The Forum Layout is a Bit of a Mess, no?

Acn

SonVolt said:

Thanks for the welcome. What happens on Friday? The whiskey sippin' starts? 

I’d say sippin’ severely undersells the damage we do to our livers.  Guzzlin’ is more appropriate.

TEXASBGE2018

SonVolt said:

Thanks for the welcome. What happens on Friday? The whiskey sippin' starts? 

Give it 2 more days, Sit back and enjoy. Oh and have your popcorn ready.

SonVolt

I like my whiskey with a splash of sweet tea and mint. 

JohnInCarolina

Wait until someone tells him about the old forum.

SmokeyPitt

Are you using one of the newer ultrawide (21:9) monitors or a 16:9? 

Have you tried different browsers?  If it is an ultrawide then it may just look that way. I agree it starts to look a bit silly. At some point I would suspect they will improve the CSS to optimize for large scale displays. 

I think a great deal of time has been spent in the web world making sites more responsive on smaller displays, and there hasn't been as much time spent making them scale up to larger displays. 

Theophan

SonVolt said:

... the content should span the full wide of usable screen real estate. This forum was obviously designed for old 1024x768 resolution so it looks a bit stilted now.

First, welcome to the site, and I really am sure that if you just hang out for a while, you'll get used to the user interface, and it'll be fine.  This site uses a standard forum software, and sure, it's not the best thing in the whole world.  But for a free site without annoying advertisements, that many of us here find really useful (and, BTW, one of the free benefits of this site is you don't need to post your images on Imgur -- you can post them right here -- no muss, no fuss), I think most of us find it more than adequate.

And no, actually, as @HeavyG said above, sensible web design makes sure that paragraphs are an appropriate width, and usually don't fill the entire screen because they would get so wide that the human eye has trouble scanning them.  The paragraphs in these posts are a very appropriate length, and if they were allowed to get wider it would only make them more difficult to read.  Very few people maximize windows on wide screens.  I have a 27" Retina iMac, and I usually have several windows open at the same time on different parts of the screen, none of which is as wide as the viewport.  Sensible web designers put limits on how wide their pages are allowed to get.  It's actually your Pizza Making site that has a rather old fashioned design because it allows its content to get so wide that it's a strain, trying to read excessively long lines of text.  You might want to check out this article: Readability: the Optimal Line Length

Here is a comparison of this forum with 3 major news sites on my 27" iMac, with each window maximized, as I never do (I'm not sure why you do?), and you'll see that this site is very similar to these other major commercial websites in the max width of its content block:



Again, welcome, and no kidding, I really think if you just hang out a while, you'll get used to the user interface, and it'll seem fine, and actually quite usable.

The main thing is the content, not the packaging.  No online forum is perfect, and this one isn't either, but I've been here for years, and I've learned a lot, and enjoyed it a great deal.  Please join in, and stick around, and I'm sure you will, too!

SSQUAL612

DMW said:

Just don't have your browser in fullscreen mode. It's intentional so you can keep the forum open in one browser window while you are browsing porn working on stuff on the rest of your screen.

To avoid Malware I do all of my porn browsing at FedEx Office but I do get some strange looks when I’m sitting there in my underwear. 

SonVolt

SmokeyPitt said:

Are you using one of the newer ultrawide (21:9) monitors or a 16:9? 

Have you tried different browsers?  If it is an ultrawide then it may just look that way. I agree it starts to look a bit silly. At some point I would suspect they will improve the CSS to optimize for large scale displays. 

I think a great deal of time has been spent in the web world making sites more responsive on smaller displays, and there hasn't been as much time spent making them scale up to larger displays. 

I'm sure it's at least a 16:9...  Us old geezers clinging to our desktop machines are being left behind it seems. I'll use my iPhone to browse the net when  I have to... like when I'm driving or taking a dump, but I still prefer the full desktop experience. 

JohnInCarolina

Lol

Theophan

SonVolt said:

... Us old geezers clinging to our desktop machines are being left behind it seems. I'll use my iPhone to browse the net when  I have to... like when I'm driving or taking a dump, but I still prefer the full desktop experience. 

I'm an old guy too (look at my picture), and I remember the days when, on small monitors, we'd have to maximize the browser, or whatever else we were working on at the time, to fill the screen.  But those days are gone!  With a really wide screen, you DON'T maximize windows to fill the screen, anymore!

I have an iMac with a 27" screen, which is pretty wide, at 5120x2880 pixels, which is a whole lotta pixels, and it's 16:9.  But here's the deal: on that wide a screen, you don't maximize ANYTHING, except maybe a video that you want to look at like it's on TV.  Please look at most major websites, and you'll see that all major commercial sites are designed to limit how wide the content can get.  (See my previous post where I showed you what 3 major news sites look like compared to this forum.)  The reason is that it's just hard on the eyes when content gets too wide.  Pretty much everybody with a wide screen keeps any windows they're using much smaller than the width of the screen.  Here's my computer right now, as I'm typing this. (I shrunk the picture so it's much smaller than my screen really is.)  You'll see that my browser window does NOT fill the screen!



I'm not a professional web designer, but I have been a volunteer web designer for multiple churches over many years, and within the past year I redesigned my church's site using the "Bootstrap framework" that very many professionally designed websites these days use to achieve "responsive" design (meaning that the pages reshuffle themselves to fit different devices differently), and it's deliberately designed to limit how wide design elements are allowed to get on very wide screens, and the reason is better usability.

