Transfans.co.uk server move

[Sunyavadin]

Well joy. It didn't last a single day without falling prey to spambots.

[bumblemusprime]

Ha--I was just going to say that. Champagne, anyone?

[Kaylee]

Awesome. I literally could not find anything in this thread in the new style one, so had missed every previous post. Thanks for the quick response.

Also, good thing I kept the original resolution version of my new avatar, now I can rescale it to 150x and people can actually make out what it's meant to be!

I get it, you don't like the style. You have a low resolution due to being a gamer, the colours have too high a contrast etc.

It would be nice for me if you got involved with the code and participated, as you're happy enough with front-end styling to write bespoke Firefox site mods, and I am unable to parse most of your complaints into practical changes that would positively affect the layout more than your built-in browser font and zoom settings.

I'm not precious about being the sole contributor. I have a dayjob and write code 0800-1730.

BTW my first post, where I mention the 2004 theme, has been up since May 20th. It would appear your vision issues predate the new style.

[Sunyavadin]

I only followed the change for the latter part of this week gone. I missed that part, thinking you were referring to having the option to test the new site layout, not the other way around.
I was trying in my last post to be grateful for keeping the old style as an option whilst maintaining the benefits of the new backend. All in all great work.

[bumblemusprime]

Enjoying the slickness very much.

Apologize if it's been brought up before, but is there a way to tweak some of the font sizes, particularly the size of the thread reply title directly above?

[Kaylee]

I'll make the subject line a little smaller next release. It's a bit too dominating.

[Hound]

Thanks for taking the time to do this Karl

One request I have is to have the 'post reply' button at the bottom of the thread. I can only see it at the top and it's a little redundant there by the time I've read to the end of the thread

[Kaylee]

Can do

[Kaylee]

New release went live just now, details here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8779

[Denyer]

Great stuff, this is really growing on me and is a huge step up from prosilver. Only a couple of things I'd probably change -- the top breadcrumbs being right-aligned (stretching the bar a bit more so that it starts under the "User Control Panel" link and they were left-aligned would look swish) and the smilies to the left of the post text box (the number of animations is causing redraw lag in Chrome whilst typing). Maybe up to 25Kb for avatars? ~10Kb is a a bit tricky to work within.

Apologies for disappearing. Still got a lot on at the moment.

[Kaylee]

Squeeee I'll add all those to my to-do list x

[Best First]

One low priority request - we used to have a "safe for work" scheme that disabled all the images so you just got a nice clean screen of text - any chance of a repeat?

Like i say not an issue if its a big deal.

Thanks

Me.

[Kaylee]

One low priority request - we used to have a "safe for work" scheme that disabled all the images so you just got a nice clean screen of text - any chance of a repeat?

Like i say not an issue if its a big deal.

Thanks

Me.

Yep, can definitely do that

[Mr_Tigg]

So I thought I’d wade in with my two cents on the re-design.

Note: This is intended as constructive feedback. I really don’t want to upset anyone, as plainly a lot of hours have gone into this.

In a nutshell: It’s a bit of a misfire.

One thing I’m struggling with is the new hierarchy and layout. A lot of components and modules seem out of alignment or too big / small relative to their importance.

Some examples:

Our avatars /Ids next to posts: the image isn’t left-aligned like the text.

The forum nav at the top is also too small, plus it should be left aligned rather than right aligned for consistency.

The header module above the forum index is still far too big. Plus the two different font sizes make it harder to read. The fonts are still too big imo too. Rather than a big module, could it be a normal sized module / text with a strong colour scheme to make it stand out.

The colour scheme isn’t right either. Too many shades of grey make it all blend into one.

Home page: header image isn’t aligned and too washed out. Why is there a link to the home page on the home page? Surely unnecessary? No link to forum either.

Scrolling Nav: The home link is hidden beneath the TF faces in the top left corner – so I couldn’t click on it.

General comment: Too much white space. A little is good cuz it gives posts room to breath, but at the moment everything seems to drown in a sea of grey.

I hope these help. I’d still be interested in contributing some vector art. Just need to wrap up several other personal projects first.

[Best First]

My construtive feedback is people need to work harder at their construtive feedback.

If you are trying not to offend don't open up with a phrase like "it's a bit of a misfire".

In isolation it is a useless comment.

Couple with an explanation, it becomes pointless as the explanation suffices.

[snarl]

The reality is this: If you don't like it you can quite easily go back to the 2004 version that everybody was comfortable with... so... where's the problem?

