Do you like the new-look BU?

[T2A`]

If you put it like that... I think the new design is worser than the old one.

 

[elmuerte]

worser? maybe bader, but worser?

 

[Wowbagger]

Its growing on me but the blue text on the left still looks very bad (its no problem tho since the extra skins will have a more toned down color)

 

[MrBond]

1680x1050, hal? What a coincidence, that's the exact resolution I use....

But I don't do side-by-side. I use tabbed browsing.

 

[hal]

Yeah, wide aspect is great, isn't it?

 

[Mychaeel]

TV stations DO control how their content is presented. They know exactly how wide your TV set is, they have a pretty good idea of your marketing threshhold (how many commercials to play), and they can show you whatever they want exactly how they want to show it to you.

I was making an (arguably witty, but still somewhat to-the-point) comparison between "fixed-width" websites and "fixed-volume" TV channels. When you stretch the analogy beyond that and it doesn't work, don't blame me, and definitely don't hold that over-stretched analogy against me.

When you watch the evening news, you get the same anchor and set regardless of the hardware you are using. You don't get to choose whether or not the person delivering the news is a two foot tall dwarf or a ten foot tall giant.

Yes, and that's because television is a naturally limited medium -- there's simply no way to let users customize the set or the anchor person. Similarly, print media are limited -- there's simply no way for readers to modify the column width of their newspaper to their personal preference.

Those media have to go with a "one size fits all" paradigm because they simply have no other choice. They were forced to cleverly devise guidelines for layout that most people will find quite passable most of the time, not accounting for any individual or momentary preference the reader or viewer may have.

Regardless of your thought about print-->web, there's no denying that there are layout design principles which hold true regardless of the media on which it is displayed.

The explicit goal of those principles is to make reading as comfortable as possible for any reader, as far as that's possible when you apply one set of rules to a wide, heterogenous audience. However, here, in the web, the reader has the ultimate control over how he/she individually wants the content to be displayed. It is very much against the spirit of those principles to have the designer control minutely how the content is displayed.

I'm aware of print-media layout principles and the rationale behind them; I've done print layout for years on a semi-professional level, quite a while before the web became relevant. I've honored them then because they were appropriate for the medium, but it'd never occur to me to translate them one-to-one to a completely different medium.

Liquid Classic should be default.

I agree. If people want to choose a fixed-width middle column, I'd be the last one to argue they should be denied that choice. But the base assumption should be that the user does not need the designer to tell them what window width they prefer.

 

[Sir_Brizz]

I was making an (arguably witty, but still somewhat to-the-point) comparison between "fixed-width" websites and "fixed-volume" TV channels. When you stretch the analogy beyond that and it doesn't work, don't blame me, and definitely don't hold that over-stretched analogy against me.

I wasn't holding it against you, I was pointing out that the two had precious little to do with one another.

 

[hal]

I understand your argument, Mychaeel, and up until recently I have been on that side of it.

 

[G-Lite]

Television is a bad media to which to compare web design. As long as the aspect is constant, televisions project the exact same image in to fit the size of your screen. When you watch the evening news, you get the same anchor and set regardless of the hardware you are using. You don't get to choose whether or not the person delivering the news is a two foot tall dwarf or a ten foot tall giant.

Web browsers do not do that. A 200 x 130 pixel image is 200 x 130 regardless... the positioning on the page is what changes.

Liquid sites just don't work well in every case. It's that simple. Regardless of your thought about print-->web, there's no denying that there are layout design principles which hold true regardless of the media on which it is displayed. Certain designs are easy to use, read, and are pleasing to the eye, and certain designs are not. Good layouts didn't just get thrown out the window because we now have the ability to control the size of our viewing window.

I think we're making a mountain out of a molehill here, actually. We've already established that we will offer a liquid alternative for those who are so inclined. It's nearly ready.

First off all, I'm glad there's going to be a liquid alternative. I liked the design as it is right now, I didn't really notice the problem at first, but that's probably because I only skim over the front page, and visit very few other sites with this problem.

