Forum Width

D

dWhite

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Should be a little bit wider, as right now everything looks crammed together tightly and doesn't look all that great and is confusing to read sometimes. :p
 

essellar

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There is nothing worse for usability/readability than full-width text. "Duff coding"? No, "best practices". There are too many sites out there already that require the Readability bookmarklet to make the usable -- a forum shouldn't be one of them.
 

SylvanOgre

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The thread: "Problem selecting login fields - with workaround" might be related. I have not tried the workaround given in the thread, but have found my own workaround using the tab key.

Yes, when the browser window is not full-screen, the banner ad, menu fields, etc. are kindof jumbled up. When the window is clicked to full-screen, the layout "fixes" itself (and the login fields become selectable so one can, well, login!).
 
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Seems people have different opinions.. but I still stand by using a setup where the width function is defined at the users end rather than at the site end.

Has anybody seen how narrow 600 is @ 1600x1400? .. when users scale the fonts so they can see it all you get is a jumbled mess

I ran a site aimed at users of netbooks a few years back.. all was good while they only did 800x600.. then along came the next get 1024 machines and te complaints came flooding in from people who couldn't use the site.. mainly because it was impossible to read.

Anyhow.. it's quaint being narrow.. but who is that for?.. the IE users?? because the fox and kazehakase and galeon have no problems at all with width=100% .. then again IE users don't have 24 desktops to work on do they ;)
 

xav0989

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I'd say that the width should at least be of 960px.
 

essellar

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960px is great -- unless you're on a netbook. A lot of them are 800px wide. And 600px is about the maximum I like for a text column, even on my 1920px-wide monitor. I preferred the old layout precisely because it had the user infobox to the left and text in a narrower column to the right. The readability was a whole lot better than the current layout. (And no, the readability thing isn't just one user's opinion -- the readability of text layouts both on-screen and in print has been much studied over several centuries. 50 ems seems to be about ideal -- much narrower forces bad typography, much wider induces reader mistakes and fatigue.)

It may seem like you're "wasting" screen real estate keeping text usably wide. So put other interesting content beside the text if you want. Break your text into columns. Whatever -- just don't force poor usability on your users because you feel like you're being charged for monitor space you don't use. (You can always hit CTRL-+ a couple of times and stand back if you want edge-to-edge text.)
 

andrew.3.141512

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The thread: "Problem selecting login fields - with workaround" might be related. I have not tried the workaround given in the thread, but have found my own workaround using the tab key.

Yes, when the browser window is not full-screen, the banner ad, menu fields, etc. are kindof jumbled up. When the window is clicked to full-screen, the layout "fixes" itself (and the login fields become selectable so one can, well, login!).
It is related.

I have a very handy add-on installed in Firefox called Tree Style Tab. Currently I have my options set so that the tabs show up on the left side of the screen instead of on top like normal (that's my preference - I can open a lot more tabs this way without having to have a scrollbar for all of my tabs). This shortens the width allotted for the page content itself, however. Unless I minimize the list of tabs, the top of these forums get messed up visually and I get the common glitch where you can't click in the login fields.
 

SylvanOgre

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The solution to "Drop down menus top of forum page not working" may have fixed the issue in this thread, also.
 
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SylvanOgre

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The "problem" has returned, but only in Firefox 3.6.13 (Linux and Windows). The search window is foobarred in Windows, and the menu is s.n.a.f.u.-ed in Linux. Probably something to do with the new Facebook link/logo at the top of the page.
 

vv.bbcc19

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Is there a way to auto adjust the width according to browser i.e., in a browser,I set the required width on forum in my mozilla firefox.
Is that possible?
 

SylvanOgre

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Looks like it has been (finally) fixed. There are (were) several issues that were all related, and now everything looks (and works <grin>) like one would expect. No more gymnastics with window size and tab key! <woo-hoo!>
 

SylvanOgre

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Uh-oh! The gymnastics are required again. The problem has returned: the login field for the forums cannot be selected unless the browser is expanded to full screen (at 1280x960 resolution). Seems to be a width issue, because at 1680x1050 I do NOT have to expand to full screen.
So it seems that if the browser window is less than a certain width, the elements get scrunched together and/or dont show up at all.
 

vv.bbcc19

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Yeah..several issues are fixed.
Certain links are taken aback and forum is back to its cool.
 

SylvanOgre

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Actually, no its not fixed.
I had to maximize my firefox window (to 1280x960) before the login/password boxes would even show on the page. Once logged in, I can go back to a "normal" window (not full-screen). So this still needs some attention (again).
(The problem comes and goes. Check the dates of the postings on this (and the other 3 related) thread(s).)

(added later:)
And I noticed that my posts to those other 3 threads ("Drop down menus top of forum page not working", "forum login problem ", "Problem selecting login fields - with workaround ") have been deleted. That makes the dates a bit harder to check.
 
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Brandon

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I'll look into this tomorrow. We redid the forum theme when we upgraded vBulletin, and nobody who I talk too has a small resolution. Thanks for the report and sorry for the inconvenience.
 

SylvanOgre

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Hey Brandon:
Finally have something constructive to contribute to this (long) thread!

In Firefox, using the Addon "Request Policy", I can restrict/permit requests to other domains besides the one I actually type into the address bar.

Here is the constructive part:
When I restrict access to x10powered.com, the login is visible (and works!) no matter what size my window is. When I allow access to x10powered.com, the login fields disappear if my window is below a certain size (just grab the bottom corner with the mouse and resize the window... you will see what I mean).

So! Something about the code retrieved from x10powered.com is messing with the page rendering! I have duplicated this on WinXP SP3, Firefox 4.0.1 and on Fedora 14, Firefox 3.6.17. In Opera (WinXP SP3), resizing the window makes the login fields come-and-go (just like Firefox), but I dont have a way (yet?) to disable cross-site requests so I cannot test X10powered.com as the culprit in Opera. BUT, the evidence is pretty strong already, IMNSHO.

OK, now that we have something to go on, do we escalate to a support ticket?
 
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