News and Announcements

**KeithMcL** · 08-23-2004, 12:56 PM

New design looks well. Good job

**jeter4982** · 08-23-2004, 12:58 PM

At first, I didnt really like it, but now it is growing on me. Nice job!

**HostLead** · 08-23-2004, 01:13 PM

I like the design!

HL

**PinkPanther** · 08-23-2004, 03:04 PM

Great work! It looks very nice!

**Annie** · 08-23-2004, 03:59 PM

I also like it alot.

I'm on my laptop right now which has a lower resolution and colour. (800x600 and 256 color). On the header, the right side is a nice blue, but the left side, the the blue background is dithered. I'm guessing that if your monitor has all the colours, the eye can't distinguish that the right and left side are slightly fifferent colours colours. Most likely if you tweek it in photoshop to be the same colour as the right side, that will go away.

That's it!

Annie

**Giselle** · 05:59 PM

Just beautiful! Really looks very very nice, the old style was nice too, the new design really spruced the pages up. I especially like the logo with the background.

Another comment I forgot to mention, the User above the Forum news and Rules on the far right is nice and handy. A great job and can appreciate all the work that went into the new layout!

**KeithMcL** · 08-23-2004, 05:53 PM

What happened to the thread preview blob? I miss it

**TimSchroeder** · 08-23-2004, 05:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chroder

And to view the thread preview, click the little bullet before the username on the thread listing.

See Above

**KeithMcL** · 08-23-2004, 05:58 PM

Ah right. I guess I'll just have to get used to it this way

**itscooper** · 08-23-2004, 07:24 PM

Well done it looks great! I think the vertical menu makes it much simpler to navigate. Kepp up the good work!

**RonnieTheDodger** · 08-23-2004, 07:28 PM

The post info on the side is a big improvement. This is phpBB style, btw and I think it improves the readability of threads ten-fold. It is more evident on some sites that have stricter limitations on siglines (not that I am suggesting that here

)

Couple of quick things on losing some horizontal height in that side info box. I have had this problem also when I scrunched our board down to 120 pixels in that area. The join date can simply be Joined: xx/xx and you will save one line there. Location can be abbv to just Loc. which may or may not save height. Use "military time" for the time of the post on that upper bar. This will drop the AM/PM designation. This one would be a big improvement on the aesthetics of that entire upper bar.

You are still going to have that big gap between the bottom of the box and the sigline on shorter posts. But I think losing as many lines as you can in the poster info box will make this less of a gap.

On smaller resolution screens, it is a little squished. Perhaps losing about 5 px on each left/right margin will alleviate some of that. The right column menus are perfect sized (and I like rounded corners on menus too) .. but the wider margin to the right of those menus looks out of kilter for some reason. Suggest you make it smaller, same width as between the main body and the menus.

Can you tell I am a pixel freak?

The Topic Review box (below where I am posting right now) is too skinny. It does not appear to be "stretching" the full width of that particular area.

Colors -- don't change a thing! You nailed em good on that aspect.

Those are just a few of my thoughts Chroder ... keep up the good work.

**TimSchroeder** · 08-23-2004, 07:50 PM

Thanks for all the nice comments on the new design. Maybe we can win vB of the month

Great Review and Suggestions RonnieTheDodger

We will see what we can do!

**Giselle** · 08-23-2004, 07:56 PM

Quote:

RonnieTheDodger..... Couple of quick things on losing some horizontal height in that side info box. I have had this problem also when I scrunched our board down to 120 pixels in that area. The join date can simply be Joined: xx/xx and you will save one line there. Location can be abbv to just Loc. which may or may not save height. Use "military time" for the time of the post on that upper bar.

I don't have that many fingers and toes to count on...

I know just deduct 12 hours, even though this is a military family, I still hate military time! You are right would cut down on pixels.......

**RonnieTheDodger** · 08-23-2004, 08:25 PM

Is there any reason why that poster info box is wider on Page 3 than on the previous pages? Or is it my info that makes it wider? That is too strange.

**Christopher** · 08-23-2004, 08:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RonnieTheDodger

Couple of quick things on losing some horizontal height in that side info box. I have had this problem also when I scrunched our board down to 120 pixels in that area. The join date can simply be Joined: xx/xx and you will save one line there. Location can be abbv to just Loc. which may or may not save height. Use "military time" for the time of the post on that upper bar. This will drop the AM/PM designation. This one would be a big improvement on the aesthetics of that entire upper bar.

All of those things wouldn't actually reduce the width or height of the info box, unless I misunderstood. The join date is already slim, but I think Location can be cut down to "Loc" like you suggested. Then we could reduce the width of that column by about 10px or so (I upped it from the original because people's location was spanning two lines and looked ugly). I hate military time as well, but I don't see how changing it would help. The time is a perfect width for that column, and if needed, we could move the "new post" indicator to the other column by the post #, on the right.

Quote:

On smaller resolution screens, it is a little squished. ...
but the wider margin to the right of those menus looks out of kilter for some reason. Suggest you make it smaller, same width as between the main body and the menus.

I think I'll make the inner-margins the same as the width between the body and sidebars. I don't want to reduce the outer-margins though, I think it looks nice.

Quote:

The Topic Review box (below where I am posting right now) is too skinny. It does not appear to be "stretching" the full width of that particular area.

I thought you mean the quick reply (I thought, why is he calling it 'topic review'

) until I previewed my post, now I see what you mean. I'll get on that soon!

Thanks for the comments, certainly a help

Just clear me up on the first bit because I think I misunderstood

I think I'll reduce the bottom margin on the quote boxes as well...

**Christopher** · 08-23-2004, 08:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RonnieTheDodger

Is there any reason why that poster info box is wider on Page 3 than on the previous pages? Or is it my info that makes it wider? That is too strange.

I see that in IE, not Mozilla. I think I have a solution, though it's not a big problem -- I'll get to that later too

**RonnieTheDodger** · 08-23-2004, 09:37 PM

Wow. That is a big difference between IE and Mozilla. I just took a look. Forget my comments on the the info box then. I was basing that on what I was seeing in this screenshot. Note: I used StudioWorks' post because those eyes are really dreamy!

I was referring to the wrapping of the lines. And I also thought that was your intent to have a skinnier width on that panel (not the wider one the is showing on page 3).

Quote:

I think I'll make the inner-margins the same as the width between the body and sidebars. I don't want to reduce the outer-margins though, I think it looks nice.

Yep, every pixel counts ... but never do it at the expense of aesthetics. If the 800x600 people don't like it, then they can drop-kick their monitors!

I just wanted to add that this is the quickest loading vB board I have come across. Well done. I also noticed is that you got rid of that jerky loading that is prevalent amongst every vB board I come across. When you click on a notification link in your email and go to that post, the screen jumps all over the place when the graphics load above and below it. It is very irritating to watch -- and I would imagine on slower connections it would be exscrutiating and downright painful. Job well done.