# New feel is restrictive



## Jeffo (Sep 14, 2004)

I like the new look of the site.  it is smooth looking, but i usually use a large screen res to get rid of scroll bars and I really dont like that the webpage has a defined width and does not resize to my screen size.  I have noticed a few things that also do not fit in the defined width also.  for example this very screen i am starting this thread with.

will add the screen cap as soon as i can.

obviously it is not up to me to make any changes, but just my suggestion.


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## Jeffo (Sep 14, 2004)

Here is the picture


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## porteous (Sep 14, 2004)

Well done on the new look and feel. It looks great. 

Yes - perhaps a few glitches such as Jeffo has mentioned above - but, overall, very professional and user-friendly.

Obviously the product of much hard work - it's appreciated.


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## twister (Sep 14, 2004)

I've seen that glitch in most vBulletin boards.  Overall I really like the new theme!


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## Gnomo (Sep 14, 2004)

I am not really a fan of the new look.  I like the buttons and the smileys, but something about the color scheme and things like the font size of members names just doesn't feel right to me.

I know it would take up extra space if we had to keep the images for multiple themes, but isn't a good portion of the style done with CSS?  And wouldn't it be possible to keep various css styles around and let users choose the style that is most pleasing to them??


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## MBHockey (Sep 15, 2004)

looks a lot more like macosxhints.com now


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## porteous (Sep 15, 2004)

Let's hear from the designers of the Forum - is this being discussed anywhere else? I couldn't find a discussion on any other thread....

I assume that the type size - which is a little large at most resolutions is designed for those who have their monitor set to a higher resolution - ie, the majority (?) 

That's the only thing that takes a bit of getting used to - oh, and the use of Tahoma instead of Verdana - but I expect there was a reason for that.

As a former designer, I believe in letting designers do the design - and allowing programmers to programme, etc, with a minimum of uninformed interference. 

So, well done, guys.


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## Jeffo (Sep 15, 2004)

I did not start this to be badmouthing the site.  i like it, like i said before.  I just like to see a site that adapts to the user instead of the user adapting to the site type of thing.  as a webdesigner i know it is very hard to do when you are worried about windows and hopefully mac and how it renders in various browsers.


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## mdnky (Sep 15, 2004)

The problem with forum sites is they're not a good candidate for a 'fluid design'.  All the 'stuff' that makes up the page creates a major problem with those types of layouts.  Not to mention the issues with line-lengths at large resolutions, which make it harder to read.  

The 'span of acute focus' for the human eye is only 3-4 inches.  That's why most books you buy aren't printed on full letter size sheets...if they were your eyes would get fatigued really fast.  Most are between 4 and 6 inches wide, and the margins make line lengths between 3 and 4 inches.

For a website a line length of 50 to 60 characters (ten to twelve words) is a good all around bet to ensure maximum efficiency and legibility.  How you achieve that can be the issue at hand.  Fluid layouts (aka. flexible layouts) don't usually work well here.  They just wind up becoming really distorted at either end of the range of sizes (too small or too long).

Jeffo, why not specify your own stylesheet to override the defaults here?  If the version of NN you're using isn't up to the job, download a copy of Firefox or Mozilla 1.7 and it'll do it.


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## fryke (Sep 17, 2004)

While you're certainly right in theory, mdnky, you're technically wrong. A website should _not_ define the width of a text line, or at least it doesn't _have_ to, since the user can choose the width of his browser windows, whereas he cannot choose the width, of say, a page in a book made of paper. That's why I prefer webdesigns that offer more flexibility here, as webbrowsers do offer a lot of flexibility (as you mentioned, too...). For example, I can hit Cmd-+ until my lines are short enough (less words) or Cmd-- until they're long enough (more words) for my very personal taste. So what good is selecting for the viewers, if they can still choose to differ?

