Vladimir Panteleev:

> I assumed that someone who claims to have HTML design sense would be familiar with the acronym for User-Agent ;)

That's named "acronym sense", I often fail at it on computer topics :-)


> The forum starts looking bad for me when I make the browser window smaller than 730 pixels in width. Sorry, but I don't think anyone designs web pages for resolutions lower than 800x600 today.

If you take a look at my screen grab, it's 1101 pixels wide. Probably my non-proportional font size is larger than yours. People more than 50 years old often desire to use a larger browser font (if they know how to do it).

Bye,
bearophile

On 19/02/2012 20:46, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
<snip>
> The forum starts looking bad for me when I make the browser window smaller than 730 pixels
> in width. Sorry, but I don't think anyone designs web pages for resolutions lower than
> 800x600 today.

Mobile devices still have screens much smaller than this.

Moreover, have you tested the site on Lynx or anything like that?

Stewart.

On Sun, 19 Feb 2012 18:53:55 -0000, Vladimir Panteleev <vladimir@thecybershadow.net> wrote:

> On Sunday, 19 February 2012 at 16:16:29 UTC, bearophile wrote:
>>> I don't understand how you can claim that it takes up vertical space when it's alongside the post. The only case where it would waste vertical space is when the post is a few lines long.
>>
>> I meant there is a empty vertical rectangle, it steals a rectangular surface. Doing so steals both vertical and horizontal space.
>
> This layout is used by nearly all web forum software. It was chosen to be familiar to people used to those forums.
>
> How would you design the layout?

I've not see a web forum do this yet, but I guess ideally the message text would flow around the image as you often see in newspapers and magazines.  That way lines of message text below the bottom of the image would be full width and not have a large image width margin on them, if you see what I mean.

Regan

-- 
Using Opera's revolutionary email client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

On 19/02/2012 14:22, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> On Thursday, 16 February 2012 at 13:22:43 UTC, bearophile wrote:
>> A screen grab:
>> http://oi39.tinypic.com/2s7e1dy.jpg
>
> I'm not quite sure what browser or configuration you're using, but the screenshot does not
> represent the intended look of the forums.

An astute observation - it represents the actual look to the user who posted the screenshot.

But it does seem that the user has disabled a handful of CSS features by some means.  Of course, text zoom, font/colour overrides and disabling images are things that any web page design needs to be able to cope with.  Switching off CSS completely is another circumstance in which a page should still come out readable and well-structured, even if it doesn't look very good.  On the other hand, if someone wants to put crazy stuff in a user stylesheet like

    h1, h2, h3 {
        font-size: 0.5em;
    }
    p {
        border: 10px solid grey !important;
        font-size: 2em;
    }

_then_ I suppose it's their problem when they find that no web page looks sane.

<snip>
> I don't understand how you can claim that it takes up vertical space when it's alongside
> the post. The only case where it would waste vertical space is when the post is a few
> lines long.

Under that user's settings, it makes the message bodies narrower, causing them to take up more lines.

>> - The menu on the left of the page steals a large amount of space. The threads are often
>> long, while the D menu on the left is short, so there's often a huge amount of space
>> wasted on the page. The result is a too much thin space left for messages text. In my
>> screen about 54% of the horizontal space is wasted for things that are not messages
>> text. I suggest to fix this, I'd like to something more like 80% of it left to messages
>> text.
>
> Viewing the forum in a modern browser will cause the menu on the left to be hidden when
> there is insufficient space to show the full width of messages.

Doesn't quite work for me as I try.  At 1280px width and with text zoomed more than two or three notches, I get header text running into the border of the main body of the page, and the navigation column remaining on the screen and causing lines to break.

Also, with CSS switched off, message lines are all run together.  If you want preformatted text, use <pre>.  It's what it's there for.

Stewart.

On Monday, 20 February 2012 at 12:50:19 UTC, Regan Heath wrote:
> I've not see a web forum do this yet, but I guess ideally the message text would flow around the image as you often see in newspapers and magazines.  That way lines of message text below the bottom of the image would be full width and not have a large image width margin on them, if you see what I mean.

I tried that. It was awful.