[Brendocon]

The reality is this: If you don't like it, go start your own board. With blackjack. And hookers.

[bumblemusprime]

So I thought I’d wade in with my two cents on the re-design.

Note: This is intended as constructive feedback. I really don’t want to upset anyone, as plainly a lot of hours have gone into this.

In a nutshell: It’s a bit of a misfire.

One thing I’m struggling with is the new hierarchy and layout. A lot of components and modules seem out of alignment or too big / small relative to their importance.

Some examples:

Our avatars /Ids next to posts: the image isn’t left-aligned like the text.

The forum nav at the top is also too small, plus it should be left aligned rather than right aligned for consistency.

The header module above the forum index is still far too big. Plus the two different font sizes make it harder to read. The fonts are still too big imo too. Rather than a big module, could it be a normal sized module / text with a strong colour scheme to make it stand out.

The colour scheme isn’t right either. Too many shades of grey make it all blend into one.

Home page: header image isn’t aligned and too washed out. Why is there a link to the home page on the home page? Surely unnecessary? No link to forum either.

Scrolling Nav: The home link is hidden beneath the TF faces in the top left corner – so I couldn’t click on it.

General comment: Too much white space. A little is good cuz it gives posts room to breath, but at the moment everything seems to drown in a sea of grey.

I hope these help. I’d still be interested in contributing some vector art. Just need to wrap up several other personal projects first.

A bit nitpicky, are we? It's still a work in its final tweaks, but I don't need Bob Ross to design the color scheme of the place I go to talk about Transformers. I like the lighter grays--easier to read than the dark blues and grays of the last board.

[Mr_Tigg]

Meow. A touch sensitive some of us are aren't we?

I honestly don't think it's easier to read or navigated than the previous board. I'm presuming that moving forward the vision is that this will be the new version of transfans? I'm also assuming that it's an organic process, with tweaks and refinement going on in the background. I said what I said to give my personal view on areas of the re-design that could be improved. The point is, I'm trying to help make Transfans a better experience, not just for us, but for any potential newbies too who could find the site confusing. I've even offered to pitch in with some new illos. So maybe ditch the catty comments yeh?

I'll take on board what Best First said. The misfire comment was wrong of me to say, and I apologise if it offended some of you.

Ultimately you can ignore the feedback if you want. Life goes on.

[Kaylee]

So I thought I’d wade in with my two cents on the re-design.

Note: This is intended as constructive feedback. I really don’t want to upset anyone, as plainly a lot of hours have gone into this.

That's actually quite sweet, although you can happily replace the passive 'anyone' with 'Karl'. It's nice that you recognise this took time.

Our avatars /Ids next to posts: the image isn’t left-aligned like the text.

They were left aligned, but it just didn't look right. That's the problem with user-generated content: it varies in shape, size, colour and composition. Laying it out on the screen is tricky because the left section is quite organised and methodical. It worked better in the previous design because the avatar size was smaller, so it was easier to blend it in.

The forum nav at the top is also too small, plus it should be left aligned rather than right aligned for consistency.

The breadcrumb bar absolutely should be left aligned, I moved it to the right so I could compress the masthead area without the breadcrumbs running into the 'heads' in the top left. That's something I'm tinkering with.

The header module above the forum index is still far too big. Plus the two different font sizes make it harder to read. The fonts are still too big imo too. Rather than a big module, could it be a normal sized module / text with a strong colour scheme to make it stand out.

You can adjust font sizes in your browser and at the bottom of each page: there are sliders for contrast and font-size. Your settings are stored in a cookie in your browser and will be automatically applied just for you when you visit the site.

I've also got an enhancement planned to make the hero-spaces hideable. Again this will be stored in a cookie and applied individually for each user.

Strong colours run into contrast/accessibility issues, and given you're nonplussed with my design choices so far you probably don't want to trust me with stronger colours

Re fonts, as I said to Suny, the sizes are not unusual. They're the same as the Guardian and BBC News. Personally I dislike small fonts, and professionally speaking they're easier to read on a variety of devices. It's easier, as a desktop user, to change your font sizes than it is for someone else on an iPhone or Android tablet.

The colour scheme isn’t right either. Too many shades of grey make it all blend into one.

Again, readability and accessibility issues. I originally had the contrast between the background and text too high, as Suny quite rightly pointed out to me [if tactlessly and self-righteously]. Now it's off-white with dark grey. I wouldn't want to introduce more colourful backgrounds where a lot of copy is concerned, grey is just inoffensive.

