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Forums match the main site a bit better
Post Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2012 6:55 pm
I've changed the forum templates to make them look a little bit more like the main site. The biggest change you may notice is that the page is fixed-width. The competitions widget at the top will of course only be there for a few more weeks.
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Post Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2012 6:59 pm
I'd make it a tad larger perhaps. Can we allow for small width and cap larger width to a maximum?
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Post Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2012 7:08 pm
I changed the width to max-width. The width should match the main site, do you think it is too narrow?
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Post Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2012 9:20 pm
looks good to me, reading posts is definitely more nicer now. Much less left-right scanning needed :)
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Post Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2012 3:53 pm
Seems like exposure gets donations =)
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Post Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2012 7:54 am
Is it just me, or did the font become gigantic yesterday or so?

In before someone says that I have to change the zoom level of my browser thinking that I'm stupid and that I didn't check it out already.
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Post Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2012 8:03 am
So it is not Opera's Zoom setting gone bad ^^
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Post Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2012 9:21 am
The font got an extra 1pt to match the main site, and be a bit closer to modern website design :) phpBB seems obsessed with having stuff in small fonts all the time. Expect more changes in future...
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Post Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2012 1:58 pm
I'll be honest, I don't like the bigger font.
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Post Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2012 2:10 pm
Well, I may change it. Do you find the fonts large on the rest of the site?
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Post Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2012 2:31 pm
Oh no, don't misread me, the rest of the website is fine and I like it, it's just that the bigger font looks out of place on the forum, in my opinion, maybe because I'm not used to it and I always think something went wrong with my zoom settings or with a css or something...
Maybe it's just a matter of getting used to it, but as of now, my reaction is "wtf happened" and not "hey this looks good".
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Post Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2012 3:03 pm
I totally agree with Tom.

I'm using Firefox. In Opera looks a bit better, as the underline thickness isn't that fat.
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Post Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2012 3:05 pm
I think big fonts must have a (design?) reason, like search input captions or titles.

What is very common today is to use new google fonts. That is really pleasing and you have lots of fonts to choose: www.google.com/webfonts
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Post Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2012 3:52 pm
Web fonts are generally not good for body text due to poor hinting and we have chosen not to use them for headings. But that's a digression.

Overall, I'd like to move the forums to look more like the rest of the site - consider the news on the front page which is a custom representation of the news forum, and definitely readable.

Right now I think the primary problem is that there's too much bold text, especially on forum index pages, which causes the fat underlines and poor readability; it's apparently just on the Windows font renderer threshold to make everything suddenly much fatter.
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Post Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2012 4:04 pm
TmEE wrote
So it is not Opera's Zoom setting gone bad ^^


Hah. My first thought was that I'd messed up Opera's zooming, too, so I pressed the asterisk key a few times. When it didn't change, I realised it was an update to the forum.

I'm not a fan of the larger font, but that's something I can fix (and have now fixed) on my end. :)
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Post Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2012 2:28 pm
I have to admit, it really is a matter of getting used to it.
After a few days I'm starting to like the new design.
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Post Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2012 2:33 pm
I haven't commented so far because I myself wanted to see it over a few weeks. Its a bit early still to be able to draw the line clearly between actual usability changes and old anchored habits reacting to any change.

The said I think the topic name "Forums match the main site a bit better" is misleading in the sense that I don't think it matter much that the forums matches the main site considering how important the forum usability needs to be. So I'm only evaluating the changes as to wether they are making the forum a better place or not.
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Post Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2012 3:14 pm
Didn't the Preview/Submit buttons lose their original blue style in the transition?
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Post Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2012 4:03 pm
It is an ongoing process, eventually hoping to use common css for both the forums and main site, also aiming to look good on a smartphone. I did recently change buttons to use native style, as on the main site - buttons that look like buttons should be a usability improvement.
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Post Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2012 12:07 pm
Not a fan, it gives me a horizontal scroll bar.
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Post Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2012 12:19 pm
Do we have pictures of the old style? There's lots of many things that disturb me that I can't put my finger on.

The crumbtrail font size seems enormous to me, and the line of button at the top ("Log out", "search") maybe shouldn't show up in bold?

I understand the change on Preview/Submit buttons if it makes it easier to use on say, iPad. Maybe the buttons could be coloured blue somehow.
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Post Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 7:24 am
Can you provide screenshots and tell me which browser you're using if there's a problem?

Fonts should mostly all be the same size. The 1pt increase makes bold text look a lot darker on Windows - I'm mostly removing the bold tags.

Scaling down by one step in Chrome gets you back to the old font size. Almost everything should be the same as it always was at that size.
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Post Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 2:44 pm
IE8 1280x1024.
1280_1024.jpg (204.75 KB)
1280_1024.jpg

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Post Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 4:04 pm
Opera, 1680 x 1050
SMSpowerInOpera.png (163.17 KB)
Opera shot
SMSpowerInOpera.png

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Post Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 5:20 pm
Opera seems correct.

IE is screwing up, I'll see if I can fix it.
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Post Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 6:01 pm
Maxim wrote
IE is screwing up.
Tell me something I don't know :P
I don't get why people still use IE...

