New Sidebar Layout

[GrnEyedDvl]

That's a minimized window? That's going to be almost impossible to prevent, and not even worth the time trying. I just went to the official vBulletin site, found a big thread, shrunk the window down, and it did the same thing. And they do not have a sidebar installed. We cannot possible code things to fit in every single possible size of a minimized window and we shouldn't be expected to. Websites are not designed to be viewed minimized. Use vBulletin Mobile which is designed for small windows if that is how you want to view the site.

I can even make Google appear screwy by shrinking it.

[alex86]

That's a minimized window? That's going to be almost impossible to prevent, and not even worth the time trying. I just went to the official vBulletin site, found a big thread, shrunk the window down, and it did the same thing. And they do not have a sidebar installed. We cannot possible code things to fit in every single possible size of a minimized window and we shouldn't be expected to. Websites are not designed to be viewed minimized. Use vBulletin Mobile which is designed for small windows if that is how you want to view the site.

I can even make Google appear screwy by shrinking it.

It's not minimized, it's just not maximized. It's around 525px wide, and it's not impossible to prevent: just use min-width in your CSS to force certain elements to be at least a certain width.

If you shrink the window to this size in a Google query, for example, it's not "screwy", it just has a horizontal scrollbar. Precisely because they employ min-width. You'll see in the CSS they have #appbar {min-width: 980px }

Websites are exactly designed to be viewed in a wide variety of resolutions, browsers, etc. A 500px-wide window isn't close to an edge case, really. The layout just needs to be fluid/elastic.

This way users can view it in a max window if they want to, or if they need to make the window smaller and pull up another window on the side, they can look at the website without it breaking.

I don't know why vBulletin doesn't do this by default, but if you look at the IPB official forums you'll see an example of what I mean.



The elements don't shrink and run into each other because there's a min-width applied. You can check out the CSS used there (http://community.invisionpower.com/), as it should be quite applicable for a similar forum + sidebar setup as is being employed here.

[Wulfburk]

Kinda also think it eats too much space.... Would very much prefer without it. Make it smaller, or make it go IMHO

edit: Well actually, keep it and make it like .Org, only showing on the main forum. (and not at mods forums for example and in topics)

[Yayattasa]

Use a wider resolution, an give us an actual use for the horizontal scroll bar in this forum layout, is that possible?

[Emperor Hantscher]

I'm getting the impression this sidebar is not debatable, however I think it should be able to be minimized or once inside a thread have the ability to open "A reader" that makes posts go fullscreen. I'm sure I will get used to it, I use a wide screen TV as a monitor so really it makes no difference to me. I cannot imagine what it is going to look like on my cell phone when I'm checking TWC on the toilet at work tomorrow though......

[GrnEyedDvl]

Use a wider resolution, an give us an actual use for the horizontal scroll bar in this forum layout, is that possible?

What horizontal scroll bar??

I'm getting the impression this sidebar is not debatable, however I think it should be able to be minimized or once inside a thread have the ability to open "A reader" that makes posts go fullscreen. I'm sure I will get used to it, I use a wide screen TV as a monitor so really it makes no difference to me. I cannot imagine what it is going to look like on my cell phone when I'm checking TWC on the toilet at work tomorrow though......

Because you did not read the thread. Its disabled on mobile devices.

Really guys I am willing to talk about anything, but I also really get tired of repeating myself. If you aren't going to bother to read the thread then why bother posting?

[Yayattasa]

What horizontal scroll bar??

I mean the browser one. You leave the new sidebar kinda "hidden", far to the right. (But somehow the new ad must always appear, or not?)

[Emperor Hantscher]

What horizontal scroll bar??



Because you did not read the thread. Its disabled on mobile devices.

Really guys I am willing to talk about anything, but I also really get tired of repeating myself. If you aren't going to bother to read the thread then why bother posting?

Yea sorry I didn't have a ton of time to read all six pages, read the first two and posted. I'm on my mobile now because I would not have been able to sleep wondering how my bathroom break is going to affected tomorrow. And really, you have been around this long and you haven't accepted the fact that nobody reads the whole thread before posting! Thx dvl, I appreciate all the work you do here, I love the new M2 theme.

[SturmChurro]

Yeah, I do not like it. I don't mind it too much on the forum index, but anywhere else it feels very cluttered, as said before. If it was only on the index, I would be fine with it. That is just my opinion.

[webba84]

How about disabling it, or shrinking it to tower ad width for forums or threads with more than a certain number of posts (say, a number that will see the main content of the page appear longer than the sidebar?)

That way it will appear frequently and in most parts of the site but will not get in the way of big threads or complicated posts.

[Sebidee]

Would it be possible to personalise what we see? So that we have boxes for specific forums of our choice?