That said, if you or anyone else who knows what they're doing wants to be involved: please do. The code is open, public and available here https://bitbucket.org/kgl2083/transfans.co.uk-website along with the bug/enhancement tracking.

Home page: header image isn’t aligned and too washed out. Why is there a link to the home page on the home page? Surely unnecessary? No link to forum either.

The homepage is sort of ******, but it's a low priority for me (rightly or wrongly). I tend to dogfood and fix things that stand out to me as issues in my usage. Hence most of the improvements I've focussed on are around the forum: I think I spend about 45 seconds a year on the homepage

Again: it's a collaborative effort (or at least I'd like it to be). The homepage and the rest of the site that isn't the message board all run in a fairly pain-free content management system. It's a bit like a word processor. If you want to fix the homepage, you're only a request away: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8773

Scrolling Nav: The home link is hidden beneath the TF faces in the top left corner – so I couldn’t click on it.

Yep yep- in the next release the 'heads' will be clickable so they have the same function as clicking the home link. You can also undock the top-nav using the check box, that removes the 'heads' and restructures the masthead so the home link is available again.

General comment: Too much white space. A little is good cuz it gives posts room to breath, but at the moment everything seems to drown in a sea of grey.

I understand what you're saying, but there are functional issues surrounding white space.

The original, 2004 design was created when FireFox was trendy and cutting edge and Internet Explorer 6 was the incumbent. We now live in an IT world where this site can, will be and is accessed by a truly insane variety of devices: tablets, phablets, phones, laptops, eReaders, desktops, screen magnifiers and more. Every time Samsung release a new phone, they seem to purposely create a new screen resolution, change aspect ratio or swap orientation.

Because of that, white space is necessary. Furthermore, more white space is necessary because it facilitates a wide range of input (mouse, pen, touch) by preventing accidental clicks and selection. It's also the same reason the buttons are bigger, links are larger and text is size 12 by default. It's easier to 'hit' the things you want and more difficult to get something else by accident.

It may not be what I'd develop for a purely desktop-consumed website, but that doesn't matter. You can use this site on any device and it will try its best to scale, restructure and compensate.

The alternative would be to create separate styles for desktops, and I'm not going there. It doubles (or triples, quadruples etc. depending on the number of devices) development effort. My time is technically free, but pragmatically speaking there will be a point where I feel things are of a high-enough quality/I'm bored and I stop. Hence, my time is finite and therefore not technically free. It has value and I wouldn't want to squander it focussing on multiple layouts and styles for different devices.

I hope these help. I’d still be interested in contributing some vector art. Just need to wrap up several other personal projects first.

Unfortunately I think we're fast approaching the point where the low-hanging fruit improvements, the ones that are 'free' because they have no impact, are either done or scheduled. After that we're into opinions and ideas that have trade-offs, decisions that I actually thought about before making and have reasons for being the way they are. I hope at that point most people will be happy with what I've done, but that's more about my insecurities and my endless quest for a pat on the head.

It would be really great if you could help. I appreciate real life and blahblahblah but, to be serious for a moment, I cared enough about this to spend time doing it. I have personal stuff, I have work, I have hobbies. I want to play Bioshock and go swimming. I work nine hour days as a senior web software developer (and usability specialist, which I'm sure will make Suny laugh) for a major enterprise in a team of 12. I made the time. I also made the ability to get involved as easy as I could: the code is public. You can download it and run the whole website. If you don't want to download it, you can edit it online using Cloud9 https://c9.io/kgl2083/transfans for free (just give me warning as I've shut down my QA sql server to save cash and it'll need that restarted). The whole site runs on a CMS so anybody can get in and improve it. I made the time to make not only this, but a framework so others could help without needing to run their own AWS server, know about LAMP/WAMP or learn PHP.

I couldn't have made it easier to pitch in, so please do so if you'd like. I'm not precious about the code, it belongs to everyone. I'm also not precious about everyone 'liking' it, per-se, I'm big enough to take criticism professionally, but I would just like to observe:

* if you have time to bitch, you have time to fix.
* I'm not an employee, and nobody pays to use this site, so play nice.
* I don't expect to be applauded, but a little word of kindness does wonders for my self-esteem. I appreciate my self-esteem is my problem, and nobody else's, but still.

~

On that note, thank you for the support, Paul, Rob, Chris and Spence. It really makes me smile

[Best First]

Meow. A touch sensitive some of us are aren't we?

No. i don't think who is sticking up for Karl is being. That's really a bit of a stretch isn't it reading the posts following yours.

