The "Look" of waccobb.net

["Mad" Miles]

Hey Barry and Barry's Board Designers,

Aside from all of the things already said in discussion about the change, I'm having a problem with the text formatting. The standard type size (3 Point) is too small. But more importantly, the line lengths are too long and there is no spacing between lines of type. This makes reading posts difficult and tiring. Eyestrain, having to review lines to keep my place. All not good.

As a student of graphic design, I would shorten the line lengths by about a third, introduce at least a half space break between each line, ideally as much as a one and an half space line break.

I can adjust my picas and zoom small text. But I can't readily adjust line length and spacing.

I also find myself putting a blank line at the beginning of every post, because otherwise the title crowds the first line of the posts body. That must be pretty easy to rectify?

"Cyber Hospital" Good one! I concur.

[Barry]

The standard type size (3 Point) is too small.

Type size seems OK to me (even without my new glasses!), but I could see increasing it a bit. How's the type size work for the rest of you??

line lengths are too long and there is no spacing between lines of type.

The width of the post display is controlled by the width of your browser window at the moment. Narrow your browser and the line length will shrink!

Sometime this fall we'll be switching to a fixed-width display with side columns to maintain a consistent and short line length.

The line spacing seems fine by me. Anybody else?

I also find myself putting a blank line at the beginning of every post, because otherwise the title crowds the first line of the posts body.

I haven't noticed this, but I imagine this will be addressed when we do our full pass on the design in November.

Thanks for your comments!

["Mad" Miles]

Hey Barry,

Thanks for the progress you're making on tuning up this new version of the site.

I just wanted to report that I've found a way to clear my "New Posts" page, by double clicking on each category icon! It's a bit tedious, but it works. I patiently await the ability to do it in one click, or two.

[Off-topics comments have been split off to https://www.waccobb.net/forums/showthread.php?71382-quot-Mad-quot-Miles-Blog]

[PGundry]

I'll admit I am just perusing the new design and I'm sure there are things to "correct" -- I just wanted to congratulate you on a clean clear site. What a great improvement. Thanks, Patty

Hey Barry and Barry's Board Designers,

Aside from all of the things already said in discussion about the change, I'm having a problem with the text formatting. The standard type size (3 Point) is too small. But more importantly, the line lengths are too long and there is no spacing between lines of type. This makes reading posts difficult and tiring. Eyestrain, having to review lines to keep my place. All not good.

As a student of graphic design, I would shorten the line lengths by about a third, introduce at least a half space break between each line, ideally as much as a one and an half space line break.

I can adjust my picas and zoom small text. But I can't readily adjust line length and spacing.

I also find myself putting a blank line at the beginning of every post, because otherwise the title crowds the first line of the posts body. That must be pretty easy to rectify?

"Cyber Hospital" Good one! I concur.

[Barry]

I'll admit I am just perusing the new design and I'm sure there are things to "correct" -- I just wanted to congratulate you on a clean clear site. What a great improvement. Thanks, Patty

Glad you like it, Patty! AND... we'll be introducing a new style later this month that I'm hoping you'll (and everybody else) will like more yet! And you will be able to choose which style you prefer and be able to use it.

["Mad" Miles]

OK Barry,

Since you're tinkering with the site/platform on this holiday weekend, I'm gonna mention a couple of things I've been holding back, since I figured you were jammed with the redesign and re-mounting of the "new" waccobb.net.

As you know I've asked for the return of "Mark All Read", but without it, I've been using the double click on Category icons, to turn them from blue (unread posts therein) to gray (no unread posts).

But I still get a few posts left in "New Posts" when there shouldn't be any. As an anal retentive person with mild OCD, I always leaves my email inbox and deleted files clean of everything, this is an irritant.

Second, the archive only goes back to 6/6/09, Belay that! You fixed it!!! It goes all the way back to '05, Yay Barry!!!

I'm off to Okili's memorial for his brother who passed in Congo Brazzaville recently. I can breath easy about access to my ramblings here for the past five years. Merci beaucoup!

[Barry]

As you know I've asked for the return of "Mark All Read", but without it, I've been using the double click on Category icons, to turn them from blue (unread posts therein) to gray (no unread posts).

You'll find the Mark All Read option on the "Forum Actions" submenu. Let me know if that works for you.