[Melooo182]

How it is right now


Proposal with sizes edited


could it be made like this?
is just a little bit of post space gained but i think it makes the difference, i also reduced a bit the bar but i think that by at least taking over that gap between the new bar and the posting area, as well as shrinking a bit the borders on the forum member info it would look better.

[Ishan]

New sidebar.css needs to be more fluid as per relevant resolution, like for tablets it needs to be worked using media queries. Like for example width 800, you guys could use:

<link rel="stylesheet" media="screen and (min-device-width: 800px)" href="sidebar-800.css" />

could be done in the same sidebar.css if we don't want to create separate files. For higher resolutions we could also design it to be more slim.

[GrnEyedDvl]

Would it be possible to personalise what we see? So that we have boxes for specific forums of our choice?

Not without a bunch of custom hooks. But you already have this function through the thread subscription.

How it is right now


Proposal with sizes edited


could it be made like this?
is just a little bit of post space gained but i think it makes the difference, i also reduced a bit the bar but i think that by at least taking over that gap between the new bar and the posting area, as well as shrinking a bit the borders on the forum member info it would look better.

The ads wont fit in that, and if I put the 160 wide ads in that they would look like crap. The bar needs to be scaled to fit the ads, whatever size ad is in it. If we use the narrow ads, then the information in the blocks will get squished.

New sidebar.css needs to be more fluid as per relevant resolution, like for tablets it needs to be worked using media queries. Like for example width 800, you guys could use:

<link rel="stylesheet" media="screen and (min-device-width: 800px)" href="sidebar-800.css" />

could be done in the same sidebar.css if we don't want to create separate files. For higher resolutions we could also design it to be more slim.

It shouldn't even show on tablets now.

[Melooo182]

The ads wont fit in that, and if I put the 160 wide ads in that they would look like crap. The bar needs to be scaled to fit the ads, whatever size ad is in it. If we use the narrow ads, then the information in the blocks will get squished.

Ok, but what about the gap between the posting area and the bar, as well as forum member/poster info rectangle borders?

[Kahvipannu]

But you already have this function through the thread subscription.

This. I already have customizable track threads and forums etc option, which is really, really good. And the best part, optional. And it doesn't get in the way of things.

I'm going to be totally honest, I do not like the side-bar at all. It shrinks everything up, and since I have for years now used ranked up ammount of posts shown per page, there is a ton of dead-space on the right side.

Please atleast consider removing it from the actual threads. Atleast it wouldn't be on the way most of time.

if a single member finds even one of the boxes useful to him then it would be worth it.

I have to disagree. Putting in optional features I would agree with that statement, but not something that affects every single member.

[rafmc1989]

I have to disagree. Putting in optional features I would agree with that statement, but not something that affects every single member.

But someone is interested to putting this **** as a PERMANENT feature.

[Ishan]

I suspect this would fix almost everyones issues with it.

Yes it would but it's not possible as i said earlier. Ad companies wouldn't pay if their ads aren't displayed everywhere.As for the width these are the types of formats which are considered standard. And GED has chosen the medium rectangle format (300x250 pixels). Like what i'm seeing now on TWC is this ad:

Width can't be reduced anything less than 300 pixels, unfortunately. And GED wouldn't have applied this if all the other alternative options had not been ventured earlier.

But someone is interested to putting this **** as a PERMANENT feature.

That someone would be the site owner, who has personally spent thousand of dollars from his own pocket to sustain this site and he wouldn't have bothered with this step if the site currently was generating enough ad revenue to sustain its bandwidth costs.

[ahowl11]

Okay I was cool with it at first, but even with PM's it's there.. It's on every users profile page too. Idk man, but that's too much in my opinion.

[Ishan]

Not without a bunch of custom hooks. But you already have this function through the thread subscription.

The collapsible function for boxes is there but i don't think we can make it an exception for ads, so either none of them are or all of them are collapsible.

It shouldn't even show on tablets now.

Thanks.

Okay I was cool with it at first, but even with PM's it's there.. It's on every users profile page too. Idk man, but that's too much in my opinion.

Anyways this will be good for TWC in the end and if a single member finds even one of the boxes useful to him then it would be worth it. Right now it looks bad because none of the content is to our taste and we're just not used to it right now.

But have to say, for lower desktop resolutions like 1024x768 it's completely intrusive and simple unbearable. Not a problem for me since i use widescreens.

I think the main question remains whether we want them to displayed everywhere. We have following areas in vbulletin.
- Forum main
- Subforums
- Threads
- Post Preview when using advanced mode.
- Social groups section
- User control panel, private messages etc.
- User profiles, visitor messages etc.

I think this should be put everywhere except when viewing threads or using visitor messages. Like say I'm viewing Thema Devia, i should see the sidebar but not when i'm reading a thread inside Thema Devia.

I think it's possible but because of the restrictions of ads it's not possible because they need to be visible all the time to comply with their terms.