More constructive criticism: if you are going to apologise, start and end there. Anything else robs the gesture of any sincerity.

I'm hoping the way some people have reacted in this topic is a product of ignorance, and that they imagine Transfans is in fact run by some dedicated team of people who are fully salaried and should be held to some kind of associated account. I'm also hoping that the seeming sense of entitlement some people are showing suggests that they think they are paying customers and that if i check my bank account i'll find subscriptions from you all. That’s really the only good justification for the way some people seem to have approached this change.

Rather the reality is this:

• Transfans is free to you.
• The URL is owned and occasionally renewed by me at my own expense.
• Transfans has no adverts and no attempts are made to make any money from Transfans or recoup any running costs.
• The servers are kindly provided to us by TF Archive, if this ever goes away i will fund hosting. It also means that when they do things we have to do things (such as this change) which seems fair enough to me in exchange for getting server space for free.
• I am not technical, at least not to the extent that i can maintain the site or manage things like this re-platform, which was needed. The team of people we originally had in place largely are not here anymore (which again is entirely fair as again their time was entirely voluntary) which means we are very dependent on the skills and more importantly time of 2 people, Karl and Denyer, who pick up all of these kind of things out of nothing but their own generosity using their own free time.

I am not saying options or suggestions are not welcome, i am saying couch this in grace and gratitude for their efforts or you will incur some deserved correction from people here who have an appreciation for the realities under which we exist and the efforts a small number of people put in to make sure that continues.

[Mr_Tigg]

So I thought I’d wade in with my two cents on the re-design.

Note: This is intended as constructive feedback. I really don’t want to upset anyone, as plainly a lot of hours have gone into this.

That's actually quite sweet, although you can happily replace the passive 'anyone' with 'Karl'. It's nice that you recognise this took time.

Our avatars /Ids next to posts: the image isn’t left-aligned like the text.

They were left aligned, but it just didn't look right. That's the problem with user-generated content: it varies in shape, size, colour and composition. Laying it out on the screen is tricky because the left section is quite organised and methodical. It worked better in the previous design because the avatar size was smaller, so it was easier to blend it in.

The forum nav at the top is also too small, plus it should be left aligned rather than right aligned for consistency.

The breadcrumb bar absolutely should be left aligned, I moved it to the right so I could compress the masthead area without the breadcrumbs running into the 'heads' in the top left. That's something I'm tinkering with.

The header module above the forum index is still far too big. Plus the two different font sizes make it harder to read. The fonts are still too big imo too. Rather than a big module, could it be a normal sized module / text with a strong colour scheme to make it stand out.

You can adjust font sizes in your browser and at the bottom of each page: there are sliders for contrast and font-size. Your settings are stored in a cookie in your browser and will be automatically applied just for you when you visit the site.

I've also got an enhancement planned to make the hero-spaces hideable. Again this will be stored in a cookie and applied individually for each user.

Strong colours run into contrast/accessibility issues, and given you're nonplussed with my design choices so far you probably don't want to trust me with stronger colours

Re fonts, as I said to Suny, the sizes are not unusual. They're the same as the Guardian and BBC News. Personally I dislike small fonts, and professionally speaking they're easier to read on a variety of devices. It's easier, as a desktop user, to change your font sizes than it is for someone else on an iPhone or Android tablet.

The colour scheme isn’t right either. Too many shades of grey make it all blend into one.

Again, readability and accessibility issues. I originally had the contrast between the background and text too high, as Suny quite rightly pointed out to me [if tactlessly and self-righteously]. Now it's off-white with dark grey. I wouldn't want to introduce more colourful backgrounds where a lot of copy is concerned, grey is just inoffensive.

That said, if you or anyone else who knows what they're doing wants to be involved: please do. The code is open, public and available here https://bitbucket.org/kgl2083/transfans.co.uk-website along with the bug/enhancement tracking.

Home page: header image isn’t aligned and too washed out. Why is there a link to the home page on the home page? Surely unnecessary? No link to forum either.

The homepage is sort of ******, but it's a low priority for me (rightly or wrongly). I tend to dogfood and fix things that stand out to me as issues in my usage. Hence most of the improvements I've focussed on are around the forum: I think I spend about 45 seconds a year on the homepage

Again: it's a collaborative effort (or at least I'd like it to be). The homepage and the rest of the site that isn't the message board all run in a fairly pain-free content management system. It's a bit like a word processor. If you want to fix the homepage, you're only a request away: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8773

Scrolling Nav: The home link is hidden beneath the TF faces in the top left corner – so I couldn’t click on it.

