. New things sometimes need time to appreciate, or at least time to adjust to. Let's see how people feel in a week or two! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul hays Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 At least on IE 5.2 (Mac), the redesign looks kind of clunky, with poor alignment of page elements and crowding. A screenshot of the upper right corner on my monitor illustrates the problem. The white on black pulldown menus are crude looking as well. I appreciate minimal design in web-pages, but expect a certain amount of elegance, especially on a photography site. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James G. Dainis Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 After stepping back from my first impression, and giving it a bit of time, I think the new look does look better, more professional. It has a certain clarity of line and yet kept simple, nothing fancy like flash to slow down my 56K modem to about a 2 or 3 minute loading time, no annoying animated gifs, and no difficult to read colored text on a colored background like red on blue. James G. Dainis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nicholas Barry Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 <p>OK. <em>I'll</em> stick my neck out and say that underlines have <strong>always</strong> been ugly regardless of which version of HTML you look back at. I know it's easy for some to read with underlines but it really does make pages look sloppy. Especially pages with lots of links. But if you want underlines, force them on in your favorite browser (if that's actually possible). I have them shut off by default (and always have) so I don't notice anything different between the old photo.net and the new photo.net. My guess is that the change was made in the style sheet for photo.net's anchor format so now everybody has to live without underlines. <p>So I guess I'm saying - put 'em back for all those that are whining as long as you don't force them on in style sheets; that way I can continue to live without them (by disabling in the browser's settings). How's that for a compromise? :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nicholas Barry Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 I'll also add that I like the new look. Works great with Chimera v0.6 on Mac OS X. The interface hasn't changed that much (for me, since I disable underlining) and it's still clean. The banners don't bother me either - then again, I use the Junkbuster proxy so I almost never see banners and animated GIFs only loop once (a Mozilla setting). :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobatkins Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 Look OK under IE 6.0 on a PC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gregory_gardner Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 The cleaner new look looks great, IMHO. On the subject of clean web design, how about removing all the bullets from the various lists? Like the underlines, they just seem to detract from the text. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nicholas Barry Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 Under IE v5.2.2 in OS X the dropdowns don't look so hot. Certainly not as good as on PCs/Windows. And I'm still not sure if they work in Chimera or if it's b/c I've just got pretty restrictive conditions set on JavaScript (which is something you can do with the Mozilla-based browsers). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
duolian Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 A suggestion: Please, how about a <i>little</i> more space between the "My workspace | Log out | Search" links line, and the "Community Gallery Learn [etc]" links line immediately below it? The "My workspace" link and the "Community" link are vertically contiguous - there's not even a single pixel of separation as far as I can tell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
majid Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 How about a new feature for subscribers: a choice of CSS style sheets? It's not good practice to use inline styles anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
todd peach seattle, washi Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 Please bring back the underlined links. As somebody else noted, I think Phil's book is *still* the way it should be done to reach the largest audience in the clearest manner. I believe photo.net is a popular destination for those who want to learn about photography, and I would guess that many of those are somewhat new to the web as well. 'Hiding' your information and links is not in your best interests. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
willie_ju1 Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 I tried changing the font colors and the link underline option in Netscape 4.79 and IE 5.5. Can't. Even with "override document fonts with my fonts" checked. Instead of arguing with constributors whether underlined links are better or which colors are better, just give us back THE OPTION of choosing for ourselves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve_barnett2 Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 I note that in Netscape you can overide the site settings to select your own colours for visited and unvisited postings. Despite the same input (I think) into Explorer, I can't change the settings from blue on blue (albeit one shade is slightly darker than the other, but come on, which bright spark thought of that for a good colour scheme?). Is it possible with Explorer? I would like to be able to see the postings I have and haven't yet read, without screwing my eyes up to detect the subtle difference. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ben_rubinstein___mancheste Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 In my previous incarnation as a web designer for many years before having to leave High-Tech for a humbler life managing a 1hr lab.. Underlined links, please can we have them back, at least use the 'hover' function in your CSS (so that the link is underlined when the mouse is over it) That at least... The graduated blue banner, maybe not so tall, a centimetre shorter would give a cleaner affect as well as graduating the other direction, i.e. blue to white. Having the 'visited' links in such a similar colour is very annoying and hard to see, why not a different (tasteful of course) colour all together? At the moment there is just too many shades of blue. Come on, you guys are photographers, Black and white works. If you want colour then don't use blue exclusively, widen your horizons! Last point, the 'My workspace' should be higher even by a tiny bit, it just looks wrong. Good luck guys, and have fun! