The latest soapblox code upgrade has given us the ability to create additional columns, so I thought I’d try it. I’ve moved all the ads into the right-most column; that prevents the Recommended list, the Recent User Post list, and the Recent Comments list from being pushed so far down the page. It also looks a bit weird, so perhaps it’s a bad idea.
Thoughts on that, or anything else?
UPDATE ON LAYOUT: We are experiencing technical difficulties. Please stand by.
FURTHER UPDATE: Whew, OK, I think the problems are fixed. Amazing what a couple of errant html tags will do. And, bowing to the weight of public opinion, we’re back to the old layout. Thanks for your input.
Please share widely!
Fewer columns. The less cluttered, the better.
Putting one or two up by the header might be better so as to prevent the pushing down effect. But I agree, it’s a bit cluttered now…
Also, the top of the page looks, well, blank. A simple horizontal blue line might make the transition better.
Has anybody else checked out the ICA’s exhibition on design? I went this past Saturday, and I was pretty impressed by the array of gizmos, ads, book jackets (I’m a big fan of Chip Kidd), home design & more. As always, it’s funky and often off beat.
So narrow I feel like I’m going to choke.
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p>Also aggravates my biggest pet peeve: narrow main column makes long posts even longer. Would be better if people didn’t post so much above the fold. But look at the post after this on the front page. You have to scroll for like a week to get by that.
Are you trying to prevent us, with these narrow columns, from using big words in order to expand readership? Or are you trying to prevent exchanges that go 10 deep and already tortured the right margin in wider days?
…which generates loooong thread columns in the OLD system, we’re gonna need MAGNIFYING glasses to read barb and retort!
…it requires expanding the window to the width of the screen, but it’s worth it.
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p>Now, all you need to do is to get people not to post multiple “user posts” on the same topic that serve merely to push other “user posts” off the 2d column from the right.
If a poster is the “first post”. But, by the third or fourth response, it’s going to be awfully narrow.
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p>My thoughts, posted curtly but with love:
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p> * Kill the extra column on the right.
* Move “about” to the bottom for users who are logged in, since we know what this thing is all about anyway. Above or below blogroll, doesn’t matter much. Event Calendar is more important to be seen without scrolling.
* I miss the “upcoming events” written below it… even the net two or three would be nice.
* Drop the leading 0 in days 01…09 on the calendar. Use text colored the same as the background for each leading 0 to keep the spacing.
* Revise the Romney Research Center logo so that it remains it’s clean look and feel but is more legible [particularly the red text]. Perhaps involve the BMG doodled MA graphic, to tie the RRC closer to BMG.
* Why is the spacing between boxes on the left hand side inconsistent? Probably extra whitespace. Have a look and keep it consistent, and closer is better. Scrolling is less good than not-scrolling.
* Capitalize the “e” in “Special elections!” and lose the “!” to keep the heading consistent with other boxes.
* Capitalize the “a” in “BMG’s advertisers” for consistency too.
* Capitalize the “n” in “Latest news” for consistency also.
* Give me back my square braces. I like ’em, and now on “auto_format” I can’t use ’em lest I get an HTML formatting error.
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p>Just some thoughts. Take ’em or leave ’em, but know they came with nothing but appreciation.
News feed now on top. Temporary transition I suspect. I hope.
The four-column layout was working earlier today. Now I’m getting the giant newsfeed as well.
I get this as well. It was awhile before I scrolled down enough to note that a diary/comment page actually has content, and that it wasn’t just a broken link.
Working on it. Not sure exactly what’s gone wrong …
myDedham.org uses SoapBlox as well, and I’ve used the Sandblox to test out changes like this before I go live with them on our blog. You mght want to revert back to the old format, then fool around in the Sandblox.
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p>Also, I wasn’t getting four columns, I was getting 3. The recent users posts, &c, were all down at the bottom of the page in one massive screen wide column.
is that we can’t get user feedback that way. Screen-wide column problem should be fixed now.
Three columns across is plenty.
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p>I’m not familiar with Soap Blocks… Could you configure such that the ads appear below the blog specific blocks like most recent post, etc? That would be a much more readable, less headache-inducing solution to the problem.
just to point out, the new NYTimes layout and the new Boston.com layout has the same number of columns. You may not recognize that, but it’s true.
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p>You’ll get used to the “four column” layout. As Seven of Nine* is wont to have said, “Adapt.”
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p>*we’ve been renting StarTrek Voyager from Blockbuster.
…apparently the new format is not entirely stable. It seems to be toggling back and forth between the three-column format and the four-column format.
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p>Not exactly a problem as far as I’m concerned, but I just thought you might want to know.
i just posted a dairy (the henry hyde one) and had a few problems i’ve never had before. the first is that the software only sometimes now recognizes links when i put them in brackets. as in: [ link text http… ]. it now seems to require the more complex < a > formulation.
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p>also, i accidentally saved my diary before i was finished. well, that was my mistake of course. but when i went in and made changes then hit ‘save’, it produced a second diary rather than just updating the original. i’ve deleted the un-updated version, but it’s an odd thing that has never happened before.
I’ve had the square-bracket problem too. It’s very annoying. Soapblox central is aware of it but is having trouble isolating it. You can avoid it either by using < a > tags (as you’ve done), or by using the WYSIWYG editor.