But I still get a few posts left in "New Posts" when there shouldn't be any. As an anal retentive person with mild OCD, I always leaves my email inbox and deleted files clean of everything, this is an irritant.

Let me know if the Mark All Read option fixes that for you. And thanks, I have been wondering why some posts have been missing from "New Posts". I've been expecting to see it work like the old version which did not reflect the "read status". So I think the read status explains this.

I think I'm going to have to provide two different New Posts lists, one that only shows un-read posts and one that shows all recent posts.

Second, the archive only goes back to 6/6/09, Belay that! You fixed it!!! It goes all the way back to '05, Yay Barry!!!

Whew! I had no idea why it wasn't working in the first place and hadn't even tested it yet, and have done nothing to fix it. So Yay indeed!

[Tars]

Type size seems OK to me (even without my new glasses!), but I could see increasing it a bit. How's the type size work for the rest of you??

At the default size 3, the text is quite comfortable and readable to me. I think readability at that size is largely a serif vs sans serif issue. Or, perhaps size 3 may seem small if one has a monitor set at very-high resolution.

["Mad" Miles]

Barry,

The "Mark Categories Read" function under "Forum Actions" in "Bulletin Board" is working for me to "Mark All Read". Although two or three clicks to one, the convenience factor is not as good as before. But all things get gotten used to.


Tars,

My comment about type size, line spacing and line length was that combined, the current arrangement with all of them, reading text on this new version of the site is more arduous than before. And it's more difficult than the vast majority of other places I read text on the internet.

My bias is towards serif, hence my extra effort to put everything in TNR 3. And when I was using IE it was Garamond, because TNR wasn't available to me.

All other things being equal, 3 pica is fine as the standard setting. The problem is that 3 pica, combined with the lack of extra space between lines, and lines of 100 characters (yes, I just took the trouble to count it!?), the text body is too dense!

Keeping track of which line I'm on, especially when people can't be bothered to break their text into paragraphs, which seems to be the convention for online composition, is frustrating and irritating.

I read with glasses, my eyesight is very good, with correction. What I'm trying to convey is that the layout of pages here, is not user friendly.


Barry,

When the "blog" function is established here, will comments on the posts from the blogger be differentiated graphically, from the blog posts themselves? That's the standard as far as I can tell on other sites.

Usually comments are listed after the "articles" in the blog. As things are set up now on wacco it's the standard setup with posts following, or preceding, one another in chronological order, with no differentiation between what is written by the "blogger" and the posts by those commenting. Without going into my own personal foibles, this is not conducive to a sense of authorial privilege and authenticity on the part of the blogger.

I don't have a problem with people commenting on my offerings, in fact I welcome it. But when a comment is off topic, or an unsolicited advertisement, the only option I have now is to ignore it or delete it.

If comments were in a separate section at the end, I could decide whether to let them stand, or not, and it would be a more appropriate section to moderate the conversation, than in the main body of the "blog" itself.

[Barry]

Thanks for your comments, Miles.

I think you may be one of about a dozen people who use Mark Forums Read. That will be re-configured (somehow) in the new interface, probably as part of a new "advanced options" dialog, which would probably involve a mouse-over and then a click.

I'll re-visit the fonting when the new skin arrives. I'm OK with making it larger, and I could also see providing a choice of sizes, colors, and fonts.

I too wish people would use paragraphs. I often edit them in for people, and I invite you to, too (without changing any text).

I'm still working on the blog presentation, but the basic is that there is a series of blog entries by one blogger (or perhaps a team) each of which can receive comments. I hadn't considered highlighting the comments that are made by the blog author, but that's a good idea!

[Tars]

I too wish people would use paragraphs. I often edit them in for people, and I invite you to, too (without changing any text).

IMHO it would be better yet if responders only quoted just the specific point to which they're responding, rather than include whole paragraphs. Just (one of) my pet peeves...

Looks to me like a vBulletin glitch, or at the very least an annoying idiosyncrasy: If there are no line breaks between paragraphs in quoted text, vB leaves it that way - annoying and dense to read. But if you add a line break between paragraphs when editing, vB adds an additional line break, making 3 lines between paragraphs. Sheesh, I wish they'd fix that!