Yep yep- in the next release the 'heads' will be clickable so they have the same function as clicking the home link. You can also undock the top-nav using the check box, that removes the 'heads' and restructures the masthead so the home link is available again.

General comment: Too much white space. A little is good cuz it gives posts room to breath, but at the moment everything seems to drown in a sea of grey.

I understand what you're saying, but there are functional issues surrounding white space.

The original, 2004 design was created when FireFox was trendy and cutting edge and Internet Explorer 6 was the incumbent. We now live in an IT world where this site can, will be and is accessed by a truly insane variety of devices: tablets, phablets, phones, laptops, eReaders, desktops, screen magnifiers and more. Every time Samsung release a new phone, they seem to purposely create a new screen resolution, change aspect ratio or swap orientation.

Because of that, white space is necessary. Furthermore, more white space is necessary because it facilitates a wide range of input (mouse, pen, touch) by preventing accidental clicks and selection. It's also the same reason the buttons are bigger, links are larger and text is size 12 by default. It's easier to 'hit' the things you want and more difficult to get something else by accident.

It may not be what I'd develop for a purely desktop-consumed website, but that doesn't matter. You can use this site on any device and it will try its best to scale, restructure and compensate.

The alternative would be to create separate styles for desktops, and I'm not going there. It doubles (or triples, quadruples etc. depending on the number of devices) development effort. My time is technically free, but pragmatically speaking there will be a point where I feel things are of a high-enough quality/I'm bored and I stop. Hence, my time is finite and therefore not technically free. It has value and I wouldn't want to squander it focussing on multiple layouts and styles for different devices.

I hope these help. I’d still be interested in contributing some vector art. Just need to wrap up several other personal projects first.

Unfortunately I think we're fast approaching the point where the low-hanging fruit improvements, the ones that are 'free' because they have no impact, are either done or scheduled. After that we're into opinions and ideas that have trade-offs, decisions that I actually thought about before making and have reasons for being the way they are. I hope at that point most people will be happy with what I've done, but that's more about my insecurities and my endless quest for a pat on the head.

It would be really great if you could help. I appreciate real life and blahblahblah but, to be serious for a moment, I cared enough about this to spend time doing it. I have personal stuff, I have work, I have hobbies. I want to play Bioshock and go swimming. I work nine hour days as a senior web software developer (and usability specialist, which I'm sure will make Suny laugh) for a major enterprise in a team of 12. I made the time. I also made the ability to get involved as easy as I could: the code is public. You can download it and run the whole website. If you don't want to download it, you can edit it online using Cloud9 https://c9.io/kgl2083/transfans for free (just give me warning as I've shut down my QA sql server to save cash and it'll need that restarted). The whole site runs on a CMS so anybody can get in and improve it. I made the time to make not only this, but a framework so others could help without needing to run their own AWS server, know about LAMP/WAMP or learn PHP.

I couldn't have made it easier to pitch in, so please do so if you'd like. I'm not precious about the code, it belongs to everyone. I'm also not precious about everyone 'liking' it, per-se, I'm big enough to take criticism professionally, but I would just like to observe:

* if you have time to bitch, you have time to fix.
* I'm not an employee, and nobody pays to use this site, so play nice.
* I don't expect to be applauded, but a little word of kindness does wonders for my self-esteem. I appreciate my self-esteem is my problem, and nobody else's, but still.

~

On that note, thank you for the support, Paul, Rob, Chris and Spence. It really makes me smile

Thanks for the long explanation Karl. I'm sorry if my comments offended you. In hindsight it was a touch insensitive to frame my comments as I did, so yeh apologies if I came across as a jerk. I was trying to make succinct points rather than be cutting!

I've had a play with the contrast / font and got it to a place that's improved readability for me personally. There's obviously a lot of options in place to personalise the Transfans experience - so I wonder if a brief explanation of all the new features on the homepage could be handy moving forward. Coming to it new, I've found there's a lot of new features that make it all a little confusing. Like the contrast / font tool is a nice idea, but it's not signposted and it's closer to the footer - could it be moved into the main nav bar instead (under an accessibility options tab)?

I also understand we live in an age of responsive design, so websites need to work across multiple browsers, platforms and devices. Of course that's a massive headache because you need to factor in breaking points, etc. If I could code myself, I'd love to help out. Sadly, all I'm good for is illustration - but I'm happy to help create new headers and to make the homepage visually punchier.

With regards to the hierarchy issues, I'm having - could the breadcrumbs be locked directly underneath the main nav rather than at the top of the forums?

