I like my browser to be full screen, because I don’t like distractions. Probably it’s because I’m on the autism spectrum. I can only focus on one thing at a time, but I focus 100%. Sensory overload is an issue for me.
e.g. I can’t listen to background music while I’m working. It would drive me crazy.
We really need that. I suppose you can click on their profile to see join date but that extra step shouldn’t be necessary IMHO.
And people can block their public profile and if they do there’s no way to know their join date. I like knowing folks’ join date–it can tell you something about an unknown poster.
Also, there’s only wasted white space on the left and right if you make your browser full screen or so wide that a single column of type is too difficult to read anyway (that’s why newspapers use 5 or 6 columns, not a single one; for reading comfort and ease.
Be thankful Discourse doesn’t force you to read one massively-wide single column in full-screen. I could never have the old Board in full-screen for that reason. This is an improvement.
Whereas I had the old board in full-screen just about all the time, and I among many others are saying that not having that option is not an improvement.
I’ve discovered, reading this thread, that some people have trouble reading wider text. Clearly not everybody does. This ought to be a user option. And, in effect, it was a user option on the old boards, because anybody who wanted to be restricted to a narrow column could just narrow their window. Nobody was “forcing” you to read in a width you didn’t like; but those of us who prefer the wider text are now being forced to read in short cramped lines.
The only time I don’t have Windows open full-screen is when I’m working on a document and have to keep referring to something else – then I’ll have the two side-by-side, each taking up about half the screen.
I’d like to see the space between the text and the slider, and the space between the slider and the right margin, cut in half. (The wasted space at the left side doesn’t annoy me near as much.) As is, the text block takes up just under seven inches, with another half inch for the poster’s avatar, on a thirteen-and-a-half-inch screen.
It wasn’t really an option. I mean, maybe I could have made it EVEN WIDER than it was, but if I pulled in the window as much as I wanted to, I had to scroll side-to-side on every line, which was enough of a PITA that I routinely widened my browser window when I was reading the Dope, and narrowed it again when I moved to friendlier screens. I used to have to resize my Chrome window all the time to accommodate this site.
I’m not saying it’s bad to give you an option to make it really wide. I like options, and that seems like one a lot of people would like. I’m just really surprised that it’s one SO MANY people want, as it’s one that would drive me nuts.
Do you mean that the text wasn’t readjusting to the window size?
I think that must have been Chrome. I read the Dope in Firefox (Mac) and on the old board the text always wrapped to whatever the window width was; if I made the window narrow I got short lines, if I made the window wide I got long lines. I never had to scroll side to side if I narrowed the window (as occasionally happened if I wanted to see something else on the screen at the same time.)
That’s true.
Correct. There was a “default” size. I could make the window wider, and the test readjusted, but if I made it narrower than the default then I had to scroll back and forth. I think the width of the default may have been driven by other non-text items on the screen. (like the ads.)
Multicolumn text in a message board is an absurd idea.
This is why we have themes. We can have a wide format one and the narrower format one so that people can read the way they prefer.
True, but, that just means changing things depending on the screen size, which is what the best designed sites do.
I do see people don’t like the two-column text idea. I probably should have never brought it up. My point was just that the studies about line length do not mandate the single narrow columns. You can put other stuff, which is what most well designed sites do.
As for you being okay with it–how wide is your screen? I assume that most people who are complaining have white bars that, when put together, are wider than the actual text. A little bit of white bar isn’t bad–but it gets excessive on wider screens, which is why, IMO, you want to design around that.
I have a wide screen, and the text block takes up just over a third of it. I like it that way.
The white space is fine as far as I’m concerned. I don’t want a busy screen jammed with text. And it seems that only a very few people are complaining about it.
On Chrome at least, you can zoom the browser in, and reduce the font size in your preferences, giving wider blocks.
Otherwise you need a theme with a wider text block. Or it can probably be done with Greasemonkey, Tampermonkey, FreeStylerWs, or similar. Perhaps you can get someone to write some custom CSS for you, and for the other people who want wider text.
Just wondering, is it possible for a theme to change the previous page/next page links into a list of pages like the old board had?
E.g. instead of “← previous page next page →” it might show “← previous page 1 2 3 4 5 next page →”.
~Max
Personally I used to have the Straight Dope taking up part of the screen, with a separate research window or text editor taking up the other part. I don’t mind the whitespace when in fullscreen but I have to admit it is wasted space. Thankfully the whitespace mostly disappears when I resize the window like I used to.
I do understand the argument in favor of a wide theme and I have no objection to that. I can always resize my window to reduce column width - people who prefer wide columns are currently out of luck.
I also want to note that email notifications are bound by the width of my email client window, which is also fine by me.
~Max
Let’s be honest here. MOST sites (like 98%) do exactly what this site does, it is absolutely a web standard approach. Pick a standard maximum width and stick with it. The columns are responsive at narrower resolutions but they are capped on the top end to keep them readable and to avoid a situation where the majority of the text (short paragraphs/sentences) is all in the lefthand gutter leaving the middle of the screen, where people’s eyes naturally rest, blank.
It’s not unreasonable to say that you want a wider maximum, but you should accept that you are the outlier here. Whitespace on the sides of a widescreen monitor is the lesser evil when compared to whitespace in the middle of the screen with shorter responses which is why it’s the web standard.
Less scrolling
I don’t think pages even exist here on the new board, do they?
And further, this is not a new thing. This is not a “because of mobiles” or “kids these days!” kind of thing like many complaints about the new board are (including from me).
This has been a thing on the net since almost the beginning. You could always tell which websites were professionally made and which were Geocities or Lycos or My Yahoo Fun Page by whether the text went all the way across the width of the screen or not.
I never even knew the old Board went all the way across because I kept my browser window narrow enough so I could read it. The old SDMB was in a minority even 15 years ago.
I’ve been around since the early days of the web, and it was a way to tell what was professionally made and what wasn’t, but not the way you seem to think. A fixed width page was a sign of a n00b who thought designing web pages was the same as designing printed pages. Another sign was having the front page say something like “Best viewed at nXn resolution”, or “Adjust your window to match the width of line”. The intent of the web was for the content to conform to the user’s browser, and competent designers were expected to make the page look as good as possible at any resolution or window width.
You mentioned that you never knew the text could go the full width of the screen because you never had your window that wide. That just shows that using a fluid layout doesn’t have a negative effect for anyone. But this maximum width for the content pane has no benefit for those who set their windows narrower, and a definite negative effect for those who prefer a wider window.
I just want to reiterate that the old one wasn’t fully fluid, at least with the theme I had been using. Because I like to keep my web browsers narrow, and I often had to widen my window to accommodate the old Dope – otherwise it made me scroll back and forth – which is a lot worse than scrolling up and down.