logo Sign In

Excessive use of vertical screen space

Author
Date
Author
Time
 (Edited)
Post link
(Continuing from thread in announcement)

OT Forum screen space usage

the red parts are the white space (and ads). See how little of the page is actually useful content?

Part of this is probably because the forum only fits horizontally with a browser window of > 1024 pixels. Even though monitors are getting bigger, that's excessive as a lot of people browse with a window smaller than full screen.

Moving into the content, the unused avatar area (turned off for me wastes lots more space).
Darth Lucas: I am altering the trilogy. Pray I don't alter it further.
Author
Time
Post link
I've moved this thread out of the bug reports forum, because it's a suggestion for a design amendment not a software bug.

Personally I'm pretty happy with the layout, although maybe it could benefit from a couple of minor tweaks.

Guidelines for post content and general behaviour: read announcement here

Max. allowable image sizes in signatures: reminder here

Author
Time
Post link
Do you not mind having to constantly scroll to see content? Or is it that you don't actually see the space? Or that your monitor is so large that it doesn't matter?

The risk of reinventing the wheel (forum software) is that Jay will have to make a lot of effort to cover all the design decisions that other software has done, including active user research, not just listening to the vocal few who are willing to comment on forum design. While his forum software is OK, it has a lot of quirks that others have already solved - and doesn't seem to offer any unique feature that others don't have - so it is not compelling...
Darth Lucas: I am altering the trilogy. Pray I don't alter it further.
Author
Time
 (Edited)
Post link
Keep in mind that a big chunk of that space is for a banner ad that you're probably blocking. If you think that's bad, you should check out some of the larger forums out there. They have so much crap at the top, the primary navigation is below the fold.

I worked with a professional designer to come up with a good balance of content and white space. I knew that the design would not please everyone, but that's impossible. Also note that your smaller screen size and increased font size are driving the content down even further. A monitor capable of 1024x768 is not "large," it's baseline in today's market.

I disagree with your assessment that it only offers features that others do already. The post bookmark feature is very helpful (much better than random search, and you don't need to litter your browser's bookmark menu with links to individual posts), and I haven't seen that elsewhere. I also don't know of any forum software that lets you save posts as drafts to edit and post later. I could be wrong, of course.

I made the software flexible enough to allow for different skins merely by placing a custom CSS file in the style directory. I've considered allowing users to upload their own stylesheets, letting them create their own skin. Wouldn't be hard to add to the preferences panel.

This is a beta product, and yes, it has quirks. Please keep in mind that this software is constantly under development, and there are fixes in testing for many things (an advanced post editor, more advanced search options, layout tweaks like your avatar issue, and more). While there are many forum packages out there, only a few reach this level of sophistication, and while there is a PHP-based forum wherever you look (vBulletin being the dominant player), in the ColdFusion application market, there are very few choices for advanced forums. This software will help fill that niche.

One last thing to remember: I'm one developer. Software of this size and complexity usually has a team behind it, but I'm not in a position to hire someone to help out right now. That may change once it hits the market as an official retail product.

Please keep the comments coming though. I do appreciate the feedback, both positive and negative.
Forum Administrator

MTFBWY…A

Author
Time
Post link

Just to finalise a point here - my res is 1152 x 864. That doesn't mean I give all of it to the browser window.

The forums are getting worse with all the multitude of stickied/announcement posts - often it's one and a half windows worth of headers to get to the real content.

Well keep up the incremental work - eventually you should have a compelling package hopefully.

Darth Lucas: I am altering the trilogy. Pray I don't alter it further.
Author
Time
Post link

Not the same exact problem as the original poster, but the topic title fits so i'm putting this here.

The Google banner ad that i encountered runs vertically and not horizontally.  This gives a very bad look to the forum home page, as it looks empty.  (admittedly, given the recent forum update, i thought everything was missing).

I suppose they are only using the alloted area for a banner ad, but by going vertical they are killing a bunch of space.  Can you specify that advertisers run only horizontal ads in these places?

Pink Floyd -- First in Space

Author
Time
Post link

Try refreshing your cache. I updated the style sheet to fix this issue last night, which I introduced trying to fix the image display issue posted in the bug forum.

Forum Administrator

MTFBWY…A