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gl5 Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 <i>"just about every change in layout of any website or magazine is initially greeted with some scepticism on the part of readers"</ i> <p> this is typical moderator/editor-speak. too caught up in your pride to actually listen to readers input and do what makes the user experience a good one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ben_rubinstein___mancheste Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 Another point I just realised, I tried to click on a post by Lex in the unarchived forum, clicked my mistake on his name instead and couldn't work out how, went back and realised that you have to strain to see the 'by' in black and make sure you click to the left of it. Ouch, that is really annoying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobatkins Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 </i> Italics off. <p> No, it's the truth. I didn't say I liked the new interface, I didn't say I didn't like it. I just said that almost all change meets resistance. People like things the way they've always been. It's human nature. Every magazine that changes it's layout gets initial resistance. <p> BTW though it seems easy to override the photo.net settings for links using Netscape (4.8), in IE 6.0 the browser settings (which can be set to "always underline links") are overriden by the photo.net settings. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gl5 Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 well in my several years of photo.netting i have never read one post complaining about the GUI, colors and underlined links. now with the new style, the consensus seems to be in this tread and others that people dislike it a lot. that should tell you something about how bad this change is. whether or not you do anything about it is of course up to you but you are doing a dis-service to the readers by not taking their input into consideration. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobatkins Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 I don't do anything about it. It's not my decison to make. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
david_h._hartman Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 Form Follows Function. <br> <br> I find the list of threads harder to read because they are not underlined. There is a lack white space on the list of thread and now it look more line one huge unbroken paragraph rather than a list of thread. The lines not only tell one that it is a link but also guide the eyes in the ocean of characters. There is nothing idiotic about underline links if you want anyone to find them in a paragraph. Perhaps some like to play hide and seek. I want to get where I going.<br> <br> I set the colors on my browser so its easy to find links Ive visited and ones I have not. A dark blue visited does not stand out against black so it just works poorly. If ones idea is never revisit a link a second time then perhaps obscuring it is an advantage. Ive never liked sites that change the color of visited and unvisited links from the standard or those I've set. I also turn on fly-over color and miss that. Once again I not interested in playing hide and seek.<br> <br> Otherwise the format changes dont move me.<br> <br> ---<br> <br> Ive personally been on the verge of subscribing about four or five times. But usually there is some blowup that says to me, why? Ive posted four rather benign slightly negative responses in the photo of the week and every one has been deleted. I posted four positive responses and none were deleted by PHOTO.NET though I later deleted three myself.<br> <br> Ive also had comments deleted from reviews where there were some really nasty comments about the reviewer though mine were not one of those. My post was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and was deleted very likely without even being read. I dont know about others but if Im poked in the eye without reason I dont feel benevolent even if it was an accident.<br> <br> ---<br> <br> <em>"I presume there's something burried in IE 6.0 that does the same thing, though I've no idea where they hide it." -- Bob Atkins<br> </em><br> In IE5.5 SP2 there is a little in Tools> Internet Option> General> Accessibility> but its very limited and really messes up the page. There is also an option to write ones own Style Sheet but Ive never tried that and dont have time to do that now. Maybe later?<br> <br> If anyone can find "something buried" in IE5.5 or 6.0 please post it here.<br> <br> Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil_parker Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 Well it changed again, and I must say this is WAY better, I like the green visited links and the rollover underlines, this brings back full functionality at least to me for the colors. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimvanson Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 Hi guys...like the CLEAN new look. For me the link controversy don�t strike a yay or nay BUT now having the thumbs 3 across and 7 down for 21 per page sux's (for want of a more diplomatic term). I guess it would be alright if we were all running 15 inch monitors and 800x600 but standard is now probably 17 inch (with 19 inch coming on strong)...now I'm using a lot less of my screen and doing A LOT more scrolling...don't like it AT ALL! Must add though (and I hope this isn't wishful thinking) maybe I'm missing a default somewhere...Regardless of how the new look controversy turns out, things are a lot better then when I started hanging out back in the days of 14 inch monitors & 9600 modems...thanks to all for the blood, sweat & tears they've put in to get it this far...jim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tim_youngs Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 I think the layout looks very nice. I like the the colour scheme at the top of each page, the rollover links are tidy and if the banner ads help to better cover the costs of running this site, I'm fine with them too. However, the pull-down menu bar (Community, Gallery, Learn...) still doesn't work for all users. On Apple's (admittedly new) Safari browser, there is no menu bar whatsoever on the top of each page, and the grey bar only showed up for me when I was logged in with the pull-down menus turned off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brian_e Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 Banners and the rest, no issue. But please BRING BACK THE UNDERLINES! It does make it functionally easier to navigate. I'm one that is for constant unrelenting improvement (it's one of the things I do at work), but this is a case where change for change's sake is a very bad thing. Perhaps this redesign proposal could have been circulated for comment before executing? Please Brian et al, BRING BACK THE UNDERLINES! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mottershead Posted February 20, 2003 Share Posted February 20, 2003 Jim, the change from four columns to three was to accomodate people with 800x600 displays. We had a lot of complaints, and according to my research 800x600 is still the most common. The design center for most major sites seems to be 800x600. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a good way on all browsers to set the number of columns in a table in Javascript according to the current window size, and anyway, using Javascript brings in other problems. When the world moves to bigger monitors enough so that we can tell people with only 800x600 to get with the program, I will happily put it back to four columns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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