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New forum layout?

The use of a fixed-width content area is the CSS equivalent of using the Value property node.

 

I suggest two immediate changes:

1) remove the 6px bottom margin from the img element I describe earlier.

2) remove the 980px fixed width from the containers for both Jive and Lithium content.

 

If you need exact line numbers of the offending code I have them, or even fixed files.

 

The new content looks great so I think the developers have the harder to acquire skills, should be simple to say "repeat after me: no fixed widths!"  Just like LV, let the data "flow"

 

Further changes to the flow of Lithium content (I'd like limits to the right-hand column content size) can be addressed at our leisure, I think the two points I mention vastly improve the usability of the site in the meantime.

Message 41 of 102
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@Ray.R wrote:

Did this feature change??

 

I seem to recall that when looking at all the latest posts within my profile (within VIEW ALL), if I clicked on the link in the NEW column which had the number of posts since my last visit to that thread, it would bring me to the first of the unread posts.

 

Now it simply brings me to my last post within the thread.  If the behavior I described is now lost with the recent change, then it needs to be brought back..


I didn't notice any change with respect to this.  When I click on the number it is giving me the first unread post at the top of my screen.  I do know at times in the past, it will give me a previously read post.  It seems to be related to pages that have large, slow loading images.  That when they finally load, it pushes messages off the bottom of the screen and effectively putting a previously read message on my screen and I have to scroll down to get to the unread message.

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Message 42 of 102
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In my case, it could be several pages away from the last message I read, more specifically it brings me to the last message I posted (not read).

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Message 43 of 102
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Good morning,

My apologies for a bit of a late jump on this thread. I can always count on the passionate forum users to spot changes and bugs, so thank you for your thoroughness Smiley Wink

 

Firstly, I'd like to explain the reasoning for the fixed width as I know it is mentioned multiple times in this thread. I understand your frustration, but perhaps if I explain the reasoning behind the sizing, things will become a little more clear. Fixed width layouts allow a designer more direct control over how pages look in most situations. With that, our web designers have been leveraging industry standards and working slowly but surely toward creating a cohesive, consistent experience on all of ni.com (including the Community). 

 

The current industry standard for the web is to design for a resolution of 1024 x 768, as this is the most widely used resolution based on our research. If you alter your screen to that resolution you will notice the white space is minimal. While this can sometimes result in more whitespace and more vertical scrolling in larger monitors, we believe this is the best layout for all of ni.com and are striving for consistency throughout our entire site. If you have further questions regarding this decision, feel free to reach out to me personally.

 

A couple of updates on reported bugs:

1. Image Uploader Tool - this should be fixed and you should no longer have to scroll in the window to upload an image

2. Raised smileys and images - this should also be resolved
 
I will be following up on a few other reported issues on this thread later this afternoon.
Thanks for you patience,
Jordan
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Message 44 of 102
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The other thing I would add is the smaller font.  It seems like it is slightly smaller and/or more compressed than the previous font.  I'm sure with time it is something I can get used to.  But overall, there seems to be a tendency among web designers to make things slightly smaller to fit more on a page.  But we are all getting older, and these slight changes start making things slightly harder to read.  At some point we need to stop making things smaller.

 

It's almost like frog in the pot of water slowly brought to boiling.  The slight changes may not seem like much at the time they are done, but they eventually add up to the point they become unbearable.

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Message 45 of 102
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@JordanG wrote:

The current industry standard for the web is to design for a resolution of 1024 x 768, as this is the most widely used resolution based on our research.



I would like to see the source of that research (I expect it to be dated something like 2005).  My own empirical evidence provided by hundreds of uploaded VIs in the forums is that LV users tend to skew toward larger monitors.  Much larger monitors.

 

That resolution much more accurately reflects the minimum resolution a site will be viewed with.   "Industry Standard" subconsciously equates to lowest common denominator for me.  Having seen it with  my own eyes, you will have trouble convincing me that flowing the forums content with the width  is not a vast improvement.  The 960/980px is perfectly fine as a minimum width, that means no horizontal scrolling for the 0.5% of people with that size monitor.

 

I think two things can be equally true in this case.  The design of the website certainly leapt forward a great deal, and it landed somewhere in the 960-grid craze of 2007.  The community and the forums are two places where content and substance should prevail over style.

 

Each advance in the past 5+ years has given us more style, and when there is "fluff" added on the sides like sidebars and widgets it was tolerable because we could expand the width to take advantage of modern technology and maintain a decent size for the real content.  Now we have the fluff on the sides but we can no longer expand the width to compensate.

Message 46 of 102
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@JordanG wrote:

Firstly, I'd like to explain the reasoning for the fixed width as I know it is mentioned multiple times in this thread. I understand your frustration, but perhaps if I explain the reasoning behind the sizing, things will become a little more clear. Fixed width layouts allow a designer more direct control over how pages look in most situations. With that, our web designers have been leveraging industry standards and working slowly but surely toward creating a cohesive, consistent experience on all of ni.com (including the Community). 

 

The current industry standard for the web is to design for a resolution of 1024 x 768, as this is the most widely used resolution based on our research. If you alter your screen to that resolution you will notice the white space is minimal. While this can sometimes result in more whitespace and more vertical scrolling in larger monitors, we believe this is the best layout for all of ni.com and are striving for consistency throughout our entire site. If you have further questions regarding this decision, feel free to reach out to me personally.


Not a question, but...

 

I'm not an expert on resizable UIs, and certainly not on web design, but that seems like a really bad decision. For one thing, it's providing a really bad experience to your users. For another, it doesn't seem to make much sense - with the proliferation of devices of various resolutions and sizes, sites should be adaptive. It's called responsive design and I know I don't have to teach them about it, because they already know. Also, while the standard may be 1024*768, although I can't remember the last time I saw such a resolution, I highly doubt it's the common resolution among regular ni.com users, and certainly not the forums users.

 

In any case, the main content area should adapt to fit as much of the space as is available. You could set a minimum width (and the CSS does actually have a property specifically for that), but let us use the site like normal people.

 

Let me just stress this again - this is really bad:

 

 

 

They should modify the CSS and set the width to fill the container. They can keep the minimum width at 980 px if they want.


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Message 47 of 102
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Hi Jordan,

 

every simple online browser check is able to document the screen size the website is shown on. I'm sure Lithium and NI are also able to read that data from each user of your website.

 

So can you please provide statistics on the screen size of your website users? I agree with Darin by guessing only less than 1% is still using screens showing just 1024*768. Even my 8 year old laptop has a 1280×800 screen…

 

Nowadays 1366×768 px is "industrial standard" for laptops with large (and growing) amount of 1600×900 and 1920×1080 panels. On box PCs you usually start with 1280×1024 px…

Best regards,
GerdW


using LV2016/2019/2021 on Win10/11+cRIO, TestStand2016/2019
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Message 48 of 102
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Just to illustrate what has happenned in the name of progress, here are then and now shots showing the width of the thread title area:

 

ContentWidth.png

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Message 49 of 102
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Hi Jordan,

 

maybe some statistics from other websites may help. Ok, it mentions 6% for 1024×768px…

 

So 93% of all users will suffer from whitespace because 7% of the users use screens with 1024×768 px (or less)? And the percentage of those users decreased from 24% to just 7% in the last 5 years. (So next year we should expect just 4% with small resolution screens…)

 

Sarcasm: Maybe you should reduce color resolution too as there are 1.5% users with just 8bit or 16bit color modes…

 

Can you provide such statistics for www.NI.com?

Best regards,
GerdW


using LV2016/2019/2021 on Win10/11+cRIO, TestStand2016/2019
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Message 50 of 102
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