One final super minor quibble - the 'search' icon isn't a mini magnifying glass.

[Mr_Tigg]

Meow. A touch sensitive some of us are aren't we?

No. i don't think who is sticking up for Karl is being. That's really a bit of a stretch isn't it reading the posts following yours.

More constructive criticism: if you are going to apologise, start and end there. Anything else robs the gesture of any sincerity.

I'm hoping the way some people have reacted in this topic is a product of ignorance, and that they imagine Transfans is in fact run by some dedicated team of people who are fully salaried and should be held to some kind of associated account. I'm also hoping that the seeming sense of entitlement some people are showing suggests that they think they are paying customers and that if i check my bank account i'll find subscriptions from you all. That’s really the only good justification for the way some people seem to have approached this change.

Rather the reality is this:

• Transfans is free to you.
• The URL is owned and occasionally renewed by me at my own expense.
• Transfans has no adverts and no attempts are made to make any money from Transfans or recoup any running costs.
• The servers are kindly provided to us by TF Archive, if this ever goes away i will fund hosting. It also means that when they do things we have to do things (such as this change) which seems fair enough to me in exchange for getting server space for free.
• I am not technical, at least not to the extent that i can maintain the site or manage things like this re-platform, which was needed. The team of people we originally had in place largely are not here anymore (which again is entirely fair as again their time was entirely voluntary) which means we are very dependent on the skills and more importantly time of 2 people, Karl and Denyer, who pick up all of these kind of things out of nothing but their own generosity using their own free time.

I am not saying options or suggestions are not welcome, i am saying couch this in grace and gratitude for their efforts or you will incur some deserved correction from people here who have an appreciation for the realities under which we exist and the efforts a small number of people put in to make sure that continues.

Point taken BF. Of the comments I got back, I did actually say that I understood where you were coming from. It was more aimed at some of the other catty comments.

I have already posted a direct apology to Karl before you posted this.

[Mr_Tigg]

Scratch that comment regarding search. I was being retarded there.

[Kaylee]

Thanks for the long explanation Karl. I'm sorry if my comments offended you. In hindsight it was a touch insensitive to frame my comments as I did, so yeh apologies if I came across as a jerk. I was trying to make succinct points rather than be cutting!

No problem

I've had a play with the contrast / font and got it to a place that's improved readability for me personally. There's obviously a lot of options in place to personalise the Transfans experience - so I wonder if a brief explanation of all the new features on the homepage could be handy moving forward. Coming to it new, I've found there's a lot of new features that make it all a little confusing. Like the contrast / font tool is a nice idea, but it's not signposted and it's closer to the footer - could it be moved into the main nav bar instead (under an accessibility options tab)?

That is a fine idea. They could go into a little settings box, available from the top nav. I'll tinker with it.

I also understand we live in an age of responsive design, so websites need to work across multiple browsers, platforms and devices. Of course that's a massive headache because you need to factor in breaking points, etc. If I could code myself, I'd love to help out. Sadly, all I'm good for is illustration - but I'm happy to help create new headers and to make the homepage visually punchier.

That would be lovely

With regards to the hierarchy issues, I'm having - could the breadcrumbs be locked directly underneath the main nav rather than at the top of the forums?

I don't see why not- that way they'd float with the rest of the menu (or undock with it and live at the top of the page).

[Hound]

I have to say that the board looks natty on my ipad mini

[spiderfrommars]

Could we maybe put the quote boxes in a darker shade to the main messages, to make them stand out more?

[Best First]

Could we maybe put the quote boxes in a darker shade to the main messages, to make them stand out more?

i was just thinking that...

[Kaylee]

I'm not dead! I'll try to make time for another build of tweaks and changes soon as I can.

Saga are re-archetecting their travel site, so I'm working overtime on the information architecture research and UX guidelines.

[Jack Cade]

Hallo chaps.

So I struggled with the changeover at first, but I always do, so have given it some time to settle in. Generally, it feels very wide and expansive, which I'm still getting used to. One thing I find very unusual and which keeps fooling me is that the thread title is repeated in every post. I keep accidentally clicking on it because I think the poster is linking to something they want me to see. I also find it slightly unusual that the box I'm currently typing in is right-aligned with all the emoticons sitting on the left. I do like how the face top-left scrolls up to reveal the site name though! I'm going to have a go now to see what I can do with the user control panel.

But holy ****, Karl, to do all this yourself! I work myself up into tears just doing a bit of modest php on a non-interactive website, and most of that breaks.