[LoCash]

This has sort of been a long time coming, and we appreciate your patience. This is the Nova UI Update 1.5, but really, since we couldn't finish it all in time for the new year, this is more like 1.5 beta 1. We still have some things to clean up on the templates, but Alcimedes and I were tired of waiting, so we're deploying it now because it's close enough

Everybody should give a huge thanks to Brad for fixing a lot of the outstanding rendering issues with my design here. He really buckled down and while he didn't fix it all, he did a lot. Have a good new years, guys, and enjoy the refreshed look.

[Luca]

It might be nice if it didn't ask for a password (and my regular forum password does not work) eight or ten times whenever I open any page. It might also be nice if there wasn't a huge white border around the outsides. But other than that it looks nice .

Only other thing I could possibly ask for would be that the Quick Reply box were focused if you click on it rather than having to hit the "reply" button on a post. But that's not related to the update I don't think.

[InactionMan]

Yeah, looks great. But I got the goofy password thingy too.

[Quagmire]

Me like new stuff. It will take a while to get use to the new bar. Happy to see updates here.

[staph]

Looks good.

My only complaint (other than the few rendering errors you're obviously still cleaning up) is that reading the menu bar with "register preferences members etc." on it is giving me eyestrain. I don't suppose you want to bump that font size up a little?

[LoCash]

The password issue was fixed. I forgot to point to the CSS file on applenova.com instead of our test server.

The secondary navigation bar will get a darker background in the next few days which will actually increase readability. It's easier than bumping that text size up

[SonOfSylvanus]

Originally Posted by LoCash And that bar itself looks a bit flat compared to the rest of tha site, maybe give it some 3D definition?

Nach, screw what I just said.

Just noticed the little show/hide buttons at the bottom of each page. Have they aalways been there? They're great anyway.

Oh shit! I replaced my first post instead of quoted it. Well, the gist was: great! well done! make the navigation text a bit bigger and separate the page numbers a bit.

[torifile]

You fuckin' slackers STILL didn't fix the quick reply button key combo!!!!

And it's back to Alt + S. Screw this shit. I'm going back to AI.com.
















Looks good. On the main forum pages, there's a very faint grey line through the bar that has "Thread" "Thread Starter" etc. It's like 2 px wide. Anyone else see it?

[staph]

Re. readability of the menu bar, the problem is as much the thickness/boldness of the text at that size — the "e" is almost missing the gap at the top, and the "a" looks decidedly blobby as well. So perhaps a slight decrease in font weight with the added contrast would fix it?

[onlyafterdark]

Originally Posted by torifile Looks good. On the main forum pages, there's a very faint grey line through the bar that has "Thread" "Thread Starter" etc. It's like 2 px wide. Anyone else see it?

Yes I do.

[alcimedes]

we're hoping that the little things will be annoying enough to force Brad to fix it.



have a good night all!

[Brad]

God damn you, LoCash!

*writes up a global announcement*

[ast3r3x]

I really love everything. I really appreciate the nice shadow on the dark grey text area.

Can you put in a little whatever so that if we are logged in, we don't see the "Register" link? That and I think the shadow offset is a little too much on the text. Perhaps increase the size by 1 and decrease the distance by 1 or 2? That is all this drunk man has to say about now.

Of course I love the new look, nice job Brad, LoCash, and everyone!


PS - The calendar page is ass ugly...but I'm not volunteering to fix it I think maybe because each row is a different size then the others.

[Brad]

To anyone pointing out problems: read the global announcement.

[IonYz]

Re: Quote / Reply

So Tori are you joking or serious? I know I'm new around here but these two buttons confuse me. Used to having a quote open in a new window, but I find myself still hitting reply sometimes thinking, "Ok, Reply to them with a quote".

Re: Register / Pref bar

Has the designer considered using CSS to mimic the images? In another thread I read the justification of a PNG-24 logo image because visitors are Mac users. Wouldn't that support text-shadow links then? Unless Safari visitors aren't the majority.

Just thought I'd add some. Haven't looked around a lot but the rest looks great and kicks AI's ass.

[Brad]

PNGs? We don't give a damn about Windows IE. Yes, the overwhelming majority of our hits are from either Mac users or Windows users with some form of Mozilla.

CSS shadows? Name one browser besides Safari 1.2.x that can do CSS shadows. The old versions certainly don't. Mozilla doesn't. That cuts out a LOT more users.

We know the images don't look great. We know there are lots of things that need fixing. Blah blah blah blah!