On Monday, 20 February 2012 at 13:19:30 UTC, Stewart Gordon wrote:
> But it does seem that the user has disabled a handful of CSS features by some means.  Of course, text zoom, font/colour overrides and disabling images are things that any web page design needs to be able to cope with.  Switching off CSS completely is another circumstance in which a page should still come out readable and well-structured, even if it doesn't look very good.

OK, you're right. However, testing for all such combinations is tedious and time-consuming, so I'll need to rely on your feedback.

> Also, with CSS switched off, message lines are all run together.  If you want preformatted text, use <pre>.  It's what it's there for.

Good point, thanks.

Stewart Gordon:

> But it does seem that the user has disabled a handful of CSS features by some means.  Of course, text zoom, font/colour overrides and disabling images are things that any web page design needs to be able to cope with.

In that screengrab there are images, images are not disabled. And I think I have not disabled CSS features (on purpose).

Bye,
bearophile

As a web-dev-for-food, I can say that trying to design a site that works on all browsers, all the time, is an impossible task. You think that a few odd settings producing this: http://tinypic.com/r/2ch9ykj/5 or this: http://oi39.tinypic.com/2s7e1dy.jpg is horrible. Try using a browser that doesn't properly support a certain CSS feature, or a small javascript bug with some sites and they are literally unusable.

I get that "well other sites are worse" is not an excuse, but you've got to judge it accordingly. If, under normal browser settings, the site looks good, then that should be enough. If you then have suggestions, present them as such, do not try to present the site as broken and needing to be fixed. Web design is hard, trying to cover as many bases as possible is a nightmarish task.

For example: "Long lines?" "They should be broken, otherwise it looks bad"/"They shouldn't be broken because it looks bad." - Some lines are broken by the software the person is using, other times the user has done it deliberately because of the interface they are using and the reflow has broken things.

There are a potentially infinite number of possible configurations, and sites need to be aimed at the lowest-common denominator. Doesn't look right with an enlarged font size? Tough. Doesn't look good on Netscape 2.0? Tough.

Of course you try to code to make it works as well as /possible/ in browsers outside the Webkit/Firefox/IE trifecta, and you try to make it flexible, but at some point, you need to sacrifice portability for aesthetics, otherwise we're still stuck in the early nineties...

I'm pretty sure that making a website work in all browsers and all configurations is a punishment in hell for IE developers...

--
James Miller

On 2012-02-21 01:53, James Miller wrote:
> As a web-dev-for-food, I can say that trying to design a site that
> works on all browsers, all the time, is an impossible task. You think
> that a few odd settings producing this: http://tinypic.com/r/2ch9ykj/5
> or this: http://oi39.tinypic.com/2s7e1dy.jpg is horrible. Try using a
> browser that doesn't properly support a certain CSS feature, or a
> small javascript bug with some sites and they are literally unusable.
>
> I get that "well other sites are worse" is not an excuse, but you've
> got to judge it accordingly. If, under normal browser settings, the
> site looks good, then that should be enough. If you then have
> suggestions, present them as such, do not try to present the site as
> broken and needing to be fixed. Web design is hard, trying to cover as
> many bases as possible is a nightmarish task.
>
> For example: "Long lines?" "They should be broken, otherwise it looks
> bad"/"They shouldn't be broken because it looks bad." - Some lines are
> broken by the software the person is using, other times the user has
> done it deliberately because of the interface they are using and the
> reflow has broken things.
>
> There are a potentially infinite number of possible configurations,
> and sites need to be aimed at the lowest-common denominator. Doesn't
> look right with an enlarged font size? Tough. Doesn't look good on
> Netscape 2.0? Tough.
>
> Of course you try to code to make it works as well as /possible/ in
> browsers outside the Webkit/Firefox/IE trifecta, and you try to make
> it flexible, but at some point, you need to sacrifice portability for
> aesthetics, otherwise we're still stuck in the early nineties...
>
> I'm pretty sure that making a website work in all browsers and all
> configurations is a punishment in hell for IE developers...
>
> --
> James Miller

I completely agree. And it's hell for you when you're forced to support IE because more than 50% of the customers use IE.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On Tuesday, 21 February 2012 at 00:53:51 UTC, James Miller wrote:
> There are a potentially infinite number of possible configurations,
> and sites need to be aimed at the lowest-common denominator. Doesn't
> look right with an enlarged font size? Tough.

So the joke about "standard font size" isn't a joke?