New Sidebar Layout

[Melooo182]

why not make a poll about this?
unless what TWC users think is of no interest

with 1280px i'm loosing like a 3rd of horizontal space :/

google chrome can scale up the screen making the bar smaller, but then the text gets too small, still readable but kind of annoying
cannot the code for the bar adjust to screen resolution?

[Spartan999]

why not make a poll about this?
unless what TWC users think is of no interest

I think there was a thread discussing this beforehand.

(No links on my part but I am sure others can provide for one)

[Ferdiad]

I think there was a thread discussing this beforehand.

(No links on my part but I am sure others can provide for one)

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...663059-Sidebar

[QuintusSertorius]

It's hideous, distracting and annoying. Sorry, but I couldn't give a toss what's going on outside the EB fora, looks like I'll have to delve into this css malarkey to make it go away.

[GrnEyedDvl]

Hi! Some feedback:

Shrinking the page is not too much of a problem - just not what we're used to. It's probably good for 'optimal reading line length'.

But in threads, we get a lot of blank space on the right. That's a weird look. It's frustrating that it can't be closed.

The sidebar itself also doesn't look too good. I would suggest some spacing between the discrete boxes of the sidebar. And removing the 'search' section -- there's already a "search" elsewhere.

vBulletins search function sucks, the beta version sphinx one I have been messing with for a year is a pain and actually crashed on the official vBulletin site last week causing them about 72 hours of downtime. So I thought I would throw this one in and see how well it works. I haven't had time to really play with it much yet, and it can be tweaked a bit. There is also a Google widget for this, but the site for that one is currently down.

The search bar may stay or go depending on how useful it actually is.

I was also going to mention a significant issue with its alignment (too much padding-top in some pages) but either that was fixed or I can't find the page where it was a problem.

I fixed that.

Almost none of the items are useful. There are better ways within vBulletin to push out site-wide announcements, of which there should at any one time only be one or two anyway. So, it was a good way to find this thread, but for me -- not being a Rome II player -- it doesn't look like there's much utility there.

What would you consider to be useful? One of the things there now is the Poll section where Content will be doing some weekly polls, and I put in a bunch of the Content publications. For those into politics there is the Hot Political Topics block.


And we can add more. The TWC Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube pages will probably be there later this week. The idea here is to make hot sections of the site easier to find. We have 1200 or so subforums, new people have a rough time finding stuff, and even long term members miss a LOT of stuff that is going on. Such as the discussion I started on this very topic last month. Getting that kind of stuff visible is what I am trying to do here.


With the site wide announcements you mentioned, this single thread already has far more views than the last announcement I posted, and that one was about taking the entire site down for some maintenance. If people don't read that kind of announcement, highlighted in BIG RED LETTERS, then obviously they don't pay too much attention to announcements.

Ah, this should be a completely solvable issue. Just do:

.postbody .content img {
    max-width: 90%;
}

Or 95% or 100%; I like to leave a little wiggle room.

OK, it might be a little more complicated than that if you want to get into supporting IE. Supposedly Windows has issues scaling images, too, but I'm on Windows and have never noticed it. Here's a reference site if you want to be really thorough: http://unstoppablerobotninja.com/entry/fluid-images

There are also some problems tying that into imagmagik to auto resize it. We have done some stuff with it before.

Here is the blue colour of the sidebar text for Blackout. It doesn't look so bad in this close up but from 2 feet away it sort of blends in. I assume that the side bar is supposed to be glanced at but I have to lean in and study it to see what it says (I don't have perfect vision either so its a bit of a bummer).

Yeah that needs to be looked at. I will get into some of the specific themes in a bit.

why not make a poll about this?
unless what TWC users think is of no interest

I made one weeks ago.

[Sebidee]

Yeah that needs to be looked at. I will get into some of the specific themes in a bit.

Thanks!

[Arandir Tur-Anion de Bodemloze]

I loved the sidebar for the front page, but on other parts of the forum (espicially in subjects themselves), it ruins more the experience for me than nothing, has it does not have so much to do with what we are doing.

Anfd it takes almost the third of my screen for nothing

[alex86]

what would you consider to be useful?

Hm, good question. In thread view? Nothing. I just want to read the thread.

On the main forum, what you have here isn't bad. I liked what was there previously of recent posts, but I guess there are all sorts of things that could go into it. Not feeling strongly enough to give suggestions yet. Maybe later...