Firefox 1.0.7 @ 1152×864:


Chrome 13.0.782.220 @ 1152×864:


Looks good. I can provide 1920×1080 pics from my laptop later.

lol Internet Explorer 6.0.2900.2180 @ 1152×864:

17503060.png (76.18 KB)
Firefox 1.0.7 @ 1152×864
17503060.png
63368513.png (77.3 KB)
Chrome 13.0.782.220 @ 1152×864
63368513.png
48393145.png (56.8 KB)
lol Internet Explorer 6.0.2900.2180 @ 1152×864
48393145.png

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Post Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 7:29 pm
I never understand what people have against IE. Sure 5 and and 6 weren't that great. But it has improved a lot over the last couple of years. Also, Firefox still has memory leaks and I'm not a fan of Google's policies. I have no real problems with IE8.
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Post Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 8:00 pm
Last edited by aypok on Tue Apr 24, 2012 3:52 pm; edited 1 time in total
S.F wrote
I never understand what people have against IE. Sure 5 and and 6 weren't that great. But it has improved a lot over the last couple of years.


Up to and including IE7, it was abysmal for following standards - to get things to work in IE, you'd have to include nasty hacks. IE users were the bane of my existence for many years because they kept finding problems with sites I'd made - problems that didn't occur in any Real Browsers™.

I don't do much web work these days, so I don't know how IE8 is - although IE9 has caused some problems on a recent project, oddly... It is certainly improving -- as you say -- but it has taken Microsoft so long to do it... IE has been left behind.
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Post Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 8:55 pm
I think IE should be better now - I've only got IE8 on this XP box, but it seems happier (padding seems missing, most other things seem correct).
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Post Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 9:57 pm
IE is fine now, thx.
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Post icons
Post Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2012 8:31 pm
Currently, on the forums we use these icons:

- forums

- topics

- post anchors (like at the top of this post)

- "go to post" links

- map markers, representing users.

However, on the main site, we have:

- topic link

- post link

- user link

I'd like to standardise this, but it'd make more sense if the snail wasn't used for both users and posts. I like the egg for topics (cool stuff inside it, broken open version for read topics), and the snail for users (the guy who lives in the SMS...) - but what would make sense for posts? I'd prefer to avoid the items in eggs in Psycho Fox that we aren't already using (medicine bottle = attachment; others seem inappropriate). It has to be a maximum of 16x16px, from an iconic SMS game and ideally somehow matching the concept. Maybe this, for example:

Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2012 9:31 pm

...except it's not very recognisable...
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Post Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2012 7:34 am
Should the text under our user names be so squished? I personally think the forum could be a little wider.... Although that is just personal preference.
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Post Posted: Wed May 23, 2012 9:36 am
Jacko wrote
Should the text under our user names be so squished?

I'm wondering about this as well. To clarify, I've attached an image of Jacko's post as seen in Firefox 10.0.3 (ESR).
JackosPost.png (56.77 KB)
JackosPost.png

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Post Posted: Wed May 23, 2012 3:56 pm
That's not supposed to happen.

Firefox 1.0.7, btw.
47193693.png (3.63 KB)
47193693.png

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Post Posted: Fri May 25, 2012 10:34 am
The text under the user names appears "squished" in Opera as well.

The problem seems to be that, in the HTML, the column containing the names has width="150" and the one containing the posts themselves has width="100%". Given these conflicting requests some browsers honour the former, but Firefox and Opera seem to try to satisfy the latter at the former's expense.
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Post Posted: Fri May 25, 2012 7:26 pm
I've removed one of the 100%s that seemed like it was causing the trouble.
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Post Posted: Sat May 26, 2012 7:03 am
That seems to have fixed it. Thanks!
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Post Posted: Sat May 26, 2012 11:12 pm
The "location" field now looks weird (in a bad way) if it's longer than one line, though. Unless it's just me.
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Post Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 12:28 am
That was on purpose... it's supposed to make it clearer that it's a wrap, not someone with confusing location text.
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Post Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 1:38 am
I see. Well, I hope it can be added to the list of "things I will need some time to get used to", but... it just looks too weird :|
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Post Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 9:12 am
Not if I turn it off again. For future reference, here's what it looked like:
before.png (3.35 KB)
before.png
after.png (3.35 KB)
after.png

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Post Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 10:03 am
I actually quite liked the indent, even though its presence does not prevent "hacking": consider someone writing something like "Site Admin" in place of "Evil: yes".
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Post Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 6:00 pm
Maxim, you didn't need to turn it off because it looks weird to me, my opinions might differ from other people's. Changes per se always scare me, but in the end I get used to new things with the same ease.

Also wow, I noticed just now that I've been on smspower for more than 10 years, woo :)
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Post Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2012 7:11 pm
Take your guesses on what's what:



72875682.png (557 B)
72875682.png
83810321.png (568 B)
83810321.png
94456064.png (557 B)
94456064.png

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Post Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2012 11:39 am
It looks OK in Chrome and IE8 for me. IE6 is not expected to work.
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Post Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2012 10:05 pm
if i were you i wouldn't even bother w/ie6 for this site at this point. xp users can go all the way to ie8, vista & 7 can do ie9, and every non-ie desktop browser is already capable of handling it "correctly."
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Post Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2012 9:54 pm
Nice blue buttons :)
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Post Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2012 9:19 pm
Hey, I have 98 and ie5 :(
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