I don't really agree with some of the rest of the points you bring up, though. I guess everyone's view on this differs a bit, and it's hard to tell which is right, if there's a right one at all. But it ain't gonna stop me from throwing in mine.

The reason I disagree, is not because I think you're creating a problem where there isn't one, but instead making an existing problem even bigger. The consequence of the original problem is what you mentioned yourself, that images don't scale along. A 200x130 pixels picture usually stays that size. The problem is though, that pixels are really a bad unit.

They're really an internal unit. When you increase your resolution, you monitor does not suddenly grow larger, does it? Instead, everything on the screen seems to become smaller (atleast in Windows), which is never really what you asked for when you "change the resolution". When you look up the word resolution in a dictionary, there's not really any definition of it that is directly related to size.

Pixels are something a designer shouldn't really care about. It's the wrong unit, we should be using something like centimeters or inches for measuring sizes on monitors just like we measure them everywhere else. (Points work aswell, and are probably more natural for font sizes.) But because we are using them, things like bad website designs using them can go horribly wrong across setups.

Now that I'm so deep into background information, let me just bring up Depth Per Inch (DPI) aswell, which is the amount of pixels that fit in an inch. DPI is not constant, it's dependant on your monitor's resolution and the Real World size of your monitor. Windows neglects it. These days there's very few setups where the DPI is actually set properly in Windows, because it's almost always set to 96. This is why when you change resolution, and thus the DPI should change along, things grow or shrink in Windows, because the DPI isn't changed as it should.

Now going back to our 200x130 example image, the problem is that it's measured in the wrong size. A webbrowser has no way of telling what the actual, Real World size of that image is supposed to be. It only has a non-portable size expressed in pixels. It can't translate that, because it has no idea what the DPI was on the computer it originated from.

The thing is, we're stuck with this limitation. It can't really be solved, because we'd either have to scale the image, which is really ugly for raster graphics, or start supporting vector graphics, which IE will support within the next lightyear orso.

I wouldn't have a problem with a fixed-width design if it wasn't for this, because then I'd actually have a website displayed the way it was meant to be by the author, and I wouldn't have eye-strain trying to read the 11 pixel font on a 1600x1200 resolution on my 17" monitor.

For that reason, fixed-width designs never work. Atleast not today. Liquid designs may not always work for your design ideas, but they work a helluvalot more often than a fixed-width design.

 

[_Zd_Phoenix_]

I really like the clean look. :tup:

 

[PsychoMoggieBagpuss]

I think we're making a mountain out of a molehill here, actually.

Heh, this is the BU forums remember

TBH I didn't ask the right question on the poll. The question should have been "Do you think the new design is better or worse than the old one?". I think that particular question would have made it even clearer that the current design's not an improvement in the slightest.

So if answer doesn't give the results you expecting it to you now want to change the question?
Since when did you start working for Brussels pushing the "yes" campaign on the EU constitution?

 

[Selerox]

"He chose... poorly"

So if answer doesn't give the results you expecting it to you now want to change the question?
Since when did you start working for Brussels pushing the "yes" campaign on the EU constitution?

Hehe, it was more a case of realising I'd asked the wrong question pretty much as soon as I posted it, but by that time it was too late to change it.

The day I support the EU constitution is the day is the day I start asking for phil to be unbanned. Never. Gonna. Happen.

 

[edhe]

Bam bam bam BAAM Bam ba BAAAM.

 

[Selerox]

Eh?

Bam bam bam BAAM Bam ba BAAAM.

You been on the Tennant's Super again mate?

 

[edhe]

Indian Jones theme, you twazzock.

"He Chose... Poorly",

 

[shoptroll]

Reminds me of the Family Guy episode where Peter just starts going "Bam, bam, bam..."

You're up Emeril

Indian Jones theme, you twazzock.

"He Chose... Poorly",

 

[MÆST]

Hooray for Liquid - Classic! My only remaining gripe is the default blue header on the BuF Chrome forum skin. Would look better with the classic header. Also, the skin for the main page ought to carry over to FileWorks.