User Interface Design is a hard topic. There are so many dos and donts. And many of them just don't feel right with the web. Designers have to make a choice: Do I adhere to the classic standards and force them onto the users who might be put off by them or just ignore them anyway and override them? Or should I actually _use_ the technology and let the user define how he or she wants the content to look. CSS has brought many designers on board of the second choice. However many forums seem to stay in that old "I'll just use tables"-mantra so many "old-school" designers seem to love. (I, too, am often found thinking that way...)


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## mdnky (Sep 17, 2004)

Never said it had to, but when you consider the factors involved it's best to.  'Readable text' is no different, be it on a printed page of a book or a web site.  It's there for a reason.  It should be properly formatted so that the reader can process it to get the message being conveyed.  

When your line lengths are long enough to swallow up a full paragraph, you have a very big problem.  When they only allow 3-4 words per line, you have another problem.  The 'max-width' and 'min-width' features in CSS can help solve this, but unfortunately they're pretty much useless right now.  IE has a major issue with them (doesn't use them at all) and even Safari stumbles on them (when used with positioned elements).

That's part of the reason why I'm leaning more and more towards fully EM based layouts.  If the document is the wrong size (too big or small) for their tastes, then all the user has to do is adjust the text size in the browser.  Everything scales accordingly to the sizes they set.  You could even throw in alternate stylesheets and a switcher that would allow the document base size to be adjusted, and still make small adjustments with the browser text zoom feature.

The problems with forums is all the 'stuff' you have to cram in there.  An XHTML/CSS layout can/has been done, it just takes A LOT of time to do.  BTW...as far as I'm concerned, if you use XHTML then you don't use tables (except for proper tabular data).


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## Gnomo (Sep 18, 2004)

mdnky said:
			
		

> BTW...as far as I'm concerned, if you use XHTML then you don't use tables (except for proper tabular data).


Wow.  I don't think I would go that far.  First off, there is nothing (at least that I've seen) in the XHTML Strict specification that prevents you from using tables for anything but tabular data.

Also at this time, CSS layout (due to rendering bugs in Safari and IE never doing anything right) is still a "hack 'n slash" operation requiring server side scripting to get cross browser consistency.

Finally, the majority of the websites are designed by people using wysiwyg tools.  The majority of these tools will most likely always utilize tables for layout (even after XHTML becomes the defacto web standard) because it is easy to calculate.  I could potentially see Dreamweaver make an effort to write tableless code, but my guess is that it would be a "feature" that is not turned on by default.

As for the debate on liquid or fixed layouts:  I guess it depends on what the content of the site is, but I typically lean more towards fixed width than liquid layout.  I just don't like the idea of people being able to make my site look horrible by resizing their window.  Perhaps if CSS could specify attributes like: minimum-height; minimum-width; and some method for locking the aspec ratio I would be more likely to use liquid layout.


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## mdnky (Sep 18, 2004)

Proper coding for XHTML is 'semantic code'...which means using the tags for their given purposes (tables for tabular data, p tags for paragraphs, h1-h6 tags for headings, list tags for lists, etc.).  Using tables for layout is the biggest hack of all times and doesn't fit to the semantic idea for XHTML.  Sure, you can use them for that purpose...people have for quite some time now...but then again when I want to hang a picture on the wall, I could use a sledge hammer to drive the nail.  Why not something that was better designed for that purpose, like a tack hammer?



			
				Gnomo said:
			
		

> Also at this time, CSS layout (due to rendering bugs in Safari and IE never doing anything right) is still a "hack 'n slash" operation requiring server side scripting to get cross browser consistency.



Actually, it's not very hard at all to get most layouts to work properly.  No server-side scripting required.  The only hack I've personally used with CSS has been the box-model hack for IE, and that's usually avoidable with a little forward thinking.

But...really that's (XHTML/CSS thing) a whole other topic which will be debatable for quite some time.  This thread was supposed to be more towards the new feel of MacOSX.com and it being 'restrictive' for some users.


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