Please, give it a try.  If you have a wide screen, try UN-maximizing your windows, and I think you'll find it actually works better.  You can have multiple windows open on the same page.  The idea is sort of like having a big desk.  You wouldn't want a book to take up the entire surface of your desk.  You wouldn't want a ledger, or a document you're working on, or anything else that might be on your desk to be as large as the entire surface of the desk!  You have many different things on your desk at the same time.  A wide computer screen is the same way.  Don't force windows to fill the entire screen unless there's a (rather rare) specific reason to do so.  Everything will work better!

SonVolt

You're going to think I'm crazy but I have 3 24" monitors in front of me setup like a cockpit. I still maximize everything. Visual Studio in the center, SQL Server Management studio on the left and a Browser of some sort or Outlook on the right.  I've always disliked the Mac experience because applications didn't always fully maximize. I'm set in my ways. 

SmokeyPitt

SonVolt said:

You're going to think I'm crazy but I have 3 24" monitors in front of me setup like a cockpit. I still maximize everything. Visual Studio in the center, SQL Server Management studio on the left and a Browser of some sort or Outlook on the right.  I've always disliked the Mac experience because applications didn't always fully maximize. I'm set in my ways. 

If you ever build an ASP.net web application it uses bootstrap in the default app templates. It sounds like you would be a fan of container-fluid rather than container. 
https://getbootstrap.com/docs/3.3/css/#overview-container

HeavyG

SonVolt said:

HeavyG said:

I think the layout is fine. Clean and simple - not over-designed like so many other places.

I do 99.9% of my viewing on my 27" iMac.

If you maximize the window on a large monitor why would you want the comments to expand to fill the entire width of your monitor? The human eye/brain doesn't process text as efficiently when a line of text gets too long. There's a reason newspapers use columns rather than just printing a story the full width of a page.

I have no problem distinguishing between posts in a thread due to the use of the footer at the bottom of every post and the use of the name/avatar at the beginning of subsequent posts.

Clean and simple is exactly the opposite of how I would describe it.  To answer your question - yes - the content should span the full wide of usable screen real estate. This forum was obviously designed for old 1024x768 resolution so it looks a bit stilted now. 

Take PizzaMaking.com as an example.... the forum spans the full width and uses alternate row coloring for proper delineation. Half the time here I'm reading someone's bolded signature thinking it's the body of their post. 

https://i.imgur.com/0gKPACg.png

I've been a member of the pizzamaking forum for a few years and am quite familiar with their site. Hate the color scheme. And it is definitely not a site I would ever consider running in full screen mode because of the free flowing text design they use. If you're content with reading a line of text that is a foot long then good on ya.

My main desktop is broken into three columns  - Twitter feed on one side, a couple apps/windows (delivery tracker and security cam) on the right and  browser windows (and other apps (such as RadarScope at the moment due to the nasty weather) I may also be running at the time) in the middle.

There are some occasions I want a full screen view and for those I set up different desktops but the sites I do that with are graphical (such as windy.com) rather than text based.

Just because you can make a browser window full screen doesn't mean you always should. But if that is what works for you then do what you feel is best.

theyolksonyou

So many words....

JohnInCarolina

What’s the user experience like over at meatspin.com?  

thetrim

I used to like it.

Then I hated it.

Then they brought back the home button.

Now I like it again.

tarheelmatt

Call Bruce!

Skiddymarker

sometimes the sipping starts Tuesday or any other day with a "y" in it, but Friday is the standout. 

What @DMW said above is the real reason this format is suitable, unlike many other forums where there can be too much going on, including pop-up ads you need the whole screen. All of us ornery old bastards like this format, but your thoughts and ideas on any topic are always welcome!

nolaegghead

Fridays typically end up being a messy free-for-all between the mean smart people and the mean dumb people.  Then someone starts crying and "The Buffalo" (AKA Moderator) comes in and cleans up the mess.

lousubcap

Gotta admit the great majority of this thread qualifies as fly over words for me.  Perhaps in the cold light of Friday eve I will have an epiphany.  

Biggreenpharmacist

Damn. I read this sh!t and now I dont think I fit in here anymore. 

SamIAm2

Biggreenpharmacist said:

Damn. I read this sh!t and now I dont think I fit in here anymore. 

Shift, Command, + will fix that for you.

Jeremiah

I’m still trying to figure out if you’re a troll or just a curmudgeon. Either way, you do know if you don’t like this forum there’s plenty others to spend your time on...

thetrim

Sounds like @SonVolt needs to get a girlfriend.  With a monitor set up like that, I’m interested to hear how you can find enjoyment in front of a single 18“ diameter ceramic grill???

jtcBoynton

The only apps that I run full screen on my large monitor desktop are mapping apps and an occasional spreadsheet.  Never for text based usage.  I never run pizzamaking.com full screen - makes it too hard to read.  

ColtsFan

Silly web designers...

nolaegghead

jtcBoynton said:

The only apps that I run full screen on my large monitor desktop are mapping apps and an occasional spreadsheet.  Never for text based usage.  I never run pizzamaking.com full screen - makes it too hard to read.  

...and pornhub.com...

DMW

nolaegghead said:

jtcBoynton said:

The only apps that I run full screen on my large monitor desktop are mapping apps and an occasional spreadsheet.  Never for text based usage.  I never run pizzamaking.com full screen - makes it too hard to read.  

...and pornhub.com...

This guy gets it.

theyolksonyou

People use desktops???

lkapigian

They did bring the Home Button back