*stabs LoCash*

[alcimedes]

if it makes you feel better, i'm sure Locash is stabbing himself plenty tonight.

[IonYz]

Originally Posted by Brad CSS shadows? Name one browser besides Safari 1.2.x that can do CSS shadows. The old versions certainly don't. Mozilla doesn't. That cuts out a LOT more users.

Your right, other browsers don't support text-shadow. And because of that your current design wouldn't work anyway. I've just grown really tired of text I can't resize thats all.

Sorry I'm a standards/accessibility advocate, I have to run people through hoops for no good reason.

Originally Posted by Brad We know the images don't look great. We know there are lots of things that need fixing. Blah blah blah blah! *stabs LoCash*

Haha, no, overall its very spiffy. Always dug the Apple Pro theme.

[drewprops]

How hard would it be to put a Forum Jump drop-down menu at the top o' the page as well? That smells like a Brad task

[Luca]

Wow, I see there have been a number of extra changes since I last checked. Looking good!

I will again suggest that the Quick Reply box becomes more intuitive. It's easy to confuse the "Quote," "Reply," and "Post Reply" buttons. Now of course I know what to do, but maybe there should be a button labeled Quick Reply, or maybe you should be able to just click in the Quick Reply box and have it accept text.

[naren]

Nice update folks, one question: how does the similar threads feature work, how is similarity determined? This is new right? Or have I been totally oblivious to it until now.....

[LudwigVan]

Originally Posted by naren Nice update folks, one question: how does the similar threads feature work, how is similarity determined? This is new right? Or have I been totally oblivious to it until now.....

I can't reply to your first question, but to your second and third, yes, the similar threads list has been around for a while now. There was a thread about this several weeks ago.

[LoCash]

The secondary navigation links at the top are images specifically because I did not want the user resizing that text. Ability to resize that text would gradually grow the height of that element, and at one point in time (and I do believe this is still the intention) we had a background image with a specific height and therefore did not want it to go beyond a certain height.

We did actually experiment with that, (Brad did at least) but I shot him down

[Luca]

Oh yeah, I'm occasionally seeing scrollbars appear to the right of certain posts. It doesn't happen often but once in a while I see it. It doesn't seem to do anything.

[Mac+]

Nice work on the update gents - and HNY to all as well!

[Brad]

Originally Posted by Luca Oh yeah, I'm occasionally seeing scrollbars appear to the right of certain posts. It doesn't happen often but once in a while I see it. It doesn't seem to do anything.

This is a side effect of a major advancement I made in how posts are laid out. Part of the new layout is that LoCash put the whole page in a giant table. Grr to that. So, if someone posts a gargantuan image, it would stretch and distort the page as in the old vB2 and UBB days. Not cool! So, I've wrapped up each post to be a scrollable entity with CSS overflow rules. It's not perfect and, like so much of this design, has bugs that still need to be hammered out.

I'm likening this UI update to Mac OS X 10.0. The management decided it had to ship on a given date regardless of the multitude of known problems, but those problems will be fixed over a period of time to follow.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by naren Nice update folks, one question: how does the similar threads feature work, how is similarity determined? This is new right? Or have I been totally oblivious to it until now.....

I haven't looked at the low-level code much, but this is how I understand it.

vB already indexes every post. The words are stored in a giant hash for quick searching. One thing it can do while indexing is to count the frequency of certain words it determines as key words. The "similar threads" feature should operate on a method that compares key word frequencies.

[IonYz]

Originally Posted by LoCash The secondary navigation links at the top are images specifically because I did not want the user resizing that text. Ability to resize that text would gradually grow the height of that element, and at one point in time (and I do believe this is still the intention) we had a background image with a specific height and therefore did not want it to go beyond a certain height. We did actually experiment with that, (Brad did at least) but I shot him down

Ah ok. Age old problem I know.

On my companies site I had that problem too. Bit the bullet and made the image that would go their simpler and larger so people could enlarge the text a few levels but after that it started looking weird. The next revision I make will use preset "smaller" and "larger" buttons. Would help me design around a max limit while allowing users to enlarge or shrink within average limits.

Your text is somewhat smaller then I'm used too, but thats just me.

[SonOfSylvanus]

Originally Posted by Brad I'm likening this UI update to Mac OS X 10.0. The management decided it had to ship on a given date regardless of the multitude of known problems, but those problems will be fixed over a period of time to follow.

He have to wait years?!

[Kickaha]

Needs avatars.