1 Reply by Gordon Barker

  • Gordon Barker
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Re: Display options for forum

Hi

I expect this is a fairly minor issue that probably doesn't affect many people, but I find the standard NBN display format for the forum awkward on the eye and usually use one of the alternatives available in the Profile Display set-up. However with these set-ups there is a problem in that some of the horizontal menu bars appear as vertical lists, i.e instead of

Home    About    NBN Gateway etc,

you see

-Home
-About
-NBN Gateway,

which is also irritating when most of the initial viewing window is taken up with a couple of menus. If this could be fixed at some point that would be great, although obviously it is not going to be high on the list of priorities. (Using IE 6, so could just be a problem with this version of the browser)

Thank you

Gordon

Gordon Barker
Biological Survey Data Manager
National Trust

2 Reply by Mandy Henshall

  • Mandy Henshall
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Re: Display options for forum

Hi Gordon,

This may be related to resolution.  If you are viewing at less than 900 pixels wide then it will squash everything up and therefore affect the layout.  Is this the case?

Regards,
Mandy

3 Reply by Gordon Barker

  • Gordon Barker
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Re: Display options for forum

Hi Mandy,

No, I have a 1280x1024 resolution. I have uploaded a file to http://forums.nbn.org.uk/uploads.php?file=NBN%20forum%20display%20comparison.doc which should illustrate the point a bit better.

Gordon

Gordon Barker
Biological Survey Data Manager
National Trust

4 Reply by jo p

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Re: Display options for forum

Hi Gordon

The style for the forum has only been applied to the the NBN layout, which is why you don't get the headings in the same format for other styles. We do not have any plans to apply the NBN settings to other layouts so it is recommended that you stick with the NBN style for viewing this forum.

Sorry it is not of much help if you prefer to use other styles.

Regards

Jo

5 Reply by TonyP

  • TonyP
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Re: Display options for forum

I get the same problem with Firefox3. On looking at the "nbn ie" skin I find it does the same thing on Firefox. I can only surmise that the other skins are all set up for a specific version of ie.
It may of course be that a css file is involved.

Data Manger
Somerset Environmental Records Centre

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6 Reply by johnvanbreda

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Re: Display options for forum

Gordon, perhaps you could describe what features of the NBN skin you do not find easy on the eye? It may be a simple tweak...

John van Breda
Biodiverse IT

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7 Reply by Gordon Barker

  • Gordon Barker
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Re: Display options for forum

Its mostly a personal preference thing really, but I feel the two greens jar, especially small white text over lime green. As this is derived from the NBN logo I can't see changes being likely without a huge wave of popular support :) . Not keen on orange text over white either. Also I find it much easier to pick out topics with new posts on the alternative dark background skins. Mostly happy with the alternatives, just the recent (ish) changes that have caused stacking of horizontally separated links that is a minor irritant.

G

Gordon Barker
Biological Survey Data Manager
National Trust

8 Reply by johnvanbreda

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Re: Display options for forum

Hi Jo,

If you download the Colour Contrast Analyser tool provided by Vision Australia (http://www.visionaustralia.org.au/info.aspx?page=1571) you will see that the orange text on white, plus the white on green of either shade don't pass accessibility tests for sufficient contrast. Bearing this in mind, it might be worth having a rething about the shades of colours used on the default template anyway. Maybe you could just clone the existing template but redo the colours to make an alternative high contrast version which Gordon could use?

Best Wishes

John van Breda
Biodiverse IT

johnvanbreda's Website

9 Reply by charlesroper

  • charlesroper
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Re: Display options for forum

Yes, only the 'nbn' skin displays correctly at present. The other skins work, but they're not optimal at present. It should be quite easy to update the other skins so that the menu items appear horizontally, rather than vertically.

As a side issue, now that IE8 is out, it is definitely time to upgrade. IE6 is a seriously outdated browser and you are going to see an increasing number of sites that don't work optimally with it, if at all. There is strong industry pressure for dropping support for it. For example see this poll (although I suspect this is more of an indication of how much web developers hate IE6, rather than an indication of whether they think support for it should truly be dropped). See here too: http://www.bringdownie6.com/

Finally, see the following article for lots of tools/resources for analysing the colour of sites:

http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200709/10_colour_contrast_checking_tools_to_improve_the_accessibility_of_your_design/

Charles

Charles Roper
Digital Development Manager | Field Studies Council
http://www.field-studies-council.org | https://twitter.com/charlesroper | https://twitter.com/fsc_digital

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10 Reply by johnvanbreda

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Re: Display options for forum

Irrespective of the "witch hunt" against IE6, its probably a fair comment that trying to support IE6 in a web development can add quite a lot of effort to the project, since it is not very compliant with web standards. You tend to find comments littered around the code which say things like "I know this code looks odd, but it gets round the bug in IE6 rendering" etc etc! But, I appreciate that whilst this is an easy switch for an individual user, to roll out a new browser across a big organisation is not so easy.

John van Breda
Biodiverse IT

johnvanbreda's Website

11 Reply by charlesroper

  • charlesroper
  • charlesroper
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Re: Display options for forum

Especially when that organisation is still on Windows 2000, which can't run versions of IE greater than 6. I think the .net magazine 'Bring Down IE6' campaign is as much a complaint against Microsoft for not supporting IE7/8 on Win2K as anything else. As someone who has been wrestling with IE6's poor standards support for the best part of 8 years now I am definitely glad its star is fading and can definitely sympathise with the 'haters', but while it remains a browser with a significant share of the market (~20% of all visitors on our site), it'll remain something I have to properly support. I think once it gets below 10%, then I might consider dropping full support for it.

Here's a counter campaign that was announced on 1st April:

http://www.saveie6.com/

;)

Charles Roper
Digital Development Manager | Field Studies Council
http://www.field-studies-council.org | https://twitter.com/charlesroper | https://twitter.com/fsc_digital

charlesroper's Website