On search, shouldn't it be possible to replace the vbulletin search box with the custom one, instead of having it in the sidebar? I think that makes more sense than having two, separate search functions. I didn't realize it was a different search until you mentioned it.

There are also some problems tying that into imagmagik to auto resize it. We have done some stuff with it before.

I'm afraid I'm not sure what you're talking about here. I looked up imagmagik and it looks like an image editing program. What I'm talking about is just a simple CSS rule to make sure images in post content that are too big get resized (by the browser) instead of spilling over the page.

[DAVIDE]

God bless Tapatalk!!!!

[KAM 2150]

Still, now most of the right side is just empty block that makes entire layout look bad.

Plus, on the official poll pretty much most of the people were against it.

View Poll Results: Do you use the Sidebar?

• I use it
  
  19.05%
• I do not use it
  
  63.49%
• What is the Sidebar?
  
  17.46%

I am not totally against it, but users should be able to turn it off or be visible only on the main page. The trade off is simply not worth it currently.

[Sebidee]

Still, now most of the right side is just empty block that makes entire layout look bad.

Plus, on the official poll pretty much most of the people were against it.

View Poll Results: Do you use the Sidebar?

• I use it
  
  19.05%
• I do not use it
  
  63.49%
• What is the Sidebar?
  
  17.46%

I am not totally against it, but users should be able to turn it off or be visible only on the main page. The trade off is simply not worth it currently.

That poll does not say that people don't want a sidebar. It says that they don't know what it is (that's what I voted for) or that they rarely use it. GreenEyedDvl took that to mean that people rarely saw it and then decided to make it more visible.

I think this could be useful. Already several things have caught my eye - including this thread. It should also make the front page announcements more powerful for advertising peoples mods.

I have Notifications, the workshop and my hosted mod on my bookmarks bar so I'm never on the TWC main page. I also rarely venture out of a few specific forums. This could be good to introduce people to other parts of the website.

[Melooo182]

Im pretty confident im not the only cough by surprise with this bar thus i think it would be just to submit this to public opinion again now that its effects are obvious to everyone using the site, just a suggestion, take it or leave it.

I am not totally against it, but users should be able to turn it off or be visible only on the main page. The trade off is simply not worth it currently.

+1

also i think the poll didn't contemplate the option of "I don't use it because I don't want to lose my precious screen area"
or
"I don't use it because i'm not interested in rome II news" xD i think that was already said.

I'm ok with having a bar but as long it can be minimized and/or scales with lower res i'd be happy...of course this is me with a 2009 macbook and its 1280px res.

[Melooo182]

I do agree with sebidee.

perhaps it can have the option to minimize but is maximized by default when you open the page, so you at least look once what it has before hiding it.

[GrnEyedDvl]

That poll does not say that people don't want a sidebar. It says that they don't know what it is (that's what I voted for) or that they rarely use it. GreenEyedDvl took that to mean that people rarely saw it and then decided to make it more visible.

I think this could be useful. Already several things have caught my eye - including this thread. It should also make the front page announcements more powerful for advertising peoples mods.

I have Notifications, the workshop and my hosted mod on my bookmarks bar so I'm never on the TWC main page. I also rarely venture out of a few specific forums. This could be good to introduce people to other parts of the website.

Exactly right. That is the main point of this, to get information to people who might not otherwise see it. I am trying to balance a useful size here with current use of the forum.

I do agree with sebidee.

perhaps it can have the option to minimize but is maximized by default when you open the page, so you at least look once what it has before hiding it.

Ads cannot be in a layer that can be hidden, as already stated.


I tweaked some of the themes a bit, going through a couple of others now.

[GrnEyedDvl]

Just gained back 30 pixels on each side of the main global body, for a total of 60 pixels. I doubt you notice where the missing pixels went, it was mostly padding between different parts of the site.

[Melooo182]

perhaps the space where the avatar is can be reduced as well, there too much superficial clutter there anyway

[GrnEyedDvl]

perhaps the space where the avatar is can be reduced as well, there too much superficial clutter there anyway

I trimmed a bit off of that, but not much. It HAS to at least be as wide as the badges with a few pixels for a border. If I make it much smaller we will have to tweak the awards settings so that one less award per row shows.

[Melooo182]

Im surprised by the improvement of removing the borders
well at 90% scae it seems bearable now

[GrnEyedDvl]

Im surprised by the improvement of removing the borders
well at 90% scae it seems bearable now

I knew I could get it tweaked I just needed the time to do it.

What resolution are you running?

[Melooo182]

1280x800